An unusual film about the art world just won the big Palme d’Or prize at Cannes

The big prize at the Cannes Film Festival every year is the coveted Palme d’Or. Filmmakers and artists from across the world attend Cannes, hoping for a chance to head home with this illustrious award. Well, this year the winners at the Cannes Film Festival have finally been announced — and the winner of the top prize is one you might not have heard of.

Ruben Östlund’s The Square has won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, and it’s definitely one of the year’s more unusual entries. Although the film festival prides itself on showcasing avant-garde cinema (there’s a reason the audience loved the new Twin Peaks episodes, after all) this sleeper hit may have slipped under your radar in favor of flashier films. Which is a shame, because The Square is a wonderfully weird, decidedly unique cinematic experience that you won’t want to miss.

The Square is an absurd, meandering take on the often baffling and pretentious art world. The satire stars Dominic West of Preacher and Elisabeth Moss, from The Handmaid’s Tale, and they’ve certainly earned bragging rights for their powerhouse roles in this surreal and smart film. The Swedish film deftly moves between high hilarity and spot-on, often uncomfortable humor that unerringly skewers the art world and the people who live in it.

Smart, savvy, and uncompromising in its honesty, The Square may be one of the few examples of a film satirizing the very community that celebrates it. After all, Cannes is a community of art and artists in its own right. But that sort of contradiction is at the very core of The Square and its virtuoso filmmaking — and why it proved such a hit with the judges at Cannes.

Congratulations to all the winners of the Cannes Film Festival! We can’t wait to see what next year will bring.