May 2012

Cannes 2012 Michael Haneke wins second Palme d'Or for Amour Austrian director wins Cannes top prize for second time in three years for tender portrait of ailing elderly couple Michael Haneke's latest movie, Amour, won the Austrian director his second top prize from Cannes in three years, following his triumph in 2009 with The White Ribbon. The film is the tenderest in a career defined by unflinching brutality, as well as arguably the least cinematic: a two-hander set in a Paris flat. Haneke joined just five others to have won the Palme d'Or twice, including Francis Ford Coppola and Emir Kusturica. Amour, which stars Jean-Louis Trintignant and Emmanuelle Riva as an elderly couple struggling to cope after one of them suffers a series of strokes, won universal praise on its premiere at the 65th annual festival last week, and its win was widely thought to be something of a certainty. But elsewhere there were shocks galore from Nanni Moretti's jury, whose members include Ewan MacGregor, Andrea Arnold and Alexander Payne.