Things are quieting down here, so I’ll be heading off. Pop over to Guardian film in the next hour or so for our full report on this year’s winners, as well as Peter Bradshaw’s reaction to the awards. Burning was snubbed, I say!

Thanks and good night.

So, after 71 editions of the film festival Jane Campion remains the only female director in Cannes history to have won the Palme d’Or. Given this year’s jury was female-majority, we’re unlikely to hear as much criticism over the decision to not reward a female director as we have in recent years. However, there remains a pretty striking disparity between men and women here, one underlined by the red carpet protest that took place last weekend, and which you can read about here:

The jury press conference is underway. Cate Blanchett describes the choice as “painful” given the strength of the competition. She’s asked whether she is wearing a kimono in homage to Kore-eda’s victory, and replies that she didn’t know she was wearing a kimono. Here’s her outfit, for the record:

Kore-eda’s win seems to have gone down very well among the Twitter cognoscenti – he’s the very definition of a Cannes heavyweight and was certainly due a Palme here:

Hirokazu Kore-eda is relatively unknown among mainstream audiences but a heavyweight in independent cinema. The Japanese director is known for his warm, distinctly human dramas, and won the Grand Jury prize here for his 2013 film Like Father, Like Son. His Palme win this time around puts an exclamation mark on what has been a sensational Cannes for directors from China and the South East Asian peninsula. As well as the aforementioned Burning there was Asako I & II by another Japanese director, Ryusuke Hamaguchi and Chinese film-maker Jia Zhang-Ke’s dreamy state-of-the-nation drama Ash is Purest White.

Shoplifters!

Goes to Spike Lee for BlacKkKlansman!!!

Goes to Capernaum. Well, that’s my prediction scorched.

So he hasn’t nicked the Palme, but has been given a special award for “continually striving to define and redefine what cinema can be,” says Blanchett. Godard is not here, inevitably – he rarely turns up to festivals, and did his press conference for the film via Facetime.

Powerful stuff:

“In 1997, I was raped by Harvey Weinstein here at Cannes. I was 21 years old. This festival was his hunting ground. I want to make a prediction: Harvey Weinstein will never be welcomed here ever again.”

“He will live in disgrace, shunned by a film community that once embraced him and covered up for his crimes. And even tonight, sitting among you, there are those who still have to be held accountable for their conduct against women for behaviour that does not belong in this industry. You know who you are. But more importantly, we know who you are. And we’re not going to allow you to get away with it any longer.”

Marcello Fonte wins for his performance in Dogman.

Deservedly so, too. Cold War is a wonderful drama

Is shared between Rohrwacher for Happy as Lazzaro and Panahi and Nader Saeivar for Three Faces. Does that take Lazzaro out of the running for the top prize?

Samal Yeslyamova wins for her turn in Ayka. It’s a heavy drama about the travails of a new mother and her child on the streets of Moscow.

Asia Argento is here. She’s speaking about Harvey Weinstein, who she accuses of raping her here in the 1990s. (Weinstein denies all non-consensual sex claims against him). “We’re not going to let you get away with it again”, she says of sexual abusers working in the industry.

Jury president Cate Blanchett is here, meaning we’re about to launch into the big prizes. Get ready ...

Lukas Dhont’s Girl wins the Camera d’Or for best film by a first-time director. It’s a Belgian trans coming-of-age film that also won the Queer Palm earlier in the week.

Australian film All These Creatures, which has won the short film Palme. Not seen it, I’m afraid, but here’s the trailer:

The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw has had a stab at guessing who will win the top gongs tonight. His Palme pick is the aforementioned Happy as Lazzaro. I meanwhile am going with Capernaum. Of course, sod’s law dictates that the winner will be the film that the fewest number of critics have seen, which would be Sergei Dvortsevoy’s Ayka, which screened after most people had gone home.

So who’s going to win the Palme then? Certainly, this is being talked up as one of the most open races in years, one where at least half a dozen films have a very decent shot of glory.

If the critics had their way, Korean director Lee Chang-dong’s Burning would take home the prize at a canter. The film, a slow-burning (geddit, geddit) mystery drama with an absolutely gangbusters payoff, has received rapturous reviews and has received the highest average rating ever on the Screen International critics grid. Peter Bradshaw’s four-star review was more measured than some of the all-out raves, but even he felt that it was a sensuously shot gripper of a movie.

In a year when so much focus has been on the lack of female representation at Cannes, three female directors are in with a good shot of winning, I’d say: Nadine Labaki has ignited critics and audiences with her gut punch of a drama Capernaum, while many, including me, have been taken by Alice Rohrwacher’s neo-realist fairytale Happy as Lazzaro.

And then there’s Eva Husson’s Girls of the Sun, about a group of female Kurdish resistance fighters attempting to take their hometown back from Isis. The film has been utterly savaged by critics for its earnest and somewhat self important tone, but it does strike me as the sort of bombastic, issue-led film that might find favour with the jury. Peter was one of the few reviewers to actually like the film: read his review here.

Other films I’d say are in with a shot are Pawel Pawlikowski’s 50s love story Cold War; Matteo Garrone’s bruising Dogman and Spike Lee’s incendiary race-relations comedy BlacKkKlansman.

While the Palme is the big one, awards-wise, there’s a whole load of other gongs to be handed out, including the Grand Prix (the second place prize, basically), the Jury prize (third place) and best actor, actress, director and screenplay prizes.

Meanwhile a number of baubles have already been doled out. In the festival’s Un Certain Regard regard sidebar, the top prize was given to Ali Abbasi’s Border, a highly distinctive neo-realist fairytale that has been regarded as a bit of a Marmite proposition.

Speaking of Marmite, the Directors’ Fortnight sidebar was won by Gaspar Noé with his new film Climax, a truly gonzo tale of a dance troupe’s LSD-spiked freakout. Gaspar has a bit of reputation for pushing the buttons of festival-goers – his film Irreversible prompted walkouts and boos when it debuted here in 2002 – but this one seems to have gone down swimmingly with critics. You can read Peter Bradshaw’s four-star review of the film here.

In the Fipresci (the International Federation of Film Critics) awards, the top prize went to Lee Chang-dong’s much trumpted Burning.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the winner of this year’s Palme Dog award went, inevitably, to the canine cast of Matteo Garrone’s Dogman. Congratulations to all!

... and welcome to the Guardian’s liveblog for the Cannes film festival awards, culminating in the all-important Palme D’Or! It looks like a very open race in what has been regarded as a strong year for films at the festival.

Regular followers of all things Croisette will have spotted that this ceremony is taking place a day earlier than usual, in what the festival says is an attempt to gain “better exposure”. Smart move – it’s not like they’re battling for attention with any major news events or anything, hey?

The ceremony starts at 7.15pm local time (6.15pm in the UK) so stick with us for news, insight and hopefully at least one use of the phrase ‘zut alors’!