At the announcement of her name, launched by Ruben Östlund, Justine Triet accused the blow. The French director has just been crowned with a palme d’or for Anatomy of a fall. She needs a few minutes to come to her senses. On stage, she bends down and hugs the music stand. She thanks her star Sandra Huller for allowing her “to inhabit her body and her mind” and her screenwriter director Arthur Harari. Then the subject becomes very political. The movement against pension reform in France has been “denied and repressed in a shocking way”, denounced the director when receiving her prize for her film “Anatomie d’une chute”.
“This country has been crossed by a historic, extremely powerful, unanimous challenge to pension reform. This challenge was shockingly denied and suppressed. And this pattern of increasingly uninhibited dominating power breaks out in several areas. Obviously socially, this is the most shocking. But we can also see it in all other spheres of society and cinema is no exception. . The commodification of culture that this neoliberal government defends is in the process of breaking the French cultural exception. This same cultural exception without which I will not be here today in front of you. This committed speech, the only one of an agreed evening, is received by many cheers and a few boos.
At the end of the ceremony, Rima Abdul Malak, the Minister of Culture, said she was “stunned” by Justine Triet’s speech in a message on Twitter.