‘Messi’ the border collie crowned top dog actor at Cannes

Filmmakers have to wait until tonight to find out who won the Cannes Film Festival’s top prizes, but for some, the greatest honours were handed out on Friday at the annual Palm Dog awards.
Competition was tough this year.
Founder Toby Rose said there was a “veritable tsunami of dog performances”, but one dog stood out: Messi from Justine Triet’s Anatomy of a Fall.
Messi played Snoop, a role which the jury said required a range of skills and emotions from its doggie actor, making the border collie a worthy winner of the main Palm Dog prize.
As Snoop, Messi “plays an essential role in the plot and particularly impressed the jury with a dramatic scene where he convincingly simulated an illness”.
The Guardian critic Peter Bradshaw – a member of the jury – quipped that “the Palm Dog is much more important than the Ballon d’Or” – won multiple times by Argentine footballer Lionel Messi, who recently led his team to World Cup victory.
Hailed as the “pawmost” award in doggy cinema, the Palm Dog has become the hottest ticket of the French Riviera film festival, drawing influencers, dog lovers, and journalists happy to get their microphones drooled on.
This year it was standing room only in the crammed seaside awards venue, as Rose drew groans for his traditional barrage of pooch puns, and scolded furry attendees for yapping and barking throughout the presentation.
Finnish director Aki Kaurismaki’s movie Fallen Leaves was awarded the Palm Dog’s Grand Jury Prize, an accolade that the film’s stars said easily beats winning a Palme d’Or.
“It’s probably the greatest award ever, so we are truly, truly overwhelmed,” said Jussi Vatanen, who stars alongside Alma Poysti in the tragicomedy about a budding romance.
Poysti told Reuters that her canine co-star, also called Alma, was a disciplined and fun.
The Palm Dog awards have honoured the top dogs on screen since 2001.
This year a special prize was also given to 11-year-old Evie, an official festival sniffer dog, who marks her final year of service before retirement.
The unofficial awards show is now in its 22nd year.
Past winners include Brandy, a pit bull belonging to Brad Pitt’s character in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and Tilda Swinton’s spaniels, who co-starred with her in a film directed by Joanna Hogg.
An honorary grand Palm Dog prize was awarded to British film director Ken Loach – whose latest film The Old Oak premiered on Friday– for a lifetime of giving key roles to dogs in cinema.
His new movie “features what I can only describe as a Socialist dog, a dog of the left”, joked Bradshaw, a reference to Loach’s famously politically engaged movies.