The 76th Cannes Film Festival has awarded its prestigious L’Oeil d’Or (Golden Eye) prize for best documentary to two powerful works – Raoul Peck’s “Ernest Cole: Lost And Found” and “The Brink Of Dreams” by Nada Riyadh and Ayman El Amir. This marks the second consecutive year the top non-fiction honor has been shared between two films.
Peck’s “Ernest Cole: Lost And Found,” which premiered as a Special Screening, offers an illuminating portrait of the titular South African photographer, one of the first Black artists to document apartheid’s harsh realities before fleeing into exile in 1966.
Drawing from Cole’s own writings voiced by Lakeith Stanfield, the film tracks his remarkable journey and brave act of resistance through his revelatory photos recently rediscovered in a Swedish bank vault.
The L’Oeil d’Or jury, led by Nicolas Philibert, praised Peck’s film as a “tragic destiny” that “deeply moved us” in chronicling Cole’s slow unraveling in loneliness and despair after being forced from his homeland.
Sharing the honor is the Critics’ Week selection “The Brink Of Dreams” from Egyptian filmmakers Riyadh and El Amir. Their uplifting documentary follows a group of girls in Southern Egypt as they form a street theatre troupe, defying patriarchal norms in their quest for artistic expression and freedom.
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“Both simple and luminous,” the jury celebrated how the film captured “the complexity of their struggle to conquer freedom, and the turbulences generated around them.”
This year’s L’Oeil d’Or was chosen from 22 eligible documentary features across all Cannes sections, including Competition, Un Certain Regard, Out of Competition, Midnight Screenings and Directors’ Fortnight.
The juried award’s €5,000 prize money will be split between the two winning films. Recent L’Oeil d’Or recipients like “Four Daughters,” “For Sama” and “All That Breathes” went on to earn Academy Award nominations.
By honoring these latest non-fiction works, the Cannes Film Festival has championed vital stories of both historical reclamation and modern grassroots activism. “Ernest Cole: Lost And Found” and “The Brink Of Dreams” each shine an essential light on long-overlooked perspectives and the enduring pursuit of human dignity against formidable odds.
You can read The Brink of Dreams review and Ernest Cole: Lost and Found review here on our website.
