This year there was a different air on the Croisette. Less sound of champagne, less calculated glamour, less of that old charm of Cannes where stars stepped out of black limousines and photographers fired like machine guns. Instead, the 79th Film Festival often seemed like a great reflection on a world that has lost its way.
And in the middle of it all: Cristian Mungiu.
The Romanian director received the Palme d’Or for his film Fjord — for the second time following his triumph in 2007 with 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days. A moment that not only made film history, but also fit surprisingly well with this strange festival. Because Mungiu’s cinema is never interested in simple truths. His characters stumble in gray moral zones, in social tensions and ideological minefields. It’s precisely there that Europe seems to be today.
Fjord tells the story of a Romanian-Norwegian family, strictly religious, isolated and tense internally. When Norwegian child protection intervenes, a conflict begins that goes beyond the family. Who protects whom? And where does care end and cultural imposition begin?
Mungiu addresses these questions with that silent precision that characterizes him. Without big outbursts. Without blocks of morality. Instead, with glances, silences, small gestures — like cracks in the ice of a fjord that seem harmless and suddenly displace entire landscapes.
The audience in Cannes reacted almost with reverential respect. During the screening, there was that rare festival silence where no one coughed, no one whispered, no one looked at their phone. Cinema as a collective experience of concentration. Are there still many places like that?
The awards ceremony in general seemed like a mirror of the present. Numerous films dealt with war, identity, migration, or political violence. Almost every second film in competition seemed permeated by a deep social nervousness. Cinema now does not look away. It investigates deeply.
This was especially clear with the Russian director Andrey Zvyagintsev. When receiving the Grand Prize for Minotaur, he made an open call to Vladimir Putin to demand an end to the war against Ukraine. For a moment, the room ceased to feel like a festival palace and turned into a political forum. Some applauded hesitantly, others immediately. Some stood up.
Cannes suddenly recalled those decades when film festivals were still considered intellectual battlegrounds — a bit chaotic, a bit megalomaniacal, but with a lot of conviction.
The other awards also fit into this picture. Valeska Grisebach received the Jury Prize for The Dreamed Adventure. Her film about migration and crime at Europe’s borders tells about people who do not belong anywhere. The directing awards were split between Paweł Pawlikowski and the Spanish duo Los Javis. Even the acting awards bet on the community instead of the traditional star cult.
It almost seemed as if Cannes wanted to consciously relativize the principle of the solitary genius. Moving away from the myth of the all-powerful director, towards the ensemble, towards shared storytelling. Perhaps also a sign of our times.
Of course, there were iconic moments: Barbra Streisand on the red carpet, Peter Jackson with unkempt beard, flashes along the Croisette. But even those scenes carried a melancholic tint this time. As if the festival sensed that the world outside the cinema hall is already louder than any red carpet.
And that is why Mungiu’s victory seems so logical.
Because Fjord does not offer easy answers. The film stubbornly refuses to present clear perpetrators and victims. Instead, it shows modern democracies as fragile structures full of contradictions. Tolerance becomes arrogance. Protection turns into control. Freedom clashes with moral expectations.
It sounds theoretical. But in Mungiu it feels terrifyingly concrete.
One scene remains especially vivid: A Norwegian official is sitting silently at the family kitchen table, while outside the freezing rain beats against the windows. No one shouts. No one escalates the conflict. And yet, in that silence there is more threat than in many action movies. Yes, only great auteur cinema can create those moments.
Perhaps that precisely explains the success of Fjord. The film does not only speak about Norway or Romania. It speaks about a Europe that no longer understands itself. About societies that constantly talk about values and often forget how complex human beings really are.
That is why this year Cannes showed less escapism and more longing — longing for orientation, for empathy, for a language beyond ideological trenches.
Can cinema really fulfill that role?
Perhaps not alone. But for a few hours in the dark room it achieves something that often fails in political debate: it forces people to really look at each other.
An article by M. Legrand