28/05/2012 - Instant reactions from the winners and jury of the competition at the 65th Cannes Film Festival

Below are extracts from the press conference that tonight brought together all the winning film directors and actors, as well as the jury of the competition at the 65th Cannes Film Festival.

Michael Haneke (Palme d'Or for Love):
"The story I tell is an aesthetic form of a very tough problem that we see around us. An event in my family really moved me and that's how I started making the film. I tried to express the subject: love. I am labelled as a filmmaker of violence, so with this film, it is not about me, but about my subject. And I make films in an open way to leave my audience with different possible interpretations."

Matteo Garrone (Grand Prix for Reality):
"It's a surprise. This award is more important than what I could have imagined before the ceremony. This Grand Prix will help the film to find a bigger audience."

Carlos Reygadas (Best Director for Post Tenebras Lux):
"I thank the journalists who hated the film and those who loved it, who didn't only see in it a succession of interconnected images. My aim is not to be loved by the biggest amount of people, but freedom and the desire to find fraternity.

Mads Mikkelsen (Best Actor for The Hunt by Thomas Vinterberg):
"I was very surprised and very moved. You can never be good in an average film, and Thomas has made an outstanding film."

Cristian Mungiu (Best Screenplay for Beyond the Hills - which also won a double Best Actress award):
"It's easy to turn up by surprise and win a Palme d'Or, but for the next film, it's more complicated. I was constantly changing the screenplay and the dialogues. We had to give continuity to a screenplay of 240 pages and working with the actresses contributed a lot to this."

Ken Loach (Jury Prize for The Angels' Share):
"The characters in my film are unemployed and everybody tells them they are worthless. But they will prove them wrong because solidarity is possible for those who resist for a better world."

Nanni Moretti (president of the jury):
"Without going into details, no prize was agreed on unanimously, a middle ground that would have pleased no one. I want to again mention Emmanuelle Riva and Jean-Louis Trintignant's fundamental contribution to Love's Palme d'Or, because some members of the jury would have liked to give them the acting and screenplay awards too. But the rules do not allow it. I noted in general that several directors seemed more in love with their own style than with their characters. Leos Carax, Ulrich Seidl, and Carlos Reygadas' films were the ones that most divided the jury."

(Translated from French)