Cannes Winners Are Again Good For Neon But Create Confusing Picture For Oscar Race – Which Films Could Place In Both?

For many years most in the industry have looked to the fall festival trifecta of Venice, Telluride and Toronto as the real start of Oscar season, but recently, with two Palme d’Or winners going on to also be Best Picture winners, the “start” of the season has to be redefined. It really now starts at Cannes.

For example, in 2024 the Cannes Film Festival selections and winners scored very big at the Oscars, with Palme d’Or winner Anora becoming only the third film to also win the Best Picture Academy Award (after 1955’s Marty and 2019’s Parasite). Emilia Perez, The Substance and the animation feature winner Flow also saw big success out of Cannes at the Oscars, where the festival’s films scored an overall whopping 31 nominations. In fact the track record has been pretty good, not at all a detriment for its early positioning, in the past seven years as Thierry Frémaux pointed out in the article on this subject that focused on Neon head Tom Quinn’s track record with the Cannes-Oscars connection I wrote for Deadline’s 2025 Disruptors issue.

Still, this year, at this early point, it is a harder call to make. Palme d’Or winner It Was Just An Accident, which is a surprisingly funny as well as devastating and humane story of the revenge of some former jailed Iranians against their tormenter, comes from Iranian director Jafar Panahi, who himself was imprisoned twice in his home country where he still lives. It is hard to imagine Iran will submit this negative look at their regime, but unlike last year’s Oscar-nominated The Seed of the Sacred Fig from Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof, that film got submitted by Germany due to the director’s residence there. We will have to see where It Was Just An Accident lands in — or out — of the International Film Oscar race (another reason why those arcane Academy rules that often force political considerations in letting the home country choose one film rather than voters should be deep-sixed).

Palme d’Or whisperer Neon, now with six wins in a row, also handled Sacred Fig, and no doubt will plan an alternate strategy for the Panahi just as they did with 2023’s Palme d’Or winner Anatomy of a Fall, which shockingly was passed over by France for its Oscar submission in favor of the very French The Taste of Things, and instead launched an aggressive campaign in every other category landing Picture, Director, Actress, Editing and Screenplay nominations, winning in the latter. The backstory of Iranian dissident Panahi and the strength of his Palme d’Or winner as a surprisingly accessible and entertaining, as well as important, film can easily lead to a similar campaign outside of the International Film race.

Neon only picked up It Was Just An Accident this week during Cannes, as they also did Brazil’s The Secret Agent which won awards for Wagner Moura as Best Actor and Kleber Mendonça Filho as Best Director. Add this to Grand Prize winner (second place) Joaquim Trier’s rapturously received Sentimental Value and you have Tom Quinn’s company with some distinct Oscar pathways out of Cannes, as usual, as we can now confidently say.

Sentimental Value follow Trier’s The Worst Person in the World which won Oscar nominations for International Film and Original Screenplay, two categories this Norwegian film will no doubt compete in at the Oscars, and you can probably add a few more including Best Picture, Director and acting for Renate Reisve and Stellan Skarsgard, and possibly Elle Fanning so marvelous in support, at least at this very early point in the Oscar race. As for the critically praised The Secret Agent, the only film to win multiple prizes Saturday, its star Best Actor winner Moura, who is also great currently in Apple TV+’s The Dope Thief, might find his way into the Oscar Best Actor race depending on the strength of a Neon campaign.

Neon also just picked up the terrific Oliver Laxe film Sirât, which could be Spain’s entry and also has other possibilities including actor Sergei Lopez in the lead. It tied for the Jury Prize with Germany’s likely Oscar entry Sound of Falling.

Elsewhere in Cannes this year, I think that even being snubbed by the jury, Richard Linklater’s delightful Nouvelle Vague, about the French New Wave and the making of Godard’s Breathless, could be a real player at the Oscars, somewhat like 2011’s charming The Artist which was a Best Picture Oscar winner, and like Nouvelle Vague shot in black and white.

The actress race could feature Cannes Out of Competition film Vie Privée’s Jodie Foster, a two-time Oscar winner and Academy favorite delivering a terrific performance all in flawless French, and an all-out turn by Jennifer Lawrence in Die My Love, the film though a longer shot as it may be difficult for voters to get through (Mubi bought it and the same company steered Demi Moore’s awards-season campaign for The Substance after losing at Cannes for Actress, so Lawrence will get a big push no matter). The 95-year-old June Squibb in Scarlett Johansson’s directorial debut Eleanor the Great could also become the oldest-ever Best Actress nominee for this wonderful film which premiered in Un Certain Regard. Both Vie Privee and Eleanor The Great are from Sony Pictures Classics setting up a strong awards season for Michael Barker and Tom Bernard’s longstanding operation. They also had out of competition in the Official Selection the great Sylvain Chomet’s (Oscar nominated The Triplets Of Belleville) animated film on Marcel Pagnol, A Magnificent Life which could contend in the animated feature race. It heads next to Annecy. You can forget the actual surprise Cannes winner for Best Actress, newcomer Nadia Melliti’s glum performance as a young girl searching for her identity in the underwhelming French entry The Little Sister — well, maybe at the Cesars but certainly not at the Oscars.

The History Of Sound starring Paul Mescal and Josh O’Connor was an enormously moving gay love story made with great craftsmanship by Oliver Hermanus, and though it won no jury mention I think could register with Academy voters given half a chance. Mubi has it domestically and Universal/Focus internationally. It feels like a more old-style kind of filmmaking Oscar voters used to crave. We will see if they still do.

A24’s divisive Eddington, set during the Covid pandemic in a small New Mexico town, won no love from the jury and clearly split Cannes despite a great lead performance from Joaquin Phoenix as a sheriff who refuses to wear a mask and sparks a MAGA-style backlash. It will be tough to see this Ari Aster film, one I greatly admired for just its bravery in taking on a political climate where this kind of ballsy ’70s era-type filmmaking, is sadly getting more rare. It opens July 18 from A24, which tells me it is aware of the challenges in this highly charged Trump era environment, so we shall see how America accepts it.

Of course there are always other categories where some Cannes debuts may show up including documentary feature, where I think the fascinating Orwell: 2+2=5 about how George Orwell’s eerie predictions seem remarkably prescient. In animation, Neon also was active picking up the Natalie Portman-produced Arco, which with its E.T.-like scenario could impress animation feature voters, as could the aforementioned A Magnificent Life.

And you can always count on Cannes to set the table for the International Film race where Iran is unlikely to submit the newly minted Palme d’Or winner, and where there are questions whether France would submit the very not-French director Richard Linklater’s Nouvelle Vague. Still there is the aforementioned overpraised Jury Prize winner (in a tie) Sound Of Falling, and in my opinion an even better but less hyped out of competition entry Amrum scoring for Germany; Two Prosectors for Ukraine; the brilliant Sirât (the other tie for Jury Prize) for Spain; Renoir for Japan; Eagles of the Republic for Egypt; Dossier 137 one of many possibilities for France including out of competition title The Richest Woman in the World with Isabelle Huppert; and the Sean Baker co-written and produced Left Handed Girl for Taiwan. That list could possibly include two first-time countries, with Nigeria’s first-ever Cannes debut, the terrific My Father’s Shadow, and Iraq’s The President’s Cake.

I was an early supporter of the latter, which debuted early in Directors’ Fortnight and now comes out of Cannes not only as Fortnight’s Audience People’s Choice winner but also as winner of the prestigious Camera d’Or (first time feature filmmaker across all sections of the festival) for Hasan Hadi for this enormously effective film that as I pointed out in my review should have been in the main competition (had it been, young lead actress Baneen Ahmad Nayyef would have been a history-making and much more deserving Best Actress choice). It is the real discovery of this year’s Cannes Film Festival and some smart distributor should pick it up immediately. Neon, are you listening?

Of note Belgium’s the Dardenne brothers continue to prove they can do no wrong in Cannes, no matter who is on whatever jury, taking Screenplay honors today, for the second time, adding to their past two Palmes d’Or, a Grand Prize, and Best Director. But they have never been nominated for an Oscar, and likely won’t be (if their track record is any indication) for their latest film, Young Mothers, which only debuted at Cannes at the last minute yesterday.

The festival also featured a number of higher-profile summer movies getting their world premieres including of course Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, the “last” in the series of eight Tom Cruise missions which have only landed any Oscar nominations for the seventh entry Dead Reckoning Part One for Visual Effects and Sound. This finale probably is headed in the same crafts direction as well at the Oscars. Too bad the newly announced Stunt Design category doesn’t kick in another couple of years. This for sure would become the first Mission: Impossible Oscar winner (!)

Spike Lee’s fifth collaboration with Denzel Washington, the remake of Kurosawa’s 1962 High and Low, was shown out of competition and probably will have no presence at the Oscars although I would say it contains a lively and rich performance from Washington, but not enough to drive yet another Best Actor nomination for the star. And then there is Wes Anderson’s latest Cannes entry The Phoenician Scheme, in competition but ignored by the jury, which like his last Cannes contender Asteroid City will likely also come up empty during Oscar season.

Cannes has spoken. Let the games begin.