Here’s my latest piece on Forbes:
This past weekend while we were all barbecuing and relaxing here in the states, the 67th Cannes Film Festival concluded. Not surprisingly, the festival continued its streak of bestowing the top prize, the Palme d’Or on a man. It’s a lot harder to win when there are only two women directed films competing against 16 males directed films. Yet, the Jane Campion led jury (which was equally divided between men and women) did bestow the Grand Prix award, the second prize, to 33-year-old Italian writer/director Alice Rohrwacher for her second film Le Meraviglie (The Wonders.) Rohrwacher is only the second woman to win the prize — Naomi Kawase who was the only other woman in the main competition this year — won the prize in 2007 for her film The Mourning Forest where incidentally there were also four women on the jury, though that jury was led by a man. (FYI — director Marta Meszaros won the previous incarnation of the prize in 1984 for her film Diary for My Children when it was called Grand Prix Special du Jury.)
