Which Cannes 2025 Standout Will Make It All the Way to the 2026 Oscars?

The Palme d’Or went to Jafar Panahi’s It Was Just an Accident, every other sharp take a look at existence in recent Iran from the lauded guerilla director—who has frequently run afoul of his executive, at nice possibility to his personal existence and liberty. At the post-ceremony press convention, jury president Juliette Binoche mentioned that Panahi’s movie “springs from a feeling of resistance, survival, which is absolutely necessary today.”

Panahi’s was once now not the one political movie known through the jury—which incorporated American actors Jeremy Strong and Halle Berry, amongst others. They awarded very best actress to first-time performer Nadia Melliti for her paintings in Hafsia Herzi’s The Little Sister, a take a look at the Parisian daughter of Algerian immigrants who’s suffering in opposition to the strictures of her house tradition and a dawning realization about her sexuality. Meanwhile, Wagner Moura gained very best actor for The Secret Agent, Kleber Mendonça Filho’s abnormal, expansive duration piece a few turbulent time in Brazil’s historical past. The jury was once obviously top on that movie, additionally awarding Filho very best director. (It’s turn out to be moderately uncommon for a movie to win multiple award at Cannes.)

Melliti’s win was once predicted through some at the flooring on the competition, whilst others concept that Jennifer Lawrence’s blistering flip in Lynne Ramsay’s Die, My Love would emerge victorious. But this was once now not the Americans’ 12 months at the Croisette; they left solely empty-handed.

With Cannes finished, we should now flip to the longer term—as is our solemn accountability annually—and beauty simply what this all would possibly imply for the Oscars. On this week’s episode of Little Gold Men, our hosts talk about a lot of the ones chances. Is Lawrence’s marketing campaign dinged through a Cannes loss? Not essentially. The larger query could be whether or not this 12 months’s crop of competition will proceed the Cannes-to-Oscars luck charge noticed, in unheard of style, in 2023 and 2024. In each and every of the ones years, 3 Cannes pageant motion pictures had been nominated for very best image. And the Palme d’Or winner has been nominated for very best image 4 instances since 2019, profitable two times for Parasite and Anora.

It Was Just an Accident will indisputably have sturdy reinforce from the overseas department of the Academy—and turns out a shoo-in for an international-feature nomination—however no Iranian movie has ever been nominated in very best image. That may just all exchange this 12 months, however may just take some severe stumping at the a part of the movie’s distributor, the now six-time Palme-predicting Cannes juggernaut Neon.

Another viable contender is Norway’s Sentimental Value, a lush circle of relatives drama from Joachim Trier, whose The Worst Person within the World was once nominated for 2 Oscars in 2021. That movie’s marketing campaign can be aided through the Stateside famous person energy of Stellan Skarsgård—scorching off the luck of Disney+’s Andor—and may just get a light profile spice up from supporting participant Elle Fanning.

The different sturdy chance is Richard Linklater’s Nouvelle Vague, a sprightly and winsome little bit of historic fiction chronicling the making of Jean-Luc Godard’s seminal New Wave movie Breathless. While Nouvelle Vague didn’t pick out up any trophies at Cannes (even though we pay attention Binoche was once gaga for it), Netflix obtained the movie out of the competition and is certain to present it a large push within the fall, together with replays at large September gala’s. Think of the movie—black-and-white, nostalgic for the movie business of the previous—as this 12 months’s The Artist. Only with none of the unhealthy Weinstein Company associations.