CANNES, France — Brazilian director Karim Aïnouz's "The Distance Between Waves" has won the Palme d'Or at the 79th Cannes Film Festival, a decision that jury president Jane Campion described as "unanimous within the first hour of deliberation — which I have never seen in thirty years of juries." The film, shot over three years across Brazil, Senegal, and Portugal, follows three generations of a family scattered by rising sea levels and economic necessity.

Aïnouz, who previously won the Un Certain Regard prize in 2019, has crafted what many critics are calling the definitive cinematic response to the climate migration era. The film opens with a young woman, Clara, leaving her submerged coastal village in northeastern Brazil for São Paulo, then follows the ripples of that departure across two decades and three continents. The storytelling is deliberately fragmented — Aïnouz cuts between time periods without warning, trusting the audience to find the emotional through-line.

The Grand Prix went to Japanese director Ryusuke Hamaguchi for "The Evening Star," a four-hour meditation on grief and geological time set in a remote observatory. Best Director was awarded to France's Céline Sciamma for "The Glass Archive," and Best Actress went to Spanish newcomer Aitana Sánchez for her devastating performance in "Salt." The festival's marketplace was notably active, with distribution deals exceeding €350 million — a Cannes record that reflects the industry's hunger for non-franchise, auteur-driven cinema in an era of franchise fatigue.