For many years after the 1955 film Marty won the Cannes Film Festival’s Palme d’Or and then went on to win the best picture Oscar, there was little additional evidence of a Cannes/Oscars connection. But in the last five years, both Parasite and — just months ago — Anora followed in Marty’s footsteps.
Indeed, within the last year, specifically, the relevance of one event to the other became harder than ever to dispute, as an unprecedented 31 Oscar noms were allocated to films that had played in Cannes — spread between Anora, The Apprentice, Emilia Pérez, Flow, The Girl with the Needle, The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent, The Seed of the Sacred Fig and The Substance — and 40 percent of the eventual Oscar winner traced back to the fest, including Anora (best picture, director, actress, original screenplay and film editing), Emilia Pérez (original song), Flow (animated feature) and The Substance (makeup/hairstyling).
Perhaps the increasing overlap is the result of the Academy significantly increasing the percentage of its membership that is based outside of the U.S. in recent years, resulting in more cosmpolitan tastes along the lines of what Cannes is famous for. Regardless, speculation is already ramping up about whether or not there are films slated to screen on the Croisette this May could show up at the Dolby next March.
Among the likeliest candidates, based on buzz amongst industry insiders and their filmmakers’ track records, are Wes Anderson’s The Phoenician Scheme (Focus) and Spike Lee’s Highest 2 Lowest (A24).
The Phoenician Scheme, which stars Benicio del Toro as a wealthy businessman who designates his daughter, a nun, as the sole heir to his estate, is playing in competition, as did three previous Anderson titles — 2012’s Moonrise Kingdom, 2021’s The French Dispatch and 2023’s Asteroid City — which collectively went on to zero Oscar noms. But Phoenician is said to be Anderson’s strongest work since The Grand Budapest Hotel, which premiered at Berlin and went on to nine Oscar nominations, including best picture, four of which resulted in wins in crafts areas, where his films always shine.
Highest 2 Lowest, Lee’s reinterpretation of Akira Kurosawa’s 1963 film High and Low, is a crime-thriller that reunites him with his longtime muse Denzel Washington. Their previous collaborations include 1992’s Malcolm X, for which Washington received a best actor Oscar nom, but also several films that were completely overlooked by the Academy. In recent years, though, Lee and the Academy seem to be increasingly on the same wavelength; 2018’s BlacKkKlansman was nominated for six Oscars, including best picture, and Lee won best adapted screenplay, while 2020’s Da 5 Bloods was nominated for one.
I’d also keep an eye on a late addition to the competition lineup, Lynne Ramsay’s dark comedy Die, My Love, which stars Oscar winner Jennifer Lawrence as a new mother experiencing post-partum depression. It is said to be a true return-to-form for Lawrence, who is also a producer of the project, and could help Ramsay finally crack the Academy, which has entirely overlooked her past work, most egregiously with 2011’s We Need to Talk About Kevin.
Richard Linklater is always someone to watch. The five-time Oscar nominee’s latest is Nouvelle Vague, a black-and-white, French-language competition film about the making of the French New Wave classic Breathless. If there’s one thing the Academy loves, it’s movies about movies — see: The Artist, The Fabelmans, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Mank, Hugo and La La Land, among others. This one counts Guillaume Marbeck and Zoey Deutch among its stars.
Other English-language titles worth keeping an eye on: competition film The Mastermind, the latest from Kelly Reichardt, whose slow-paced previous works have failed to resonate with the Academy, but whose latest is apparently a ’70s-set heist film and stars Josh O’Connor; competition film Eddington, the latest from Ari Aster, who has heretofore specialized in genre films, which are infrequently embraced by the Academy, but whose latest, which stars Pedro Pascal, Joaquin Phoenix, Emma Stone and Austin Butler, is apparently about COVID-era politics; another competition film, Oliver Hermanus’s The History of Sound, which stars “It” actors Paul Mescal and Josh O’Connor in a gay love story set in the early 20th cenutry; and Eva Victor’s Sundance-to-Directors’ Fortnight closing pic Sorry, Baby, which stars Naomi Ackie as a college professor trying to recover from a sexual assault, was produced by Moonlight Oscar winner Barry Jenkins and already has A24 behind it.
There are also two films in the Un Certain Regard lineup from actors-turned-rookie directors: Scarlett Johansson’s Eleanor the Great, starring June Squibb as an elderly woman trying to rebuild her life after her best friend’s death, which Oscar specialists Sony Classics have bet on, and Harris Dickinson’s Urchin, about a homeless man trying to escape a cycle of self-destruction.
Among non-English-language fare, consider competition film Sentimental Value, which reunites filmmaker Joachim Trier and actress Renate Reinsve, who previously collaborated on 2021’s The Worst Person in the World, for which Reinsve won Cannes’ best actress prize, and which received a best international feature Oscar nom. The North American rights to this Norwegian-language dramedy have already been acquired by Neon, winner of the last five Palme d’Or prizes.
There’s also Chilean filmmaker Sebastián Lelio’s The Wave, which is playing in the Cannes Premiere section and should not be underestimated, given that Lelio was awarded the best international feature Oscar for 2018’s A Fantastic Woman, five years after his film Gloria was also the country’s submission for that contest. His latest Spanish-language effort sounds charactertistically eccentric: it’s a musical inspired by 2018 feminist protests against gender-based violence and Chile’s patriarchal government.
Any film starring Isabelle Huppert is noteworthy, and Thierry Klifa’s French-language The Richest Woman in the World, which is screening out of competition, seems like a great showcase for the Elle best actress Oscar nominee: it’s based on the true story of the billionaire behind the L’Oreal fortune, who became romantically involved with a much younger man.
Mario Martone, who was behind Italy’s 2022 Oscar submission Nostalgia, is back with Fuori, a competition film, adapted from a 1983 novel, about three women who meet in prison and form a lifelong bond.
Julia Ducournau’s previous French-language body horror film, Titane, was awarded the Palme in 2021, but was not submitted by France for the best international feature Oscar. However, her latest, Alpha, comes on the heels of The Substance, which showed that the Academy may now be more open to such films.
Venerated Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi has never been Oscar-nominated, but his latest, It Was Just An Accident, about a minor accident that sparks a series of escalating consequences, sounds promising, and the Academy has embraced Persian-language films to a greater extent than ever over the past decade or so. (Just last year, one was nominated for best international feature and another won best animated short.)
An interesting case is Directors’ Fornight selection Lucky Lu, which is Canadian filmmaker Lloyd Lee Choi’s modern-day, New York-set, Chinese-language variation on the Italian neorealist classic The Bicycle Thief. Would Canada ever submit a Chinese-language film as its entry for the best international feature Oscar race?
Finally, the closest one could get to irrefutable proof of an increased Cannes/Oscars connection would be if the Dardenne brothers of Belgium — Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne, neorealist specialists who have been awarded more total prizes from Cannes than any other filmmaker or filmmaking team, including twice the Palme d’Or — can finally land their first Oscar nom. Their latest, The Young Mother’s Home, is playing in competition, and therefore might well end up as Belgium’s official submission for the best international feature Oscar, as have four of their previous films. This one is about five women and their children living together in a center for young mothers.
Of course, Cannes also often launches awards-contending documentary and animated features. This year, docs to watch include I Am Not Your Negro Oscar nominee Raoul Peck’s Orwell: 2+2=5, about the life of George Orwell; Mascha Schilinksi’s German-language Sound of Falling, about four women from different periods in history whose lives are connected; and Militantropos, about the war in Ukraine. And a strong animated prospect is A Magnificent Life, a French film about Marcel Pagnol that was directed by Sylvain Chomet, who has twice been nominated for the best animated feature Oscar.
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