Ken Loach’s Palme d’Or win was another triumph for the Cannes boys club

German comedy Toni Erdmann should have won the prize, but no female filmmaker has ever won the Palme d’Or outright

Ken Loach won his second Palme d’Or at Cannes Film Festival 2016 (GETTY)

It may have been a great night for British film, as Ken Loach won his second Palme d’Or and Andrea Arnold took home the Jury Prize, but for some La Croisette turned into Fury Road at the pronouncements of the awards at the Cannes Film Festival.

The reason for the ire was that the jury, presided over by Mad Max director George Miller, decided against the festival favourite, German comedy Toni Erdmann. There was a sense that if this great tragicomedy by a superb female director cannot win a prize then what chance do other fresh voices have of breaking through

It would also have been a victory that didn’t feel like tokenism, as Maren Ade has made a socially relevant film that is incredibly funny, I have not laughed so hard in a movie since the wrestling scene in Borat.

Nonetheless, no female filmmaker has ever won the Palme d’Or outright: The Piano director Jane Campion had to share her day with Farewell My Concubine’s Chen Kaige in 1993. This year, Cannes Artistic Director Thierry Fremaux said that the three out of 21 directors being women in the competition was a good rate, given that a recent report stated only 7 per cent of directors were women. He forgot to mention that two years ago, he had no female directors, and that Cannes is a festival that has a history of setting trends and making agendas, rather than following them.

But the festival has a habit of selecting the same auteurs in competition. The prizewinners were a list of Cannes favourites. Loach, Xavier Dolan, Asghar Farhadi, Andrea Arnold, Christian Mungiu and Brillante Mendoza had all made films that have won prizes in Cannes before. The only newcomer to the list, was Personal Shopper director Olivier Assayas, and I was amazed that he had not won something before, given how many times the much-loved 61-year-old French director had trotted along La Croisette. This was his fifth time in the competition.

British director Andrea Arnold has been on the Cannes jury and this was her third trip to the competition. Her excellent American Honey, takes a unique look at the American underclass and delivers an experiential high, as it follows a teenage girl, who takes a job selling magazines across America, rather than a plot-driven narrative. The film backed by Film 4 and the BFI is a huge leap for her in terms of command of filmmaking, so it felt like a token gesture when she won the Jury Prize, the third time she has been given that honour, the most minor of the prizes dished out to filmmakers.

Let’s also be clear, this criticism of the awards was not aimed at Ken Loach winning. I loved the BBC and BFI-funded I, Daniel Blake and was pleased that his take down of the British benefits system in such a heartbreaking movie was recognised.

Yet, as the awards were read out, I couldn’t help but think of the year when Spike Lee’s all-time classic Do The Right Thing, was overlooked in favour of Steven Soderbergh’s raw debut, Sex, Lies and Videotape. There was that same sense of injustice, that the true sea change in cinema had not been recognised.

Toni Erdmann had the most interesting female character to appear in a film at Cannes in years, but it seems that those in the Cannes club, are still largely blind to the needs of cinema to recognise films with strong female characters. Arguably it was the same last year, when one of the few films in the competition to feature a male protagonist, Dheepan, won the top prize.

So even after the best selection of films at Cannes for many years, the festival somehow still managed to offer a punch in the face to new cinematic voices.