‘Winter Sleep’ Wins 2014 Cannes Film Festival Palme d’Or

May 24, 2014

By Brad Brevet

The winners at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival have been announced and there was some perceived competition for the Palme d’Or with films such as Xavier Dolan‘s Mommy and Andrey Zvyagintsev‘s Leviathan, but it was the third in the bunch of major contenders, Winter Sleep, a 3 hour and 16 minute film from Nuri Bilge Ceylan (Climates, Once Upon a Time in Anatolia).

I’ve included the trailer for Winter Sleep at the bottom of this post, but here’s the synopsis for the Turkish film:

Aydin, a former actor, runs a small hotel in central Anatolia with his young wife Nihal with whom he has a stormy relationship and his sister Necla who is suffering from her recent divorce. In winter as the snow begins to fall, the hotel turns into a shelter but also an inescapable place that fuels their animosities…

As for Mommy and Leviathan, they didn’t go home empty handed with Mommy tying with Jean-Luc Godard‘s Goodbye to Language for the Jury Prize. Considering how Dolan’s style of filmmaking was so clearly influenced by Godard and the French New Wave, I have to wonder if it’s something of an honor to share the award with one of cinema’s icons or if Dolan is wondering what he has to do to finally get his name notched on the top prize.

Alice Rohrwacher‘s The Wonders took the Grand Prix.

Bennett Miller won Best Director for Foxcatcher, Timothy Spall won Best Actor for Mike Leigh‘s Mr. Turner and Julianne Moore took Best Actress for her part in David Cronenberg‘s Maps to the Stars, which, apparently features Moore defecating on screen. Oh, that Cronenberg…

Obviously Oscar chatter is sure to bubble to the surface and of those above, Miller is already at the top of my early Best Director predictions and Spall is among my early nominees for Best Actor. I don’t have Moore in my Best Actress field, but that’s only because I assumed she’d be considered a Supporting Actress and she still may be, but I’ll definitely have to get her on the list soon.

You can see the full list of winners right here, now here’s that trailer for Winter Sleep.

Palme d’or