Anora wins the Palme d'Or at Cannes Film Festival

Sean Baker's comic drama Anora was named as the winner of the Cannes Film Festival's highest honour, the Palme d'Or on Saturday night.

The prestigious French film event concluded over the weekend, with Baker's movie, in which Mikey Madison plays a sex worker who begins a fraught relationship with the playboy son of a Russian oligarch, handed the top award.

Announcing the winner, Cannes jury president Greta Gerwig said, "This particular film, this incredibly human and humane film that captured our hearts, made us laugh, let us hope beyond hope and then broke our hearts and never lost sight of the truth."

Accepting the prize, Baker said he was "shaken" and "still in disbelief" that the festival "invited our little baby to the ball."

In a passionate speech he pledged to "fight for cinema" to "keep cinema alive", adding: "This means making feature films intended for theatrical exhibition. The world has to be reminded that watching a film at home while scrolling through your phone checking emails and half paying attention is just not the way - although some tech companies would like us to think so.

"Watching film with others in a movie theater is one of the great communal experiences, we share laughter, sorrow, anger, fear and hopefully have a catharsis with our friends and strangers - and that's sacred."

As the festival closed, George Lucas was presented with an Honorary Palme d'Or by his friend and collaborator Francis Ford Coppola.

A Best Actress prize was shared among the cast of Emilia Perez, while Jesse Plemons won Best Actor for his roles in Yorgos Lanthimos' Kinds of Kindness.

Exiled Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof was given a Special Prize for his The Seed of the Sacred Fig. Grand Tour's Miguel Gomes was named Best Director. Payal Kapadia's feature debut, All We Imagine as Light, was the Grand Prize honoree.