CANNES — Japanese filmmaker Yuki Tanaka's devastating and luminous debut feature The Last Summer was awarded the Palme d'Or at the 79th Cannes Film Festival on Saturday evening, capping a competition jury president Cate Blanchett described as "the strongest in recent memory."
Shot over two years in a remote fishing village on Hokkaido that is expected to be uninhabited within a decade, the film follows three generations of a family navigating displacement, memory, and love as their way of life disappears. It was made with a crew of five and a budget under $400,000.
A Voice from the Margins
"I made this film for my grandmother, who will not see another winter in the village where she was born," said Tanaka, 31, accepting the award in Japanese. "And for everyone who has watched the world they knew quietly end."
The film received a 14-minute standing ovation at its premiere and was the subject of a bidding war between streaming platforms before the awards ceremony had even concluded. A24 confirmed it had acquired North American rights for a record sum for a Palme winner.
Critics have already begun placing The Last Summer among the great debut films — a lineage that includes Truffaut's The 400 Blows and Malick's Badlands.