Bawdy drama seduces in Palme d'Or triumph

Anora, a darkly funny and touching drama about a young exotic dancer who becomes involved with a Russian oligarch's son, has won the Cannes Film Festival's top prize, the Palme d'Or.

The film by US director Sean Baker beat 21 other films, including entries by marquee directors like Francis Ford Coppola and David Cronenberg.

Anora continues a streak of sex worker-focused films by Baker, including the 2021 Cannes entry Red Rocket and 2017's The Florida Project.

This win is dedicated to "to all sex workers past, present and future," he said, thanking star Mikey Madison and wife Samantha Quan.

Jury president Greta Gerwig, the director of Barbie, called Anora an "incredibly human and humane film that captured our hearts."

George Lucas, of Star Wars fame, received an honorary Palme d'Or from longtime friend Coppola, whose passion project Megalopolis was also in competition.

The Grand Prix, the second-highest prize, was awarded to All We Imagine As Light in a first for an Indian director, Payal Kapadia.

Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof, who was in Cannes two weeks after announcing he had gone into exile, was given a special award for The Seed of the Sacred Fig, about an Iranian court official who grows increasingly controlling and paranoid as protests begin to swell in 2022.