Someone asks Bong about how he comes up with his ideas.

“I write my scripts in the corner of a cafe and listen to the noises of people,” he says. “That stimulates me.”

A Deadline journo spices up an otherwise placid press conference by asking about a reference to North Korea in the film.

“In fact in the film you see a character who tries to imitate a North Korean presenter,” Bong says. “You shouldn’t construe it as a message against North Korea. It’s just a small joke. Also there are a lot of comics in South Korea who make sketches on these topics. It’s common in South Korea.

“I think if North Koreans see my film one day, I think they will laugh,” he adds.

Bong says that Inarritu told him that “all the members of the jury unanimously agreed to give the Palme to Parasite.”

A real seal of approval, that, as in the past Cannes juries have struggled to come to unanimous decisions.

The man of the hour is here for his victor’s press conference.

Interviewer Henri Behar opens by noting that Bong’s win is a “historic moment” because he’s the first Korean winner of the Palme.

Bong is asked what he would like to say to young directors in Korea. He replies that, “It’s the 100th anniversary of cinema in Korea this year. I think that Cannes has given Korean cinema a great gift” by giving him the Palme.

More Bong news: he’s just great, isn’t he ...

Beecham, by the way, is the first Brit to win best actress at Cannes since Kathy Burke for Nil By Mouth in 1997. At the time Burke was the third British winner in three years (after Helen Mirren and Brenda Blethyn), and we assumed that the sun would never set on our acting triumphs at Cannes. Then, presumably, they stopped giving us them to punish us for our hubris.

Beecham is asked why British female actors like herself, Olivia Colman and Jodie Comer are having such success at awards ceremonies.

“I don’t think it has anything to do with being British. I think Olivia Colman and Comer are fantastic actresses with brilliant scripts,” she says.

And with that she’s off

Beecham is asked why she isn’t a fan of flowers, a nod presumably to her encounter with the nefarious plant from her film.

“Why do you think I don’t like flowers?!” she says, in an upbraiding tone.

Emily Beecham is chatting now about her best actress win, which it seems she was pretty surprised by:

“I had a kind of inkling this morning because I had a phone call from a producer. I had to put my stuff in a backpack and get on a plane.”

More praise for Pedro from Banderas. He says that, “the award is for the character I played, and that is the alter-ego of Pedro Almodovar. There is something of him here.”

Plenty of people here thought that Almodóvar would finally win the Palme tonight. He hasn’t but Banderas’s win will be some solace.

Bong’s arrival in the press room was a bit of a rush. Usually the most exciting thing that happens in here is a delivery of new Nespresso capsules.

Antonio Banderas is now speaking at the press conference. He’s asked if he’s spoken to Almodóvar, who wasn’t at the ceremony, about his win:

“We were texting this morning. He showed a lot of happiness for me. I thank him for the years, our movies together.”

Exclusive: here’s Bong in the press room with his Palme:

Bong’s in the press room!!!! He’s come in to huge cheers from the Korean journo contingent and is addressing them all at their table. Lovely stuff.

So, another year without a female winner of the Palme d’Or, though there were individual prizes elsewhere for two of the four women directors appearing in competition. Céline Sciamma took home both the Queer Palm and the screenwriting prize for her luscious period drama Portrait of a Lady on Fire, while Mati Diop – on her Cannes debut, no less – took home the second biggest prize of the night, the Grand Prix.

Still one female Palme winner in 72 editions of the Cannes film festival remains a pretty striking statistic, and though Iñárritu is right to say that the decision to award the Palme must be made based on the films themselves, Cannes could perhaps give its jurors a few more directed by women to choose from: there were just 4 of 21 in this year’s official selection.

The press conferences are still rumbling on. We’re now hearing from the Dardennes, who won the best director prize for their film Young Ahmed. It’s an intriguing shift in direction from the pair – following a young Muslim schoolboy who is lured into extremism. “Our character excludes everybody who isn’t as pure as he is,” they say.

The question readers at home are surely asking is ‘when can I see Parasite?’ Unlike Okja, Bong’s new one won’t be appearing on Netflix (and if it was it would have been excluded from the Cannes competition due to the festival’s frosty relationship with the streaming giant).

Fear not though, Curzon have picked up UK and Ireland rights with a release date to be confirmed soon. Neon, meanwhile, have nabbed the North American rights with US and Canada release dates also still to be confirmed.

Given that the film will surely be put forward as Korea’s foreign language Oscar pick, you’d expect at least a US release date this year in order to meet Oscar qualification rules.

Peter Bradshaw has penned a reaction piece to this year’s awards. He reckons Bong was a worthy winner, even if he was ever-so-slightly less enthusiastic about Parasite than other critics:

Korean film-maker Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite is a gripping satirical parable of class, status and injustice — an invasion of the lifestyle snatchers that was widely compared to the Joseph Losey classic The Servant.

It is a handsomely made film, which runs as smoothly as a luxury car. I myself found myself thinking that I liked it a fraction less than Bong’s other films, and other films in this Competition, but there is no doubt that it is an outstanding film.

The jury press conference is over. To be honest it wasn’t the most thrilling affair – certainly nothing to match 2017 when Jessica Chastain chucked a few grenades in the direction of the Cannes selection committee:

Now Iñárritu is going out of his way to praise Elle Fanning, saying it was good to have the perspective of a millennial on the jury.

Elle Fanning is going out of her way to praise Mati Diop’s Atlantique, which won the Grand Prix. “That film touched us to the very end”.

Blimey – I’ve just realised that the only award Tarantino did take home in the end was the Palm Dog!

Iñárritu says that this year’s films had an “urgency of social consciousness” but says that the jury’s selection wasn’t based on “social or political agendas”

“No other consideration other than the film itself should be considered for the award. The cinema has to speak by itself,” he says.

The jury press conference has begun. Inarritu describes Parasite as a “surprising film, funny humorous and tender.

Here’s our report on Bong’s win:

Bong Joon-ho is the second Asian winner in consecutive years after Kore-eda for Shoplifters. Parasite has been compared to Shoplifters – offering a sort of dark parallel to the down-on-the-luck family at the centre of Kore-eda’s film:

Huge excitement from the Korean contingent of the press room. And rightly so. He’s the first ever South Korean winner of the Palme by my reckoning.

Blimey! What a win for Bong, one of the most exciting film-makers in the world right now. Parasite is a thoroughly worthy winner, an absolute edge-of-your-seat thriller that also manages to provide a canny critique of class divides.

But also a total cop out! Come on jury, stick your necks out

My esteemed colleague Andrew Pulver suggests that it may be a joint prize for Tarantino and Bong. That would make sense given both are here.

What a terrific win for Mati Diop, the first black female director to appear in competition at Cannes. Here’s Peter’s review of Atlantique:

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/may/16/atlantique-review-cannes-mati-diop-senegal-mystery

Stallone presenting the Grand Prix. He did a very entertaining Q&A at Cannes. You can read the highlights here:

So then - Bong v Tarantino for the big one (unless Diop beats both of them to the prize!)

A triumphant yelp from the Spanish journos in the press room. Banderas really is rather lovely in Pain and Glory, playing a director (or Almodóvar surrogate) who deals with physical and emotional pain by looking back to his youth.

So, in time-honoured Cannes tradition, the jury have chickened out and given an award to multiple winners. Les Misérables is a French social-realist drama from first-time director Ladj Ly, while Bacurau is a truly wild sci-fi-slash-horror-slash-western from joint directors Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles. So not two but three directors sharing this one.

So, Parasite for the Palme? Or Tarantino? That would be a story, coming 25 years on from his Pulp Fiction win.

The Cannes jury are going their own way this year. Very eclectic range of winners. Here’s Peter’s Young Ahmed review:

Beecham plays a scientist who develops a happiness-inducing flower in Jessica Hausner’s sci-fi, a film that critics have been a little frosty towards. Here’s Peter’s review if you missed it first time around:

Wow, the press room, where I’m sat, was not expecting that. Sudden audible gasp.

Not quite a prize, but Elia Suleiman gets a special mention for his film It Must Be Heaven.

Here come this year’s festival jury, headed up by The Revenant and Birdman director Alejandro González Iñárritu.

It’s a director-heavy jury this year, with Robin Campillo (120 BPM), Yorgos Lanthimos (The Favourite), Paweł Pawlikowski (Cold War), Alice Rohrwacher (Happy as Lazzaro), Kelly Reichardt (Certain Women) and author and film-maker Enki Bilal.

The non-directors this year are Senegalese actor Maimouna N’Diaye and Elle Fanning.

We begin with the short film Palme, awarded by High Life director Claire Denis.

And the winner is ...The Distance Between Us and the Sky by Greek director Vasilis Kekatos.

Right, the ceremony is about to get underway. One of the best things about Cannes’ awards bash is that it goes by in a flash. No three-hour Oscar torture here – we should hopefully know the winner within the hour.

It’s not all about prizes, you know. Here’s my report on Cannes’ new initiative to make the festival more accessible to working mums:

And here’s what we all learned from this year’s festival (featuring an inevitable appearance by Game of Thrones):

Above the muck and bullets, taking a panoramic view of the festival has been the Observer’s Xan Brooks. Here’s his round-up of week two, when Sciamma, Tarantino and Bong all wowed:

The darkest timeline:

Thankfully there’s no sign of Kechiche at the ceremony.

One last pre-ceremony award – and it’s a biggie. The Pun d’Or goes to the LA Times’s Justin Chang for a Mektoub-related zinger:

Some Cannes goss from someone usually in the know:

Mati Diop has also been spotted on the red carpet. So her, Sciamma and Hausner all claiming something?

Not here, by the looks of things is Pedro Almodovar! No Palme for Pedro for Pain and Glory then? Antonio Banderas, who stars in the film, is here, suggesting that he’s got best actor locked up. Which would be a just result, I think – some have suggested it’s his finest ever performance.

On the other hand .... Bong is in attendance at tonight’s awards ceremony, which is usually a pretty strong evidence for a prize.

Others directors here include Tarantino, Little Joe director Hausner, Sciamma and – curveball – the Dardennes, who I just completely wrote off for a prize about 30 seconds ago.

The winner of this year’s Screen jury grid, which collates reviews from major critics around the globe, goes to Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite. That’s not the best bellweather, mind. Last year they chose another Korean film, Lee Chang-dong’s magnificent Burning, which didn’t claim a single prize in the awards proper.

Peter Bradshaw has shared his favourite films from this year’s festival, plus his predictions for tonight’s prizes. He reckons Portrait of a Lady on Fire is going to win the top gong.

One film that surely won’t win anything tonight is Abdellatif Kechiche’s Mektoub My Love: Intermezzo. A sequel to the Blue is the Warmest Colour director’s hedonist opus Mektoub My Love: Canto Uno, Intermezzo has received a critical savaging for essentially being a three-and-a-half-hour-long leer at young women’s backsides. It’s currently got a zero percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes – ouch!

Peter Bradshaw was kinder than many critics in his write up, but didn’t exactly love it. Read his review here.