On January 5, the 34th annual Palm Springs International Film Awards will be presented to several leading industry figures, including director Sarah Polley and actors Michelle Yeoh, Colin Farrell, and Cate Blanchett.

Michelle Yeoh will take the International Star Award in recognition of her stellar performance in A24’s Everything Everywhere All at Once. Yeoh played the role of immigrant mother Evelyn Wang in the 2022 feature directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Schemert. In that role, she found herself responsible for saving the entire multiverse while also taking care of her family that included husband Waymond, played by Ke Huy Quan, and daughter Joy (Stephanie Hsu).

Harold Matzner, who chairs the Palm Springs festival, paid tribute to Yeoh’s performance by saying “Michelle Yeoh is everything in the exhilarating film Everything Everywhere All at Once … in one of the most memorable roles of her career.”

It’s likely that Yeoh will earn a Best Actress nomination at the next Academy Awards ceremony, as did last year’s International Star Award winner Penelope Cruz. Previous Star winners have included Nicole Kidman, Saoirse Ronan, Charlize Theron, and Helen Mirren.
Yeoh most recently starred in Kenneth Branagh’s A Haunting in Venice, a sequel to Murder on the Orient Express. She’s also appeared in Netflix’s The Witcher: Blood Origin and The Brothers Sun, and in the Disney+ show American Born Chinese.

Cate Blanchett will also be honored with the Desert Palm Achievement Award for her role in Tar. In earlier years, she’d won awards for her performances in Carol, Truth, and Babel.

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“Cate Blanchett is truly one of the best actresses of this generation, whose performances are always extraordinary no matter the role. In her latest film Tár, Cate perfectly embodies Lydia Tár as an orchestra conductor at the height of her career whose life begins to unravel,” said Harold Matzner, Festival chair.

This year’s Director of the Year Award will go to Sarah Polley for her work on Women Talking, a film about women in an insular religious community; it starred Rooney Mara, Claire Foy, Jessie Buckley, Judith Ivey, and Sheila McCarthy.

Finally, Colin Farrell will receive the Desert Palm Achievement Award for his acting in The Banshees of Inisherin, in which he played the role of an farmer on an isolated island off the west coast of Ireland.

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