The curtain has come down on the 71st Festival de Cannes, which for the last 12 days has featured artists and films from all four corners of the globe on its screens. Onstage at the Grand Théâtre Lumière, the Master of Ceremonies, Edouard Baer, welcomed the Feature Film Jury presided over by Cate Blanchett, for the announcement of the 2018 winners.

The event culminated on the Red Carpet, where the prizewinners and jury were treated to a live musical surprise by Sting and Shaggy!

ith a female-led jury and two highly acclaimed films by women at the forefront of the competition pack, this year’s Palme d’Or was widely anticipated to strike a blow for sisterhood, at the climax of a Cannes Film Festival that often felt like it was struggling to catch up to the #MeToo and #TimesUp moment.

But in the end, Cate Blanchett and her fellow jurors opted to recognise a male director who has been painstakingly honing his craft for almost three decades: the Japanese master Hirokazu Kore-eda, whose softly spoken family drama Shoplifters was presented with the most prestigious prize in world cinema at the Palais des Festivals earlier tonight.

Kore-eda has been a regular at Cannes since 2001, when his third film Distance screened in competition. But his only prize to date was the 2013 Prix du Jury for Like Father, Like Son. Shoplifters’ triumph crowned a  warmly received set of winners chosen by Blanchett’s jury, which also included the directors Ava DuVernay, Denis Villeneuve, Andrey Zvyagintsev and Robert Guédiguian, the singer Khadja Nin, the actresses Léa Seydoux and Kristen Stewart, and the actor Chang Chen.

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