Who will succeed Without Filter, by Ruben Östlund? After twelve days studded with glitter and stars, the 76th Cannes Film Festival ends on Saturday May 27, with the awarding of the Palme d’Or to one of the 21 films in a competition that is very open to the end.

The Swedish director, who won his second Palme last year, chairs the jury which will retire to deliberate and award its prizes.

Östlund, who had promised in an interview with Agence France-Presse “a very democratic approach to the presidency”, must decide in the company of the four women and four men of his jury, including director Julia Ducournau (Titane, Palme d’ or 2021) or actress Brie Larson, known as the superheroine Captain Marvel, Afghan writer Atiq Rahimi or actor Denis Ménochet.

“I like listening to what everyone is saying about the different movies. […] I have no intention of being an authority figure in any way,” he promised.

At the end of the competition, the suspense is complete. With a few favourites: Finn Aki Kaurismäki, a regular at the Festival and one of Ruben Östlund’s favorite directors, received a very glowing reception for the ultra-lancholic Dead Leaves, a romance with Baudelairian accents between two lonely souls, in a Finland working and rainy.

The prize list will take a more political turn, if the jury decides to crown the Briton Jonathan Glazer and his Zone of Interest: this film, extremely controlled, recalls the appalling “banality of evil” by describing in a clinical and chilling way, daily life nonchalant family of the commandant of the Nazi extermination camp of Auschwitz.

3rd Palm for a female director?

His compatriot Ken Loach, 86, could enter the Hall of Fame in his lifetime by becoming the first director to win a third Palme d’Or, after The Wind Rises (2006) and I, Daniel Blake (2016). He was the last to climb the steps, Friday evening, for The Old Oak, on the reception of Syrian refugees in the United Kingdom.

As for the interpretation prizes, the German Sandra Hüller, revealed to the international public at Cannes with Toni Erdmann (2016), is a very serious contender: she excels in two films, playing the wife of the Nazi commander in Zone of Interest and a widow accused of killing her husband in Anatomy of a Fall.

This last film, a two and a half hour drama with a very elaborate structure, is one of those that have pleased international critics the most. If she won the Palme d’or, its author Justine Triet would only be the third director in the history of the Festival to be awarded, after Jane Campion (La Leçon de piano, 1993) and Julia Ducournau.

The Un Certain Regard Award and the Queer Palm Award Already Awarded

Beyond the prizes, the closing ceremony, chaired by Chiara Mastroianni and broadcast from 8:30 p.m. on France Télévisions and Brut, marks the end of a 76th edition, chaired for the first time by Iris Knobloch, former Warner . Le Monde will also follow this special evening live on its website from 6:30 p.m.

It was marked by controversy over the comeback of Johnny Depp, after his trials for defamation on accusations of domestic violence, by a strong presence of cinema from the African continent, and by the return of Hollywood legends to the Croisette. Among those who made the trip: Martin Scorsese, who came to present with Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro his latest film, Killers of the Flower Moon, Harrison Ford, who at the age of 80 climbed the stairs for the last Indiana Jones and said his farewells to the character of the archaeologist with the hat and the whip, or even the actress Jane Fonda and the director Quentin Tarantino, who each came to talk about cinema and their careers.

A few prizes have already been awarded, including the Un certain regard prize for How to Have Sex, by Molly Manning Walker, and the Queer Palm, an alternative prize for best LGBT film, for Monster, by Hirokazu Kore-eda, also in official competition. .