Cannes 2019: the biggest losers and winners, the most talked-about films and a quirky movie that caught our eye

Quentin Tarantino and Pedro Almodóvar were passed over, Bong Joon-ho’s superlative black comedy made it two for two for Asian film and women filmmakers won big

One selection was a head-scratcher, the hype about Robert Eggers’ The Lighthouse proved justified and The Artist’s Jean Dujardin gave us our biggest laugh

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Willem Dafoe (left) and Robert Pattinson in a still from The Lighthouse, the most-talked about film at Cannes after Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon A Time in … Hollywood.

Published: 12:00am, 28 May 2019Updated: 6:12pm, 29 May 2019

The final credits have rolled for another year on the Croisette in Cannes.

The biggest winner at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival was South Korean director Bong Joon-ho, whose black comedy, Parasite, took home the coveted Palme d’Or for best film – more on that later.

But this wasn’t the only high, or low, point of the event. Here are our top takeaways from a French fortnight.

The buzziest film that didn’t win anything

With the exception of Quentin Tarantino’s new movie, the most buzzed-about film of the festival played in the Director’s Fortnight. The Lighthouse, Robert Eggers’ follow-up to his much-admired 2015 film, The Witch, more than justified the hype.

By the time I saw it, a repeat screening on the final Friday, word had got out, with queues around the block and audience excitement at near-fever pitch.

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