Anya Taylor-Joy, Chris Hemsworth and director George Miller were showered with applause after the Cannes Film Festival premiere of Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga on Wednesday.

The audience rose to their feet and applauded the Mad Max: Fury Road prequel for between six and eight minutes after its world premiere, according to reports.

Video footage posted on social media showed Taylor-Joy, who plays the title character, blowing kisses to the camera, giving a theatrical bow and pointing to Miller, who stood beside her.

Hemsworth, who plays the villain Dementus, reportedly looked emotional as he took in the rapturous reaction to his latest movie.

Taking the microphone, the Australian filmmaker told the audience, “We worked very hard on this film, and it’ll be very interesting to see what you make of it. Thank you for having us.”

According to Deadline, fellow Aussie director Baz Lurhmann was overheard describing the film as “a steampunk, Wagnerian opera” as he left the cinema.

Taylor-Joy plays a younger version of Charlize Theron’s Fury Road character Imperator Furiosa in the prequel. In the post-apocalyptic action-adventure film, young Furiosa is kidnapped from her idyllic home by a Bike Horde led by Warlord Dementus.

The Queen’s Gambit star recently admitted that she felt isolated on the set of the film because her character barely speaks.

“By nature, of how arduous the shooting schedule was, I was very often alone and (Furiosa’s) a character that’s very much in her head and she’s very, very quiet, so it felt everything around me that pushed that sense of isolation,” she told Deadline.

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga will be released in cinemas on 24 May.

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