The Palme D'Oracle Strikes Again as Neon Scores its 6th Winner

Mon Dieu! The jury's 'Conclave with Champagne' deliberations leave American stars and filmmakers in the cold as a slow market wraps

May 24, 2025

**VIVE LA VICTOIRE** Palme d’Or winner Jafar Panahi and Cannes jury president Juliette Binoche. (Andreas Rentz/Getty Images)

A massive, five-hour power outage that hit southeastern France on Saturday morning nearly shut down closing ceremonies at the 78th annual Festival de Cannes, but with the Palais resorting to backup power and the town’s electric grid buzzing again by 3 p.m., the show went on as scheduled.

The jury, headed by Juliette Binoche, awarded the festival’s top prize to It Was Just an Accident, directed by Iran’s Jafar Panahi, who returned to Cannes for the first time since 2003 — having survived a nearly 15-year filmmaking and travel ban, not to mention two prison stays — with a drama about the trauma suffered by political dissidents. The revenge thriller is a far cry from last year’s Palme d’Or winner, Sean Baker’s romantic and bawdy Anora, which went on to win this year’s best picture Oscar, but the two have one major element in common: Both were acquisitions for Neon, extending the American distributor’s remarkable Palme winning streak.

Accepting his award, Panahi shared his mission for a free society in his country and a wish for Iranians to “set aside” their differences in pursuit of it. “And the cinema is a society,” he added. “Nobody is entitled to tell us what we should do or refrain from doing.”

After the ceremony, Binoche testified that it was an honor to celebrate Panahi’s return, saying, “Art will always win.”

Additionally, the jury handed its Grand Prix, essentially its runner-up award, to Joachim Trier’s family drama Sentimental Value.

And, that in turn, meant, incredibly, another year when Neon dominated Cannes. Tom Quinn’s company, which boasted the last five Palme d’Or winners, saw that number notch up to six with It Was Just an Accident (Quinn shared the strategy behind his remarkable winning streak with Ashley Cullins earlier this spring). If that weren’t enough, Neon also represented Sentimental Value, which it took on before the fest, and during the fest picked up The Secret Agent and Sirât, which both collected awards.

It was not a great night for American talent, though, as Jennifer Lawrence, starring in Die, My Love, and directors like Richard Linklater (Nouvelle Vague) and Ari Aster (Eddington) all leave town empty-handed.

Lawrence ceded those acting laurels to Nadia Melliti, making her film debut in the lesbian coming-of-age story The Little Sister, which also won the Queer Palm; actor Wagner Moura was honored for the Brazilian political thriller The Secret Agent, which picked up a second award when its helmer Kleber Mendonça Filho was named best director.

In a sort of everyone-deserves-a-prize-giving mood, the fest announced a tie for its jury prize, serving up honors to both Oliver Laxe’s Sirât, a Spanish-French coproduction about a father’s search for his missing daughter, and Mascha Schilinski’s The Sound of Falling, a impressionistic look at four generations of German women.

Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, the Belgian directing brothers, are veritable Cannes fixtures, having won six prizes at previous festivals, including two Palmes d’Or for 1999’s Rosetta and 2005’s L’Enfant. This year, they were recognized with the best screenplay prize for Young Mothers, about a shelter for teen moms. A special prize was given to Bi Gan’s sci-fi drama Resurrection, which includes a 30-minute long take.

Hasan Hadi beat out such boldface namas as Kristen Stewart and Scarlett Johansson to earn the Camera d’Or, awarded to the best first feature, for The President’s Cake, about a young Iraqi girl gathering the ingredients to bake a cake for Saddam Hussein’s birthday.

The Palme d’Or for best short film went to Tawfeek Barhom’s I’m Glad You’re Dead Now.

Speaking with the press post-awards, jury member Jeremy Strong said of the deliberative process that he and his fellow jurors went through, “It was like Conclave with Champagne.”

In other awards that rained down along the Croisette this weekend, the fest’s Un Certain Regard section gave Diego Cespedes’ La Misteriosa Mirada Del Flamenco (The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo) its top award, best first film. Frank Dillane was named best actor for Urchin, fellow actor Harris Dickinson’s directorial debut, while Clea Diaro was singled out as best actress for Pedro Pinho’s O Riso e a Faca (I Only Rest in the Storm). Directing honors went to Arab & Tarzan Nasser for Once Upon a Time in Gaza, while the screenplay prize was awarded Harry Lighton for his study of a gay affair, Pillion.

And don’t forget the prestigious Palm Dog, which celebrated its 25th anniversary, by presenting its top honors to an Icelandic sheepdog named Panda, who plays the family pooch in director Hlynur Palmason’s The Love That Remains.

Market Drag and Oscar Questions

At the adjacent Cannes market — where buyers and sellers haggle over future movies — business was slow this year given all the uncertainties plaguing the worldwide economy, but there still was some brisk action focusing on the films playing in the festival itself. In addition to Neon’s buying spree, its upstart rival Mubi, the worldwide streaming service and distributor, made its mark by dropping a reported $24 million for rights to Lynne Ramsey’s Die, My Love. And though the fest’s jury may have ignored Lawrence for her performance in the film, Mubi — which secured an Oscar nom for Demi Moore in The Substance last season — is likely to put the same engine behind Lawrence.

Stateside, moviegoers — at least those moviegoers who favor art-house bookings — will have a chance to see most of the major Cannes entries for themselves, including other competition films like The History of Sound, starring Paul Mescal and Josh O’Connor, and The Mastermind, also starring O’Connor — both of which Mubi is distributing.

And, of course, some of Cannes’ non-competitive entries like Tom Cruise’s latest death-defying foray Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning and Spike Lee’s Highest 2 Lowest are already making their way into the cineplex.

By the time the film Academy’s year-end deadline rolls around, we’ll all have a chance to second-guess Cannes’ 2025 judgements.

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