Culture news “I don’t understand any of this, but thank you” Awarded at the Cannes Film Festival, Hayao Miyazaki had a reaction that no one expected
While the Cannes Film Festival is still in full swing, some of the world’s most famous directors have already been able to collect their awards. Among them, we find the great Hayao Miyazaki, whose acceptance speech was surprising to say the least.
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Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli rewarded at the Cannes Film Festival
Even if you don’t really follow seventh art news, you certainly know that the Cannes film festival is currently in progress. Always hosted on the famous Croisette, the latter is one of the most prestigious ceremonies in the industry and attracts extremely popular personalities every year. As usual, in addition to the “classic” awards, the Cannes festival jury also takes advantage of the ceremony to award a Honorary Palme d’Or. Although it is not part of the official competition, the latter is considered a particularly prestigious award and generally rewards big names in the industry.
This year, no less than three honorary Palmes d’Or will be distributed by the jury. Thus, the creator of Star Wars George Lucas should receive one at the closing ceremony as well as the American actress Meryl Streep. But last May 20, it was the famous Hayao Miyazaki and his colleague Toshio Suzuki who received the famous award for the creation of Studio Ghibli. Founded in 1985, this Japanese animation studio is behind an incredible number of classics that have had international success such as The castle in the Sky, My Neighbor Totoro, Princess Mononoke, Spirited away Or The Howl’s Moving Castle, to recite nobody else but them. Even if the studio also stood out in 2023 with the release of the animated film The Boy and the Heron, it is for all of the works that compose it that the jury of the Cannes festival decided to reward studio Ghibli.
A hilarious reaction that no one expected
While the Honorary Palme d’Or was directly intended for the creators of Studio Ghibli, Hayao Miyazaki and Toshio Suzuki were unable to come to the Croisette to collect it. However, they still sent Goro Miyazaki (Hayao’s son) to do it, and also shot a thank you video. Contrary to what one might have expected, the latter was far from classic:
As you can see in the video above, the two men behind Studio Ghibli have chosen to address this event with a lot of humor. So, while Toshio Suzuki played the role of the humble and grateful person, Hayao Miyazaki chose to surprise everyone by pretending not to understand what was happening to him. In addition to saying “I don’t understand any of this, but thank you”, the 83-year-old man continued to put obstacles in the way of his colleague by slipping in a few remarks during the video. We could thus hear him pity his son responsible for collecting the reward, and contradict Toshio Suzuki when the latter revealed that Miyazaki had always wanted to broadcast his short films abroad. In addition to giving him the honorary Palme d’Or, the Cannes festival also chose to screen four of his short films, three of which had never before left their native Japan. If you haven’t seen the Studio Ghibli films, know that many are still available in the Netflix catalog.
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