This year at the Croisette, there was a different tone in the air. Less champagne fizz, less calculated glamour, less of that old Cannes magic where stars step out of black limousines and photographers fire off like machine guns. Instead, the 79th film festival often felt like a deep reflection on a world that has fallen out of joint.
And right in the middle: Cristian Mungiu.
The Romanian director received the Palme d’Or for his film Fjord — the second time after his triumphant win in 2007 with 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days. A moment that not only made cinematic history but also fit surprisingly well with this strange festival. Because Mungiu’s cinema is never interested in simple truths. His characters stumble through moral grey zones, social tensions, and ideological minefields. Exactly where Europe seems to stand at present.
Fjord tells the story of a Romanian-Norwegian family, strictly religious, isolated, internally tense. When Norwegian child protection intervenes, a conflict begins that goes far beyond family matters. Who is actually protecting whom? And where does care end and cultural paternalism begin?
Mungiu stages these questions with the quiet precision that defines his trademark. No dramatic outbursts. No moral hammer. Instead, glances, silence, small gestures — like cracks in the ice of a fjord, which at first look harmless but suddenly shift entire landscapes.
The audience in Cannes reacted almost reverently. During the screening, one could feel that rare festival silence, where nobody coughs, nobody whispers, nobody looks at their phone. Cinema as a collective experience of concentration. Are there even many places left for that today?
At the same time, the entire awards ceremony seemed like a mirror of the present. Numerous films dealt with war, identity, migration, or political violence. Nearly every second competition entry appeared to be permeated by deep social nervousness. Cinema is currently not looking away. It probes deeply.
This was especially evident with the Russian director Andrey Zvyagintsev. When he accepted the Grand Prix for Minotaur, he made an open appeal to Vladimir Putin and demanded the end of the war against Ukraine. For a moment, the hall no longer felt like a festival palace but like a political forum. Some applauded hesitantly, others immediately. A few stood up.
Cannes suddenly recalled those decades when film festivals were still considered intellectual battlegrounds — a bit chaotic, a bit megalomaniac, but full of conviction.
The other prizes also fit into this picture. Valeska Grisebach received the Jury Prize for The Dreamed Adventure. Her film about migration and crime at Europe’s outer borders tells of people who don’t truly belong anywhere. The directing awards were shared between Paweł Pawlikowski and the Spanish duo Los Javis. Even in the acting awards, the jury opted for community rather than the classic star cult.
One almost got the impression that Cannes intended to consciously relativize the principle of the solitary genius. Away from the myth of the all-powerful director, toward the ensemble, toward shared storytelling. Perhaps also a sign of the times.
Of course, there were still iconic moments: Barbra Streisand on the red carpet, Peter Jackson with a slightly tousled beard, flashbulbs over the Croisette. But even these scenes carried a melancholic undertone this time. As if the festival sensed that the world outside the cinema hall had long become louder than any red carpet.
And that is precisely why Mungiu’s victory seems so logical.
Because Fjord does not offer simple answers. The film stubbornly refuses to present clear perpetrators and victims. Instead, it shows modern democracies as fragile constructs full of contradictions. Tolerance slips into arrogance. Protection turns into control. Freedom clashes with moral expectations.
That may sound theoretical. But with Mungiu, it feels alarmingly concrete.
One scene lingers in memory: A Norwegian official sits silently at the family’s kitchen table while sleet lashes against the window panes outside. No one shouts. No one escalates. And yet, in this silence, there is more threat than in many action movies. Well, only great auteur cinema can create such moments.
Perhaps that explains the success of Fjord. The film does not just tell of Norway or Romania. It tells of a Europe that no longer fully understands itself. Of societies that constantly talk about values but often forget how complicated people really are.
That is why Cannes showed less escapism this year than longing — longing for orientation, for empathy, for a language beyond ideological trenches.
Can cinema actually fulfill this role?
Maybe not on its own. But for a few hours in the dark auditorium, it achieves something that political debate often fails at: It forces people to truly look at others.
An article by M. Legrand