In the 2023 Un Certain Regard sidebar, Molly Manning Walker’s breakthrough film How to Have Sex has won the prize for best film. The incredible debut was The Hollywood Reporter’s hidden gem for Cannes and was one of the most talked-about films on the Croisette this year. It follows three British teens as they go on a summer vacation to Greece that turns dark.
Four African movies likewise brought back home honors at the Un Certain Respect function Friday night. The hybrid documentary The Mother of All Lies, by Asmae El Moudir, sought to uncover the truth behind her family’s accounts of the 1981 Bread Riots in Morocco.
It won the Un Certain Regard award for best director. Hounds, a Casablanca-set crime drama, won the Un Certain Regard jury prize for Kamal Lazraq. The new voice award for best first feature went to Baloji’s Omen, his first film as a director. Sudanese show Farewell Julia from chief Mohamed Kordofani — another introduction — won the Un Certain Respect’s opportunity prize. This year’s festival featured a record number of films from Africa, a genre that is frequently overlooked or ignored in Cannes.
The Un Certain Respect prize for best group went to the Brazilian show The Buriti Blossom by João Salaviza and Renée Nader Messora. The indigenous Krahô tribe’s history and decades-long struggle for land rights are chronicled in the film.
American entertainer John C. Reilly led the current year’s Un Sure Respect jury, which likewise included French chief and screenwriter Alice Winocour, German entertainer Paula Brew, French-Cambodian chief and maker Davy Chou and Belgian entertainer Émilie Dequenne.