Cannes 2025 Palme d'Or Contenders Ranked: Who Will Win the Top Prize?

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25-05-2025

Updated, May 24: My final ranking of how this year's Cannes Film Festival titles will shake out while vying for the Palme d'Or is below. Reviews and reactions to late premieres 'The Mastermind' (Kelly Reichardt) and 'Young Mothers' (Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne) haven't startled the race too much at this point. The Palme is Neon's to lose, with either 'Sentimental Value,' or the company's mid-festival acquisitions comprising 'It Was Just an Accident,' 'Sirât,' or 'The Secret Agent' taking the top prize. My money is on 'Sentimental Value,' which delivers on the emotion the jury looks for, but who can really be sure?
If not Neon, then the Palme could go to MUBI for Mascha Schilinski's avant-garde tone poem of generational female anguish, 'Sound of Falling.' Expect this film to win something. As for Neon, if they win the 2025 Palme, it's their sixth in a row after 'Parasite,' 'Titane,' 'Triangle of Sadness,' 'Anatomy of a Fall,' and 'Anora.' 'Sentimental Value' star Stellan Skarsgård could win Best Actor from the jury; so could 'The Secret Agent' star Wagner Moura. Neon will clean up on Saturday.
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Jury president Juliette Binoche is not a stranger to elliptical, emotionally sparse films, including her work with Abbas Kiarostami, Michael Haneke, and Claire Denis, all Cannes prize winners or contenders for her collaborations. She may steer the jury away from something that's purely about heightened, operatic feeling, like 'Sentimental Value,' and more toward something heady and recalcitrant, like 'Sirât.'
Jafar Panahi's 'It Was Just an Accident' dances somewhere between the two polar categories, but the narrative of this filmmaker fleeing his country after making his most accessible movie yet can't be denied. (After filming in Iran, 'It Was Just an Accident' completed post-production in France.) See IndieWire's final Palme d'Or contenders ranking at the bottom of this story.
The awards ceremony takes place on Saturday night in Cannes.
Updated, May 23: Neon now looks primed to win the company's sixth consecutive Palme d'Or with multiple contenders in its war chest. Beyond earlier Brazilian premiere 'The Secret Agent,' two Neon films vying for the Palme with extraordinary reviews are 'It Was Just an Accident,' which we discuss below, and Joachim Trier's 'Sentimental Value.'
The Thursday premiere earned raves for the Norwegian filmmaker's sprawling, Bergmanesque family portrait, starring Stellan Skarsgård as an arthouse auteur trying to jumpstart his career and recover his fractured relationship with his daughters, played by Renate Reinsve (2021 Best Actress Cannes winner for Trier's 'The Worst Person in the World') and Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas.
IndieWire's Anne Thompson called 'Sentimental Value' a 'surefire Oscar contender,' while Skarsgård could give Cannes Best Actor frontrunner Wagner Moura a run for his money with one of the deepest and most sensitive roles of the Swedish veteran's career. Elle Fanning co-stars as the American actress his Gustav hires to play a role he originally wrote for his theater-actress daughter Nora (Reinsve), who turns him down. The film received a reported 19-minute standing ovation — while these recorded lengthy bouts of applause are often arbitrary, as in-house cameras move leisurely from talent to talent to capture everyone's reactions after the credits, it's allegedly one of the longest in the festival's history.
Last year, Neon's Palme winner 'Anora' also premiered late in the festival. I'm calling 'Sentimental Value' the Palme frontrunner at this point, as it delivers on the big emotions the jury often looks for in a winner. Neon meanwhile acquired 'It Was Just an Accident' during the festival, suggesting Tom Quinn and his team have faith in Panahi's bruising portrait of Iranian dissidents to win a prize. (It's not going home empty-handed, I can assure.)
Still to screen are the Dardennes' 'Young Mothers' and Kelly Reichardt's 'The Mastermind.' Bi Gan's bewildering cinematic epic 'Resurrection' stunned and baffled critics with its expansive, genre-crossing, sci-fi-tinged filmmaking, making the Chinese filmmaker a possible Cannes Best Director contender for his boundary-pushing vision.
Earlier, May 21: The raves are in for dissident Iranian director Jafar Panahi's 'It Was Just an Accident,' with the asylum filmmaker in attendance at Cannes for Wednesday's press conference and Tuesday night's premiere. The powerful drama — less reflexive than Panahi's recent films like 'No Bears' or 'Taxi' in which the director, by virtue of his outsider and formerly incarcerated status in Iran, is forced to become a character himself — has some of the best reviews out on the Screen International jury grid. It follows an ever-growing group of Iranians who kidnap and consider killing their former captor under the regime. In an affecting move, Panahi shows women without hijab, such as a wedding photographer roped into being a part of the man's captivity, to reflect the shifts in his native country's society post-Woman, Life, Freedom movement.
Panahi spoke openly during the press conference and in a Variety interview about how his experience in prison under interrogation and torture-like tactics inspired this politically rousing film. It's tough and dark but also features plenty of humor, and there's seemingly no one at Cannes who doesn't think it's a second-week Palme frontrunner. Panahi previously won the Camera d'Or for his 1995 debut 'The White Balloon' and the Best Screenplay prize in competition for '3 Faces' in 2018.
'It Was Just an Accident,' as it's titled in English, is a sales title currently looking for U.S. distribution. I've spoken to a few buyers who loved the movie. Based on early reviews, including IndieWire's rave, someone will want to snap this one up quickly before Saturday's awards ceremony.
Carla Simón's autobiographical 'Romería' out of Spain, about an aspiring filmmaker who ventures into learning about her family history and especially her late father, who died of AIDS in the early 1990s when she was young, also debuted Wednesday to supportive reviews. The superb cinematography from Hélène Louvart, who also shot Scarlett Johansson's Un Certain Regard premiere 'Eleanor the Great' but is a regular at Cannes with her work ('La Chimera,' 'Motel Destino'), deserves consideration from the jury.
Premiering today in Cannes are 'The History of Sound' and 'Sentimental Value,' which screened for reviewers earlier on Saturday and could be up for prizes themselves. Reviews, which just broke, for 'The History of Sound' are mixed, though Paul Mescal could be a Cannes Best Actor contender for his moving portrayal of a music student enamored with Josh O'Connor. They go on the road together, falling in love and collecting music after bonding as fellow Boston Conservatory students. MUBI has distribution rights and will release the queer World War I-adjacent romance later in the year. It will no doubt make the rounds at regional fall festivals on the way to an Oscar campaign. Oliver Hermanus' film doesn't feel like a Palme winner, though. It's not hugely giving in terms of emotions, which are what the juries go for.
We'll keep updating the below ranking.
Earlier, May 20: We are exactly a week into the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, and on a day of severe, soaking rain hailing down upon the Croisette. In other words, ideal moviegoing weather.
At this point, we've seen 13 competition titles, with Julia Ducournau's divisive epidemic-horror-meets-grief-drama 'Alpha' debuting Monday night to wildly mixed reactions (including a pan from IndieWire's own critic and established Ducournau fan David Ehrlich). Ducournau won the Palme in 2021 for 'Titane' and is unlikely to repeat this year; Neon releases the AIDS-allegorical domestic drama later in 2025.
Tuesday night brings the premiere of asylum filmmaker Jafar Panahi's 'It Was Just an Accident' out of Iran, with the dissident director set to appear in person for a press conference on Wednesday. Could this film follow the pattern of another Iranian director, Mohammad Rasoulof, who won a prize last year for eventual Oscar nominee 'The Seed of the Sacred Fig'?
Yet to come are Oliver Hermanus' 'The History of Sound,' Joachim Trier's 'Sentimental Value,' Saeed Roustaee's 'Woman and Child,' Bi Gan's 'Resurrection,' Carla Simón's 'Romeria,' the Dardennes' 'Young Mothers,' and Kelly Richardt's 'The Mastermind.' That film will be the last to premiere in competition, as Cannes awaits the arrival of Josh O'Connor, who is currently in production duties in the United States on Steven Spielberg's upcoming sci-fi film. That meant he had to miss the 'History of Sound' press junket on Tuesday (stay tuned for IndieWire's coverage), with his co-star Paul Mescal holding court.
So far, there is no clear, universally praised standout, though early premieres 'Sound of Falling' from Mascha Schilinski and 'Two Prosecutors' from Sergei Loznitsa are holding high on the Screen International critics' jury grid. There was a lot of praise, too, for Oliver Laxe's tough sit 'Sirât,' a sales title that follows a father and his small son into the Moroccan desert to find his missing daughter amid drug-fueled raves that cross 'Mad Max' with Burning Man.
Richard Linklater's black-and-white French New Wave love letter 'Nouvelle Vague' was also adored on the ground, appealing to the European and American cinephile set with its gorgeous cinematography and who's-who of the Parisian filmmaking scene in 1959. It's more a New Wave hangout movie than a strict chronicle of the making of Jean-Luc Godard's 'Breathless,' though it peels back the curtain on how Godard (Guillaume Marbeck) put together his groundbreaking movie with stars Jean Seberg (Zoey Deutch, who nails Seberg's wobbly French accent) and Jean-Paul Belmondo (Aubry Dullin, a dead ringer for the late French star).
Kleber Mendonça Filho's lively, nearly three-hour epic 'The Secret Agent,' set in 1970s Brazil and following Wagner Moura as a tech expert on the run during the country's carnival week, also picked up great reviews. I could see Moura ('Narcos,' 'Civil War'), speaking his native Portuguese throughout this energetically directed political thriller, picking up the Best Actor prize from Juliette Binoche's jury — which includes actors like Jeremy Strong and Halle Berry, who surely responded to the best big-screen performance showcase of Moura's career.
Still splitting everyone on the ground are Ari Aster's 'Eddington' and Lynne Ramsay's 'Die, My Love,' which scored the biggest sale of the festival so far, $23 million at MUBI with eyes on an Oscar campaign for Jennifer Lawrence, a Cannes Best Actress contender for her character's postpartum depression spiral. It's Aster's first Cannes, and European audiences took more to his COVID-era Western satire than some Americans. Scottish auteur Ramsay, meanwhile, won Best Screenplay in 2017 for 'You Were Never Really Here' and is a regular at Cannes despite being less regular in terms of her output ('Die My Love' is her first film since that year).
Getting so-so reviews was Wes Anderson's 'The Phoenician Scheme,' an espionage comedy starring Benicio del Toro and breakout Mia Threapleton, who got emotional during the standing ovation on Sunday night. The painterly, tweezer-precise compositions from production designer Adam Stockhausen and cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel are all on vivid display here, but the narrative leaves something to be desired, and signals it might be time for Anderson to shake up his schtick.
Less buzzy but picking up praise, Chie Hayakawa's 1980s-set Tokyo coming-of-age drama 'Renoir' and Egyptian film industry political satire 'Eagles of the Republic,' from 2022 Best Screenplay winner Tarik Saleh ('Boy from Heaven'), also make a bid for the Palme. Hayakawa won the Camera d'Or out of 2022's Un Certain Regard for 'Plan 75,' making 'Renoir' her competition debut. Hafsia Herzi's French-Algerian coming-out chronicle 'The Little Sister' was a day four premiere that could pick up a lower-end jury prize or even Best Actress notices for breakout Nadia Melliti, who got a nice interview spread from Vulture's Rachel Handler.
Based on conversations with distributors, executives, critics, and industry attendees, I've ranked below which films are likely so far to score the Palme d'Or. Past winners like 'Anora' have popped during the second week, so don't rule out any of the remaining films. There's still much to see.
1. 'Sentimental Value'2. 'It Was Just an Accident'3. 'Sound of Falling'4. 'The Secret Agent'5. 'Sirât'6. 'Nouvelle Vague'7. 'Two Prosecutors'8. 'Resurrection'9. 'Young Mothers'10. 'The Mastermind'11. 'Eddington'12. 'Die My Love'13. 'Renoir'14. 'Romería'15. 'Woman and Child'16. 'The History of Sound'17. 'Eagles of the Republic'18. 'The Little Sister'19. 'Dossier 137'20, 'Fuori'21. 'The Phoenician Scheme'22. 'Alpha'
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