Sofia Coppola wins best director at Cannes film festival

Cannes, France - Swedish satire 'The Square' wins Cannes top prize Palme d'Or

Sofia Coppola scooped best director at the Cannes film festival on Sunday night for her star-studded remake of "The Beguiled"
Among others she thanked her father, the "Apocalypse Now" director Francis Ford Coppola, who she said "taught me writing and directing".
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Swedish satire 'The Square' is surprise Cannes winner
Swedish satire "The Square", a send-up of political correctness and the confused identity of the modern male, won the Palme d'Or top prize at the Cannes film festival Sunday. 
In a stunning upset, the nine-member jury led by Spanish director Pedro Almodovar and including Hollywood stars Jessica Chastain and Will Smith awarded the trophy to the movie's director, Ruben Ostlund. 
"Oh my God, oh my God!" Ostlund shouted from the stage after besting a raft of favourites for one of global cinema's most coveted honours.
In a 70th anniversary edition marked by raging debate over sexism in the movie industry, Sofia Coppola became only the second woman in history to win best director for her battle-of-the-sexes thriller "The Beguiled" with Nicole Kidman and Colin Farrell.
Kidman, who appeared in four different projects at the festival, accepted a special 70th anniversary award from the jury.
Diane Kruger clinched best actress for her first film role in her native German as a devastated mother who has lost her family in a Hamburg terror attack, in Fatih Akin's "In the Fade".
"I cannot accept this award without thinking of everyone who has been touched by an act of terrorism... you have not been forgotten," the clearly moved actress said.
Three-time Oscar nominee Joaquin Phoenix nabbed best actor for his turn as a hammer-wielding hitman in the ultraviolent thriller "You Were Never Really Here".
"Any work that I did was linked to the work of Lynne Ramsay," the film's British director, Phoenix said, before apologising for his tuxedo-and-trainers look at the gala ceremony.
"I don't wear leather," the committed vegetarian explained.
Greece's Yorgos Lantimos shared the best screenplay award with Ramsay for "The Killing of a Sacred Deer", an icy thriller set in a wealthy American suburb and starring Kidman and Farrell. 
The runner-up Grand Prix went to moving French drama "120 Beats Per Minute" about the radical activists who helped shame the world into action on AIDS. 
"This film is an homage to those who died but also those who survived and are still alive, who had so much courage," said the movie's director, former ACT UP member Robin Campillo. 
Campillo also wrote the screenplay for "The Class", a drama about a multicultural Paris high school that scooped the Palme d'Or in 2008 as well as an Oscar nomination.
"Loveless" by Andrey Zvyagintsev, a wrenching drama about moral rot eating away at Russian society under Vladimir Putin, took the third place jury prize.
"The Square", coming in at two hours and 20 minutes, is an often hilarious art world satire exploring creative liberty, free speech and the blurred lines between the sexes.
 Danish actor Claes Bang plays a museum director and divorced father of two young daughters who finds himself in an increasingly absurd set of predicaments.
The movie features Elisabeth Moss ("Mad Men") and Dominic West ("The Wire") in small roles viciously lampooning the self-important art world.
One set-piece featuring a wild, bare-chested man performing as an ape wreaking havoc at a posh gala dinner entered festival legend.
Cannes' 12 days of screenings and celebrity-packed soirees - which were somewhat muted by the Manchester bombing - were marked by unprecedented anti-terror measures and a raging row over how technology is shaping the future of the movie industry. 
Netflix had two movies in competition for the first time but faced blowback from critics who argue that online streaming is destroying cinema distribution and with it the magic of the big-screen experience.
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Greece's 'wizard of the weird' wins best screenplay at Cannes
 The Greek master of the weird Yorgos Lanthimos picked up the best screenplay award at the Cannes film festival Sunday for his icy thriller "The Killing of a Sacred Deer".
Despite dividing critics - and prompting its star Nicole Kidman to say she wouldn't be taking her kids to watch it - the creepy tale inspired by Euripides' Iphigenia impressed the Cannes jury.
He shared the prize with Scottish director Lynne Ramsay for her film "You Were Never Really Here".
"Sacred Deer" picks up the laconic tone of Lanthimos's hit "The Lobster" but then becomes much darker after a heart surgeon played by Irish actor Colin Farrell operates on a man while he is drunk and kills him. 
Years later, the dead man's teenage son plots revenge, telling the surgeon he must choose a member of his family to kill or they will all suffer an excruciating death.
Born in Athens, 44-year-old Lanthimos spearheaded a crop of young Greek filmmakers specialising in a so-called "weird wave" launched around the time of Greece's brush with bankruptcy.
He cut his teeth on television adverts and dance videos before bursting onto the international scene in 2009 with "Dogtooth", a film about the claustrophobic life of two sisters and a brother shut away in a villa by their dysfunctional parents.
"We just did whatever the hell came into our heads," Lanthimos said of his early years as a director, recalling borrowing equipment and props and shooting in friends' homes.
"A few friends, very little money. We just kept on making what we felt we wanted to make," he said.
 With just his second full-length feature, Lanthimos won the "Un Certain Regard" section at the 2009 Cannes film festival.
His equally surreal "Alps", the story of an underground organisation that helps mourners by impersonating the deceased, won best screenplay in Venice in 2011 and best film at the Sydney awards in 2012.
By that point, Lanthimos had had enough of trying to make a career in crisis-hit Greece.
 Tired by the mounting financial constraints - "Dogtooth" nearly failed to secure a home release before its success at Cannes - he soon decamped for greener pastures, settling in Britain in late 2011 with his actress spouse Ariane Labed.
Notoriously reclusive and media-shy, Lanthimos told The Guardian in a rare 2012 interview that he had "served his time" in Greece and was entitled to look for a better future in a functional enviroment where filmmaking was not regarded as a hobby.
"I made three films in Greece under very difficult circumstances, so I think I've served my time," he told the paper, who called him the "laughing mortician" of contemporary Greek culture.
"But I don't see it as jumping ship. It's not abandonment. One day I'll go back. It might be sooner rather than later."
It took him a while to find his next project but when he did, the change in scope was palpable.
In 2015, Lanthimos released "The Lobster", a surreal black comedy about modern love, this time with the backing of Irish funds and bankable Hollywood names on the roster.
 His first English-language feature, which featured Colin Farrell, Rachel Weisz and John C Reilly, and ended up bagging the third-place jury prize at the Cannes film festival.
"Lobster" became an arthouse hit, making over $5 million worldwide and securing him an Oscar nomination for best foreign language film in 2017 - Greece's first such accolade in over 30 years.
Lanthimos was also in talks to film "The Favourite", a period drama starring Weisz and Emma Stone about the rule of Queen Anne in 17th-century Britain.