By JAKE COYLE
AP Film Writer
CANNES, France (AP) — The 75th Cannes Film Festival named Korean star Song Kang Ho best actor for his performance in Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda’s film “Broker,” about a Korean family seeking a home for an abandoned baby.
“I’d like to thank all those who appreciate Korean cinema,” said Song, who also starred in Bong Joon Ho’s Palme d’Or winning film “Parasite” in Cannes three years ago.
Best actress went to Zar Amir Ebrahimi for her performance as a journalist in Ali Abbasi’s “Holy Spider,” a true-crime thriller about a serial killer targeting sex workers in the Iranian religious city of Mashhad. Violent and graphic, “Holy Spider” wasn’t permitted to shoot in Iran and instead was made in Jordan. Accepting the award, Ebrahimi said the film depicts “everything that’s impossible to show in Iran.”
The closing ceremony on May 28 brings to a close a Cannes that has attempted to fully resuscitate the annual France extravaganza which was canceled in 2020 by the pandemic and saw modest crowds last year. This year’s festival also unspooled against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine, which sparked red-carpet protests and a dialogue about the purpose of cinema in wartime.
This year, the biggest Hollywood films at Cannes—“Elvis,”“Top Gun: Maverick,”“Three Thousand Years of Longing” — played outside Cannes’ competition lineup of 21 films. But their presence helped restore some of Cannes’.