I’m sitting in the press room to quickly put together my predictions for a winner. Last night attended the Un Certain Regard award ceremony, in which Bahman Ghobadi won a prize for his film Noone knows about the Persian cats. He thanked certain people per protocol and went on to say that this prize gives him the courage to make another film and bring it to Cannes again next year; Festival director Thierry Fremaux picked up on it and thanked him, but saying, cheekily, that there are no guarantees Ghobadi will have a film here next year.

Fremaux was in top form last night and made everyone laugh, inviting the entire staff on stage so we can applaud them and then shooing them away, saying “OK, that’s enough like that, get back to work, this has lasted longer than it should.” Having Thierry Fremaux on the Debussy stage to make his introductions and translate the featured director’s comments is part of the fun of attending these screenings.

Greece’s Yorgos Lanthimos won the Un Certain Regard prize for Kynodontas, a vastly original film about an affluent family in which the children, two girls and a boy, are shielded from all the world’s evil. More later, I’m late for the Alain Resnais screening.