Director Ruben Ostlund reacts to winning the Palme d'Or award for his film The Square just after it was announced during the awards ceremony at the 70th international film festival, Cannes, southern France,... (Associated Press) 
 
 Director Ruben Ostlund reacts to winning the Palme d'Or award for his film The Square just after it was announced during the awards ceremony at the 70th international film festival, Cannes, southern France, Sunday, May 28, 2017. (AP Photo/Alastair Grant) (Associated Press) 
 
 CANNES, France (AP) — The Cannes Film Festival awarded its coveted Palme d'Or award to Ruben Ostlund's Swedish comedy "The Square" on Sunday, while Sofia Coppola became only the second woman to win the best director award. 
 
 "Oh my god! OK," the Swedish filmmaker exclaimed after he bounded onto the stage to collect the prestigious Palme, in a rare and somewhat surprising win for a comedy. 
 
 In "The Square," Claes Bang plays a museum director whose manicured life begins to unravel after a series of events that upset his, and the museum's, calm equilibrium. The movie's title comes from an art installation that Bang's character is prepping, which invites anyone who enters a small square to be kind and generous. 
 
 The film's satire and exploration of moral dilemmas culminated in one of the festival's most eye-catching scenes. A muscled, grunting man pretending to be a gorilla upsets a black-tie dinner for the museum, sniffing attendees and dragging a woman by the hair. 
 
 The president of the Cannes jury, Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodovar, praised the film for exploring the "dictatorship" of political correctness and those trapped by it. 
 
 "They live in a kind of hell because of that," Almodovar said. 
 
 "It's clever. It's witty. It's funny. It deals with questions so important," said French actress and filmmaker Agnes Jaoui, a member of the jury that also included Americans Will Smith and Jessica Chastain. 
 
 Most odds makers didn't have "The Square" as a favorite to win the prestigious Palme d'Or, the top prize awarded at Cannes. 
 
 Coppola won best director for "The Beguiled," her remake of Don Siegel's 1971 Civil War drama about a Union soldier hiding out in a Southern girls' school. Hailed as Coppola's most feminist work yet, the remade thriller told from a more female point of view stars Nicole Kidman and Kirsten Dunst, with Colin Farrell playing the wounded soldier. 
 
 Coppola was one of three female filmmakers out of 19 in competition for the Palme this year. The first — and until now, only — female winner of the best director prize was Soviet director Yuliya Ippolitovna Solntseva in 1961. 
 
 Diane Kruger was named best actress and Joaquin Phoenix best actor as the festival celebrated its 70th anniversary. 
 
 Kruger was honored for her performance in Fatih Akin's "In the Fade." She played a German woman whose son and Turkish husband are killed in a bomb attack. The film alludes to a series of actual killings that shook Germany six years ago, when it came to light that police had spent more time investigating the possible mob connections of migrant victims than the tell-tale signs of the far-right plot eventually uncovered. 
 
 "I cannot accept this award without thinking about anyone who has ever been affected by an act of terrorism and who is trying to pick up the pieces and go on living after having lost everything," the actress said. "Please know that you are not forgotten." 
 
 Phoenix was recognized for his role in Lynne Ramsay's thriller "You Were Never Really Here," in which he played a tormented war veteran trying to save a teenage girl from a sex trafficking ring. 
 
 The actor wore sneakers on stage as he collected the prize. He said his leather shoes had been flown ahead of him. He apologized for his appearance, saying the prize was "totally unexpected." 
 
 The French AIDS drama "120 Beats Per Minute" won the Grand Prize from the jury. The award recognizes a strong film that missed out on the Palme d'Or. 
 
 Directed by Robin Campillo, the co-screenwriter of the Palme d'Or-winning film "The Class," the movie centers on the activist group ACT UP in Paris in the 1990s during the AIDS crisis. 
 
 The film's docu-drama retelling of that painful period, combined with a burgeoning spirit of unity for the gay community, earned it some of the best reviews of the festival. 
 
 Vanity Fair called the film "a vital new gay classic." 
 
 Almodovar said: "I loved the movie." 
 
 The jury also presented a special prize to Nicole Kidman to celebrate the festival's 70th anniversary. 
 
 Kidman wasn't at the French Rivera ceremony, but sent a video message from Nashville, saying she was "absolutely devastated" to miss the show. 
 
 Jury member Smith made the best of the situation, pretending to be Kidman. 
 
 He fake-cried and said in halting French, "merci beaucoup madames et monsieurs." 
 
 There were no prizes for the first Netflix releases selected to be in competition for the Palme d'Or: Bong Joon-ho's "Okja" and Noah Baumbach's "The Meyerowitz Stories." 
 
 Almodovar had made clear beforehand that he didn't want the Palme to go to a movie that isn't shown on big screens. The Netflix selections prompted protests from French movie distributors and led Cannes to rule out, beginning next year, streaming-only films. ||||| Sofia Coppola becomes the second woman to ever win for best director, while Joaquin Phoenix and Diane Kruger earned acting honors. 
 
 The 70th annual Cannes Film Festival came to a close Sunday night with the main competition awards ceremony at the Palais des Festivals. 
 
 The Square, by Swedish writer-director Ruben Ostlund, won the top prize, the Palme d'Or. The satire — the follow-up to Ostlund's 2014 international hit Force Majeure — explores Swedish art, commerce, politics and national identity and stars Claes Bang and Elisabeth Moss. 
 
 The story centers on a man who is overseeing a new art installation called "The Square" — a sanctuary where anyone entering is supposed to abide by humanitarian values — but things quickly go awry. 
 
 When he took the stage to accept his award, Ostlund led the crowd in a "scream of happiness" and told photographers to turn their cameras away from him and toward the audience. He counted down, and the audience let out a massive scream. "I can direct you all now because I won this prize," he said. 
 
 Sofia Coppola became only the second woman to win the best director prize for her film The Beguiled, starring Nicole Kidman and Colin Farrell. Maren Ade accepted for Coppola, who was not present to receive her award. Ade ended the speech by thanking director Jane Campion for being a role model. 
 
 While Coppola was not present, she did release this statement: "I was thrilled to get this movie made and it's such an exciting start to be honored in Cannes. I'm thankful to my great team and cast and to Focus and Universal for their support of women-driven films." 
 
 The Grand Prix was awarded to 120 Beats per Minute by Robin Campillo, which follows 2013's Eastern Boys by mining his past as a member of AIDS activist group ACT UP in 1990s Paris. 
 
 Nicole Kidman was honored with a special prize for the festival's 70th anniversary. The actress appeared in competition projects The Killing of a Sacred Deer and The Beguiled, along with the second season of Jane Campion's Top of the Lake and the film How to Talk to Girls at Parties. Will Smith accepted the award in her absence, and a special video message from Kidman was presented. 
 
 Joaquin Phoenix was awarded the best actor prize for Lynne Ramsay's You Were Never Really Here. The actor stars as a hitman trying to save a teen prostitute. 
 
 Diane Kruger received the best actress award for her work in In the Fade. Fatih Akin's courtroom and revenge drama saw the German actress doing a German-language film for the first time. 
 
 In her speech, Kruger dedicated her award to victims of terror. "Those trying to pick up the pieces and go on after having lost everything, please know you are not alone," she said. 
 
 Loveless, helmed by Russian writer-director Andrey Zvyagintsev, took the jury prize. 
 
 In a surprise twist, best screenplay was awarded to both Killing of a Sacred Deer (written by Yorgos Lanthimos and Efthymis Filippou) and Ramsay's You Were Never Really Here. 
 
 The Palme d'Or for short film was given to A Gentle Night from Chinese director Qiu Yang. A special mention for short film was awarded to Teppo Airaksinen for Katto. 
 
 The Camera d’Or, given to the best first film that played in the festival regardless of section, went to Leonor Serraille for Jeune Femme (Montparnasse-Bienvenüe). 
 
 Nineteen movies screened in competition this year. The jury included president Pedro Almodovar and members Smith, Jessica Chastain, Fan Bingbing, Agnès Jaoui, Park Chan-wook, Ade, Paolo Sorrentino and Gabriel Yared. ||||| Loic Venance/AFP/Getty Images 
 
 The awards ceremony for the 2017 Cannes Film Festival took place on Sunday, culminating with a Palme d’Or win for Swedish director Ruben Östlund’s satire The Square, Variety reports. But the most satisfying win may have been Sofia Coppola’s Best Director award for The Beguiled: She is only the second female director in the festival’s 70-year history to win the award. The last time that happened, the award went to Soviet director Yuliya Solntseva for her World War II film The Story of the Flaming Years—in 1961. Coppola also has the distinction of being the first woman to win Best Director who attended the festival as a child the year her father’s film won the Palme d’Or; here she is looking adorable in 1979, when Apocalypse Now and The Tin Drum shared the award. (Her 8th birthday fell during the festival that year.) 
 
 Coppola’s film, an adaptation of Thomas Cullinan’s Civil War novel about a wounded Union officer who is found by the residents of an all-girls boarding school, stars Nicole Kidman, Kirsten Dunst, Elle Fanning, and Colin Farrell and looks fantastic. (Don Siegel directed his own adaptation starring Clint Eastwood in 1971.) Kidman also received a special award in honor of the festival’s 70th anniversary; she appeared in four films that screened at Cannes this year, two of which were in competition. 
 
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 Palme d’Or winner The Square, about a conceptual art exhibit that descends into chaos, stars Danish actor Claes Bang and features Elisabeth Moss and Dominic West. The Grand Prix went to BPM, Robin Campillo’s film about the French gay rights struggle focusing on ACT UP–Paris, while Loveless, Russian director Andrey Zvyagintsev’s story of a couple whose child goes missing, won the Jury Prize. Best Screenplay was a tie between The Lobster screenwriters Yorgos Lanthimos and Efthymis Filippou and We Need to Talk About Kevin writer/director Lynne Ramsay for The Killing of a Sacred Deer and You Were Never Really Here, respectively. Acting awards went to Diane Kruger for In the Fade, her first German-language starring role, and Joaquin Phoenix for You Were Never Really Here.
– Sofia Coppola scored a historic victory at the Cannes Film Festival on Sunday night when she became only the second woman in the event's 70-year history to win the best director award. The American, who won with Civil War drama The Beguiled, is the first woman to win since Soviet director Yuliya Soltsneva, who was awarded the prize in 1961 for World War II movie The Story of the Flaming Years, Slate reports. The coveted Palme D'Or prize went to Swedish writer-director Ruben Ostlund's comedy The Square, the AP reports. Diane Kruger won best actress and Joaquin Phoenix was named best actor. Coppola, one of three women among the 19 directors in the competition this year, was not present to accept her prize but she released a statement saying it was an "exciting start" to be honored in Cannes. "I'm thankful to my great team and cast and to Focus and Universal for their support of women-driven films," she said, per the Hollywood Reporter. Beguiled star Nicole Kidman also missed the ceremony, where she was honored with a special prize to mark the festival's 70th anniversary. Jury member Will Smith collected it on her behalf, pretending to cry and saying, "Merci beaucoup madam and monsieurs!"