Cannes Winners

The first major festival of the 2024-2025 film calendar came to a close in Cannes at the weekend and if recent history is any indication, there may be one or two Oscar hopefuls amongst the festival’s big winners.

Three of the past four Palme d’Or winners have gone onto receive Best Picture nominations at the Academy Awards; ‘Anatomy of a Fall’, ‘Triangle of Sadness’ and ‘Parasite’, the latter of which famously won the Academy’s top prize back in 2020. This bodes well for Sean Baker‘s ‘Anora’, which saw the 53 year-old walk home with his first Golden Palm.

The romantic drama stars Mikey Madison in the titular role as Anora, a sex worker who elopes having agreed to marry one of her clients, the son of a wealthy Russian oligarch. The film earned rave reviews from critics and may see Baker receive his first Best Picture nomination after narrowly missing out on a handful occasions, most notably for ‘The Florida Project’ in 2018.

Full list of award winners at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival:

Palme d’Or: “Anora”

Dir: Sean Baker

Cast: Mikey Madison, Mark Eydelshteyn

Synopsis: Ani is a young stripper of Uzbek-American descent from Brighton Beach, a Russophone enclave in New York City. Somewhat conversant in Russian, her boss fixes her up with Russian-speaking clients. After meeting Vanya, the son of a Russian oligarch, a romance kindles that leads to their elopement. Their fairytale marriage is threatened when the man’s parents travel to New York to force an annulment.

Grand Prix: “All We Imagine as Light”

Dir: Payal Kapadia

Cast: Kani Kusruti, Divya Prabha, Chhaya Kadam

Synopsis: Prabha and Anu are Malayali nurses living in Mumbai who are both troubled by their relationships. The two embark on a road trip to a beach town where “the mystical forest becomes a space for their dreams to manifest.

Jury Prize: “Emilia Perez”

Dir: Jacques Audiard

Cast: Zoe Saldana, Karla Sofia Gascon, Selena Gomez

Synopsis: A woman is tasked with assisting an escaped Mexican cartel leader in undergoing gender-affirming surgery in order to both evade the authorities and affirm her gender.

Prix Special: “The Seed of the Sacred Fig”

Dir: Mohammad Rasoulof

Cast: Soheila Golestani, Missagh Zareh, Mahsa Rostami, Setareh Maleki

Synopsis: The story centers on Iman, an investigating judge in the Revolutionary Court in Tehran, who grapples with mistrust and paranoia as nationwide political protests intensify and his gun mysteriously disappears.

Other Awards:

Best Actress: The Ensemble “Emilia Perez”

Best Actor: Jesse Plemons “Kinds of Kindness”

Best Director: Miguel Gomes “The Grand Tour”

Best Screenplay: Coralie Fargeat “The Substance”

Camera d’Or: Halfdan Ullman Tondel “Armand”

Camera d’Or Special Mention: Chiang Wei Liang, You Qiao Yin “Mongrel”

Short Film Palme d’Or: Nebojsa Slijepcevic “The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent”

Short Film Special Mention: Daniel Soares “Bad for a Moment”

Golden Eye Documentary Prize: Earnest Cole: “Lost and Found” and “The Brink of Dreams”

Queer Palm: “Three Kilometres to the End of the World”

Palme Dog: Kodi “Dog on Trial”