Lanthimos’s The Lobster wins Jury Prize at Cannes

The Lobster, directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, has won the Jury Prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.

French film Dheepan won the top Palme d’Or prize for director Jacques Audiard at the 68th edition of the festival

The second-place prize went to Hungarian director for Saul Fia (Son of Saul) while Lanthimos’ The Lobster won third-place prize. Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-Hsien won the best director award for Nie Yinniang (The Assassin).

France’s Vincent Lindon won best actor for French director Stéphane Brizé’s film La Loi du Marché (The Measure of a Man).

The best actress prize was shared between America’s Rooney Mara for her role in Todd Hayne’s Carol and French actress Emmanuelle Bercot in French director Maïwenn Besco’s Mon Roi (My King).

Starring Colin Farrell and Rachel Weisz, The Lobster was co-funded by Irish production company Element Pictures and shot in Ireland. It is set in the future and sees single people or those who have lost their mates must find someone during a hotel «dating game» or be turned into an animal of their choice.

Farrell plays an architect whose wife has left him. He decides upon arrival at the luxury hotel, which is actually in southwest Ireland, that if he fails to find a mate within the 45-day deadline he will become a lobster because it lives 100 years and has blue, as in royal, blood.

“We really just want to ask the questions and make people consider how we organize our ways of life and, you know, if all the rules that we follow make sense, should we rebel against some, should we make new ones, all these kinds of questions,» Lanthimos said.

One of his previous films, «Dogtooth», was about a mother and father who brought up their children to adulthood without letting them see the world beyond the walls of their compound.

[Kathimerini & Reuters]