The 63rd Cannes Film Festival has announced its results, making happy the Thai filmmaker Weerasethakul, who has won the Festival's Palme d'Or (Golden Palm), and unhappy all those who rooted for the Russian film, the only one in the contest programme – Nikita Mikhalkov's creation Burnt by the Sun 2. ...

Nikita Mikhalkov, who is the leading Russian filmmaker, submitted his new work, Burnt by the Sun 2, to the Cannes Festival. This is a very realistic and truthful film about the Second World War – to be more precise, about the battles on the territory of the former Soviet Union, which were even more aggravated by the Stalin-era repressions. Before the film showed, it was clear that Mikhalkov did not think that he would be well understood by the audience: "Filmgoers must make an effort to understand it. They should pierce into it and make an attempt to figure it out: what is true and where is falsehood inside people. What is just and what is unjust? And what is humiliation?"

The well-known Russian film critic Kirill Razlogov has something to say about the people's reaction to Mikhalkov's film: "At the official presentation of the film the audience was beside itself with delight. It drew prolonged applause from the audience. At the press showing the reaction of the audience was much calmer: only light applause followed. And the commentaries were contradictory too – from categorical opposition to categorical praise. There were also those who said that this is an academic film, which has failed to add something new to the topic of war. Therefore, together with other works of well-known filmmakers such as Bertrand Tavernier, it was awarded no prize at all. Despite that, people continued to speak about an original vision and that this was a film about the love of a father for his daughter, not simply a film about war. What was also said was that Mikhalkov's creation is a "half-film", not a single whole: nothing is said of what will happen to the main characters. Earlier I said that this film should have been shown outside the contest programme, the same way as the films of Oliver Stone and Woody Allen were presented to the audience. Because, to my mind, Mikhalkov, Stone and Allen are high-ranking filmmakers who are above the Festival, and hence should not take part in it." ...