Anglo-American companies triumphed at Cannes Lions this year with the Film and Film Craft Grand Prix going to Biscuit Filmworks and MJZ respectively.

There was a very welcome development at this year's Cannes Lions when the winner of the biggest prize of all – the Grand Prix for Film – was secured by a bone fide 30" TV commercial. The work in question was for the AI chatbot Claude and was directed by Jeff Low of Biscuit Filmworks from scripts written by Mother London, and was shown during this year's Super Bowl.

There were four ads in the series, with two of them being shown on the big screen on the night, including the ad (above) featuring a woman representing a rival chatbot that has been compromised by advertising. Given that Open AI had announced only a few weeks before the Super Bowl that this was their intention, it was pretty clear whom Anthropic - the company that owns Claude - were taking aim at, and it also makes clear how quickly this was turned around.

Three nights earlier, Oscar Hudson and MJZ had triumphed with the Film Craft Grand Prix for his marvellous Coinbase ad. It was great to see two of the trans-Atlantic companies with brilliant London offices enjoying the highest accolades on offer at Cannes Lions.

It would be wild to imagine that anyone at Cannes Lions is paying attention to what we say but it was, nonetheless, very pleasing to see advertising's biggest prizes being given to advertising for a change – this is something DAVID has been wanting Cannes Lions juries to start doing for some time.

In addition to Coinbase's Grand Prix, a further five pieces of work were given a Film Craft Gold statuette. These included this superb 'I'm Not Remarkable' Film for Apple (below) by Kim Gehrig which must surely have been a contender for the Grand Prix in both categories. You can tell that Apple had high hopes for it as they actually had the generosity to credit all of their production partners once!

Spike Jonze's film for On (below) won a Gold in Film Craft as well, and is another very beautiful piece of work that fully deserved its accolade, and probably could have had an equal reward in the Film category, even though it looks as though it could be an ad for Gap!

Meanwhile, a campaign from Mexico promoting the importance of journalism demonstrated that awards juries are inclined to go by their feelings rather than their thoughts. It won Gold Lions in both Film and Film Craft despite being a hokey pile of shit.

In an effort to portray the dangers faced by journalists when reporting in territories like Mexico, it manages to suggest they are so caught up in the idea of their own heroism that would sacrifice their own families in pursuit of a story. This is a false and horrific claim, and it fundamentally misunderstands the genuine heroism of journalists who put their lives on the line in war zones and beyond.

In rewarding this shallow and stupid film, both juries demonstrated that they sometimes can't look beyond the artifice of narrative manipulation.

Juan Señor, who presides over all the ceremonies like a 1970s Eurovision presenter, offered a heartfelt thank-you to the makers of the film each time it was given a prize, adding that he was speaking "as a journalist", which further demonstrated how out of touch everyone in Cannes can be.

There was, however, a lot of well-deserved joy on the stage, especially from those in smaller territories. Bosnia and Herzegovina won its first ever prize, and even though it was only a Bronze, they were given their moment in the sun by being invited on to the stage to receive it.

And when a Gold Lion was given to a campaign drawing attention to the prejudice still faced by the Maori peoples of New Zealand, the celebration was transcendent, as you can see below.

To be continued...!