PRIZE WINNERS FROM CANNES
It's all over in France. The 79th Cannes Film Festival closed with its awards ceremony on Saturday evening and Cristian Mungiu's Fjord won the Palme d'Or. It was Mungiu's second Palme win after having won previously for Four Years, Three Weeks, Two Days back in 2007. That film played the Telluride Film festival.
Complete winners from the Palme d'Or official competition:
Palme d'Or: Fjord (Mungiu)
Grand Prix: Minotaur (Zvyaginastev)
Jury Prize: The Dreamed Adventure (Grisebach)
Best Direction (Tie): Fatherland (Pawelkowski) and The Black Ball (Calvo and Ambrossi)
Best Screenplay: A Man of His Time (Marre)
Best Actress (Tie): All of a Sudden (Efira and Okamoto)
Best Actor (Tie): Coward (Macchia and Campagne)
STACKING UP WITH THE RECENT PAST
For comparison's sake, here's a winner of the same categories over the last five years with eventual TFF selections indicated with an *.
2025
Palme d'Or: It Was Just an Accident (Panahi)*
Grand Prix: Sentimental Value (Trier)*
Jury Prize: (Tie) Sirat (Laxe) and The Sound of Falling (Schilinski)
Best Direction: The Secret Agent (Mendonca)*
Best Screenplay: Young Mothers (Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardennes)
Best Actress: The Little Sister (Nadia Melliti)
Best Actor (Tie): The Secret Agent (Wagner Moura)*
Special Prize: Ressurection (Gan)
2024
Palme d'Or: Anora (Baker)*
Grand Prix: All We Imagine as Light (Kapadia)*
Jury Prize: Emilia Perez (Audiard)*
Best Direction: Grand Tour (Gomes)
Best Screenplay: The Substance (Fargeat)
Best Actress: Emilia Perez (Gascon, Saldana, Gomez and Paz)*
Best Actor: Kinds of Kindness (Plemons)
Special Prize: The Seed of the Sacred Fig (Rasoulof)*
2023
Palme d'Or: Anotomy of a Fall (Triet)*
Grand Prix: The Zone of Interest (Glazer)*
Jury Prize: Fallen Leaves (Kaurismaki)*
Best Direction: The Taste of Things (Tran Ahn Hung)*
Best Screenplay: Monster (Sakamoto, dir: Kore-eda)
Best Actress: About Dry Grasses (Merve Dizdar)
Best Actor: Fallen Leaves (Koji Yakoshu)*
2022
Palme d'Or: Triangle of Sadness (Ostlund)
Grand Prix: (Tie): Stars at Noon (Denis) and Close (Dhont)*
Jury Prize: (Tie): Eo (Skolimowski) and Eight Mountains (Vandermeersch and Groeningen)
Best Direction: Decision to Leave (Chan-wook)
Best Screenplay: Boy from Heaven (Saleh)
Best Actress: Holy Spider (Amir Ebrahimi)*
Best Actor: Broker (Kang-ho)*
Special 75th Anniversary Prize: Tori and Lokita (Dardennes)*
2021
Palme d'Or: Titane (Ducournau)
Grand Prix: (Tie): Compartment No. 6 (Kuosmanen) and A Hero (Farhadi)*
Jury Prize: (Tie): Ahed's Knee (Lapid) and Memoria (Weerasethakul)
Best Direction: Annette (Carax)
Best Screenplay: Drive My Car (Hamaguchi)
Best Actress: The Worst Person in the World (Renate Reinsve)
Best Actor: Nitram (Caleb Landry Jones)
As you can see, winning the Plame d'Or isn't a guarantee that a film will play at TFF although the last three have.
As to the rest of the categories, here's where they stand over the five years with winners then being a part of TFF:
Grand Prix: 5 (it's the most solid category in terms of a Cannes/Telluride connection).
Jury Prize: 2
Director: 2
Screenplay: 0
Actress: 2
Actor: 3
Special Prizes: 2
So your best odds by this metric favor 2026 Grand Prix winner Minotaur.
Next best are for Palme winners and Best Actor which would point toward: Fjord and Coward.
After that it gets very murky...
WHAT THE RATINGS SUGGEST
Taking a look at Cannes results over the last five years that have made the connection between Cannes and Telluride is, at the least interesting, and may be instructive as to anticipating what films might make that journey this year.
First, the average number of films that do the Telluride/Cannes two step seems to have increased over the past five years. Here's the number that have made it since 2021:
2021-7
2022-9
2023-10
2024-8
2025-9
That averages out to 8.6 films each year.
Now, using the ratings from Cannes-ratings.org, where did these 43 films land on their 10point scale?
2021:
A Hero 7.30
Red Rocket 7.30
The French Dispatch 7.11
Bergman Island 7.09
The Velvet Underground 6.83
Cow 6.80
Unclenching the Fists 6.24
2022:
The Pupils 8.37
Aftersun 8.17
Close 7.76
Broker 7.47
Godland 7.38
One Fine Morning 7.34
Armageddon Time 6.90
Holy Spider 6.70
Tori and Lokita 6.32
2023:
The Zone of Interest 8.19
Perfect Days 7.91
Anatomy of a Fall 7.90
Fallen Leaves 7.46
La Chimera 7.46
The Taste of Things 7.01
Occupied City 6.97
Anselm 6.41
Little Girl Blue 6.21
Room 999 (no ratings found)
2024:
Anora 8.35
Misericordia 7.47
Bird 7.45
Emilia Perez 7.42
All We Imagine as Light 7.02
The Apprentice 6.94
Santosh 6.07
2025:
Sentimental Value 8.04
It Was Just an Accident 7.75
Pillion 7.30
Nouvelle Vague 7.23
Urchin 7.15
A Private Life 6.99
Mastermind 6.29
The History of Sound 5.81
43 films in all with 2025's The History of Sound being the lowest rated film to be picked up of any of the 43 by TFF.
The vast majority of films clear the 6.5 bar. That's true for 35 of he 43 films listed above. So what do this year's ratings signal, if anything?
Using the 6.5 or above metric and also being a little sly about films that are on the MTFB watch list, here's some takeaways:
32 films in all sections of Cannes #79 were above the 6.5 threshold. Among them, here are some films that I have on the MTFB watch list and where they are on the Cannes-ratings.org list:
#7) All of a Sudden 7.39
#10) Coward 7.28
#11) Minotaur 7.03
#21) Fjord 6.69
Other films that made enough of a splash that could earn them spots on the MTFB Watch List:
#1 Club Kid 8.37
#13 The Dreamed Adventure 6.94
#15 The Black Ball 6.91
#24 Avedon 6.50
#31 Clarissa 6.43
MTFB Watch list films that may have taken a hit:
#40 Fatherland 6.15
#42 Paper Tiger 6.15
#43 Hope 6.14
Off the top 50 grid so...you know...
Moulin 5.73
Gentle Monster 4.66
Sheep in the Box 4.53
Parallel Tales 4.22
The Unknown 4.14
Draw your own conclusions...the first official "Ten Bets" for TFF #53 drops on June18th.
More on Thursday!
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