10 Best Cannes Film Festival Palme d'Or Winners

While the Cannes Film Festival has been synonymous with long standing ovations at its glitzy film premieres for decades, the Palme d'Or (the Cannes equivalent of a Best Picture Oscar) is slightly more obscure. That has changed in recent years. Mainstream audiences have declared that the allure of winning the Palme d'Or prize is the principal reason they checked out several recent films like the Oscar-nominated "Triangle of Sadness" or "Anatomy of a Fall" on the big screen. The Palme d'Or trophy has become so ubiquitous that Taylor Swift name-dropped it on her new album, "The Life of a Showgirl." If you're on Swift's radar, you know you've made it.

With the latest Palme d'Or winner, Jafar Panahi's "It Was Just An Accident," preparing its North American theatrical run, it is an ideal time to look back on the greatest films that have won this award. This prize was attached to great films long before the modern interest in Palme d'Or winners. That fact is at the forefront when ranking the 10 best features to win this prize — or its chunkily-named predecessor, the Grand Prix du Festival International du Film.

These 10 incredible movies are all accomplishments that made it on to the public radar thanks to their Palme d'Or. The artistry that helped these films win also shines a light on why the Palme d'Or is held in such high esteem.

There's cinema ripped from the headlines, and then there's cinema transcribing the art of history as it unfolds. "Rome, Open City" falls into the latter category, with this 1945 film, directed Roberto Rossellini, chronicling Rome during the Nazi occupation of Italiy. Screenwriters Sergio Amidei and Federico Fellini follow various lives in this city, including Catholic priest Don Pietro Pellegrini (Aldo Fabrizi) and Italian Resistance leader Luigi Ferraris (Marcello Pagliero) as they attempt to subvert the fascist forces suffocating their community. 

"Rome, Open City" is not a historical document. Instead, Rossellini's gaze is on ordinary people trying to change the world for the better, despite the obstacles in their path. It's an intimate story, told through so many fascinating characters, and compellingly realized on-screen. The film includes masterful cinematography from Ubaldo Arata, which, among its many feats, makes the sheer scale of the Nazi occupation so visceral. Similar emotional immediacy is heightened through further "Rome, Open City" details like its candid use of non-professional actors.

Rather than having famous names evoke a distant echo of the past, Rossellini draws upon the influence of actual citizens who experienced the occupation firsthand. The result is a feature that still feels as fresh and essential as the day it debuted in 1945.

• Cast: Aldo Fabrizi, Anna Magnani, Marcello Pagleiro
• Director: Roberto Rossellini
• Rating: Not Rated
• Runtime: 105 minutes
• Where to Watch: Criterion Channel

We cannot control our dreams. Nor can we challenge the inevitability of death. So much of life is beyond our grasp. Writer and director Apichatpong Weerasethakul's 2010 masterwork, "Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives," provides a quiet method for grappling with those realities. The film's titular Uncle Boonmee (Thanapat Saisaymar) is approaching the end of his life. One night, he and his children are visited by ghosts of the past. This begins a journey into the past, reincarnation, and death that no other film has realized with such precise dreaminess.

Weerasethakul's slow yet engaging tale of these small lives exudes confidence, including the irony-free presentation of storybook elements like a man transformed into a simian creature, or a catfish as it courts a human princess. All of this is packaged in a film oozing a melancholy aura. It derives from how imminent death is around the corner for Uncle Boonmee, as countless questions about life and beyond still plague his mind. Evocative visuals, fantasy, and touching reality all collide into a lovely spectacle. The film's inexplicable qualities also provide an idiosyncratic reflection of how much of life is simply bizarre. There's not much else like it.

• Cast: Thanapat Saisaymar, Jenjira Pongpas, Sakda Kaewbuadee
• Director: Apichatpong Weerasethakul
• Rating: Not Rated
• Runtime: 114 minutes
• Where to Watch: Strand Releasing

Love can be painful but soul-invigorating, balanced on a razor's edge by the fleeting gifts of infatuation. David Lean's "Brief Encounter" renders that complexity through a monochromatic color scheme, its subdued atmosphere, and the type of romantic story it captures. This tragic love concerns Laura Jesson (Celia Johnson) and Dr. Alec Harvey (Trevor Howard), with viewers watching them fall for each other via flashbacks. From the start, audiences know their connection is doomed to end.

As Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet's final moments in "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" similarly reflected, love matters even when it doesn't last. It's impossible not to get swept up in the romantic bond formed between Jesson and Harvey, both of whom are cheating on their spouses. It's heartbreaking to watch them keep both their love and the inevitable pain of breaking up hidden from the world.

"Brief Encounter" is a wonderful exercise that reminds us to appreciate the people who make life worth living while we can. That human connection, like love, always matters.

• Cast: Celia Johnson, Trevor Howard, Stanley Holloway
• Director: David Lean
• Rating: Not Rated
• Runtime: 87 minutes
• Where to Watch: Criterion Channel

Sean Baker's 2024 film "Anora" functions on multiple levels, both as tragic romance and screwball comedy. It is also, in a way, a horror film. The saga of stripper Ani (Mikey Madison) falling in love with and marrying a rich boy named Vanya (Mark Eydelshteyn) is a heartbreaking exploration of the limited opportunities available to young Americans in the 2020s. The hostilities that Ani face from Vanya's bodyguards and parents (and even Vanya himself), who don't want this wealthy guy to be seen with a sex worker, capture how upward financial mobility has become a joke in today's world. 

Much like previous Baker works like "Tangerine" and "The Florida Project," "Anora" renders the struggles so many working-class Americans face in simply living from one day to the next. Beyond those weighty elements, though, "Anora" is a phenomenal motion picture in every respect. Baker's precise sensibilities in executing visual gags, like a Russian goon tossing a metal bat around in the corner of a wide shot, are worth remarking on. There's not a bad performance in the entire cast, either, with Madison's hard work as Ani coming through with impressive strength. 

"Anora" is frequently hilarious, with its chaos harkening back to classic screwball comedies like "Bringing Up Baby," albeit with more vomit and swearing. At once both devastating and hilarious, with a cathartic yet bittersweet ending, "Anora" is a perfect snapshot of mid-2020s existence.

• Cast: Mikey Madison, Mark Eydelshteyn, Yura Borisov
• Director: Sean Baker
• Rating: R
• Runtime: 139 minutes
• Where to Watch: Hulu

Filmmaker Cristian Mungiu is the king of bleak cinema. Few filmmakers are capable of rendering real-world, tragic anguish in such impactful terms. He's a master of his craft and, arguably, the pinnacle of his impressive career came with 2007's "4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days." Set in 1987, the film focuses on Romanian college-aged citizens Otilia Mihărtescu (Anamaria Marinca) and Gabriela "Găbița" Drăguț (Laura Vasiliu). The latter gets pregnant in an era and a country where abortions are illegal. The duo has to venture to a hotel where a back-alley procedure can be performed, and it is an odyssey that keeps putting new obstacles in their way.

Mungiu and cinematographer Oleg Mutu frame "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days" with multiple wide shots, like an unblinking eye. It talks frankly about how people like these were forced to flee into dark places to have any power over their bodies, functionally erased by Romanian law. The film forces audiences to never take their eyes off Otilia and Gabriela, enduring with them the lengths they have to go through to win their small, human goal. A thoughtfulness is applied to every shot, meanwhile, the tiniest details of Marinca and Vasiliu's performances reinforce the humanity of their characters. A harrowing film, "4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days" is Mungiu's masterpiece.

• Cast: Anamaria Marinca, Laura Vasiliu, Vlad Ivanov
• Director: Cristian Mungiu
• Rating: Not Rated
• Runtime: 113 minutes
• Where to Watch: AMC+

Writer/director Hirokazu Kore-eda makes motion pictures told from the perspective of ordinary working-class people, a society sometimes ignored in mainstream global cinema. That quality was central to Kore-eda's 2018 film "Shoplifters," which follows a poor family, including Nobuyo (Sakura Ando) and her husband Osamu (Lily Franky), who shoplift to get what they need. Complex layers are added to their lives when they take in Yuri (Miyu Sasaki), a little girl abused by her own family.

"Shoplifters" challenges our pre-conceived notions of what is right and wrong. Our lead characters are kidnappers, yet they're also giving this girl a better, more loving home than the one she came from. It's those kinds of paradoxes (which real life is full of) that inform Kore-eda's screenplay. Within the film's observational camerawork, performances flourish. That's especially true of Ando, who has a masterful scene where Nobuyo reassures Yuri that the parents who actually love you aren't the ones that beat you. 

Ando's emotional urgency in this scene alone makes her "Shoplifters" turn an all-timer. It's just one of many scenes she and the rest of the "Shoplifters" cast get to shine their brightest. Hirokazu Kore-eda's talents have rarely been so visible as they are in this extraordinary motion picture.

• Cast: Lily Franky, Sakura Ando, Mayu Matsuoka
• Director: Hirokazu Kore-eda
• Rating: Not Rated
• Runtime: 121 minutes
• Where to Watch: Kanopy and Hoopla

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Do you ever feel like you're being watched? It may just be "The Conversation" protagonist and surveillance master Harry Caul (Gene Hackman) listening in. The man is a pro in his specialized field, albeit one with trouble in his past. His typically aloof approach to his job goes out the window when he believes he has stumbled onto proof of a murder in one of his recordings. Caught between doing the right thing and blindly moving on with his job, Caul chooses his path and falls down a rabbit hole of conspiracies and chaos.

Right from a striking opening sequence, director Francis Ford Coppola and cinematographer Walter Murch display an excellent command of space in "The Conversation." While that first set piece utilizes wide open spaces to create a lie of normalcy, the most memorable imagery in this film is full of cramped spaces and ominous atmospheres. Even a wide shot of Caul talking to a woman in a loft space, trying to muster up the courage to express his interest in her, oozes anguish. It's a masterful use of empty space, creating an emptiness that feels like it is pressurizing the characters.

"The Conversation" pairs unforgettable shots with a story that doesn't shy away from exploringthe duplicitous world Coal is ensnared in. This isn't the story of an underdog coming out on top against the system and "The Conversation" is all the better for it.

• Cast: Gene Hackman, John Cazale, Allen Garfield
• Director: Francis Ford Coppola
• Rating: PG
• Runtime: 113 minutes
• Where to Watch: Prime Video

"Titane" is a difficult movie to describe, much less experience, as it caused reports of fainting and walk-outs at its first Australian showings. Only the second feature-length movie from French director Julia Ducournau, the film follows Alexia (Agatha Rousselle), a woman with a titanium plate in her head and a passion — literally — for cars. After her latest murder spree, Alexia goes on the lam by taking on the identity of Vincent's (Vincent Lindon) missing son, Adrien. If that sounds strange, you can't imagine what Ducournau actually puts on the screen. "Titane" has the chaos of a nightmare you can't escape. While an actual nightmare is something people want to wake up from, though, you might not want the imaginative lunacy of this film to end.

Everyone involved in "Titane" is on Ducournau's wavelength when it comes to the weirdness of its craftsmanship. Everyone gives their all, from Rousselle and Lindon's gusto on screen, to the unnerving sound design, to Ruben Impens' imaginative cinematography. Some movies have a cool, weird premise but fumble the execution. Not "Titane." This film's creativity extends to wringing genuine pathos out of its ludicrous story. There's real soul under the hood of a story that doesn't shy away from raw depictions of Alexia's sexual infatuation with cars. One of the most singular visions of the decade, "Titane" must be seen to be believed.

• Cast: Agathe Rousselle, Vincent Lindon, Garance Marillier
• Director: Julia Ducournau 
• Rating: R
• Runtime: 108 minutes
• Where to Watch: Kanopy

Writer/director Bong Joon Ho's "Parasite" is a cinematic gift. The saga of the Kim family, including father Kim Ki-taek (Song Kang-ho) and son Kim Ki-woo (Choi Woo-shik), as they infiltrate the wealthy Park family's life, is a pointed exploration of class disparity and how capitalism impacts people on every level of society. It is also extraordinary visual storytelling. The placement of characters during every scene is used to communicate the shifting power dynamics between them, a detail that will go unnoticed until a rewatch, when you realize how crucial it is. Dialogue-free sequences demonstrate the power of physical acting. One facial expression can tell a monologue in the right context.

"Parasite" is also a dynamite thriller, the rare modern film that juggles both heavy sociopolitical commentary and entertainment with expertise. Bong pulls off moments of tension that may pull shocked reactions out of even the most jaded moviegoers. It's also a showcase for a flawless ensemble cast, with Song Kang-ho and Cho Yeo-jeong standing out as the MVPs. 

"Parasite," from its funniest scenes to its aching finale, will break your heart while showing you how joyful familial bliss is, too often, only possible in dreams. Bong Joon Ho's career is packed with all-time classics. Even among his filmography, "Parasite" is something special.

• Cast: Song Kang-ho, Lee Sun-kyun, Cho Yeo-jeong
• Director: Bong Joon Ho
• Rating: R
• Runtime: 108 minutes
• Where to Watch: Netflix and HBO Max

You've probably never seen a movie as beautiful as "The Cranes Are Flying." Director Mikhail Kalatozov and cinematographer Sergey Urusevsky offer up a movie filled with incredible staging, tangible depth, and precise lighting. Downward-tilted wide shots capture characters walking across empty tableaus, creating painterly moods. The lives of our doomed lovers, Veronika (Tatyana Samojlova) and Boris (Aleksey Batalov), are haunted by the skeletal shadows of war. Their passions run deep, but they're trapped in a toweringly cruel world. Boris must eventually depart to fight in World War II. The result is a foregone conclusion to everyone, except Veronika.

There is grandeur to "The Cranes Are Flying," offering humanity to civilian lives caught up in the violence of war. The drama is often centered on the heartbreaking story of Veronika, as Samojlova, delivers a timeless, emotional performance. The earliest scenes are of Veronika enjoying a simple life with Boris, making the ornate tragedies that pile onto her as unbearable to watch as they are for her to suffer. Yet hope remains and, like her doomed lover, she fights on despite the suffering.

Even the most gentle romances can be derailed. War is often the culprit, as it is here, bringing with it a misery that forever scars the lives of survivors. Among that brutality is a light, even in the shadow of the greatest moments of despair. "The Cranes Are Flying" never forgets to offer meaning to the suffering. That's all we can do, when the horrors envelop us all.

• Cast: Tatyana Samojlova, Aleksey Batalov, Vasili Merkuryev,
• Director: Mikhail Kalatozov
• Rating: Not Rated
• Runtime: 95 minutes
• Where to Watch: Criterion Channel