Which Cannes 2025 Standout Will Make It All the Way to the 2026 Oscars?

The Palme d’Or went to Jafar Panahi’s It Was Just an Accident, another piercing look at life in contemporary Iran from the lauded guerilla director—who has often run afoul of his government, at great risk to his own life and liberty. At the post-ceremony press conference, jury president Juliette Binoche said that Panahi’s film “springs from a feeling of resistance, survival, which is absolutely necessary today.”

Panahi’s was not the only political film recognized by the jury—which included American actors Jeremy Strong and Halle Berry, among others. They awarded best actress to first-time performer Nadia Melliti for her work in Hafsia Herzi’s The Little Sister, a look at the Parisian daughter of Algerian immigrants who is struggling against the strictures of her home culture and a dawning realization about her sexuality. Meanwhile, Wagner Moura won best actor for The Secret Agent, Kleber Mendonça Filho’s strange, broad period piece about a turbulent time in Brazil’s history. The jury was clearly high on that film, also awarding Filho best director. (It’s become somewhat uncommon for a film to win more than one award at Cannes.)

Melliti’s win was predicted by some on the ground at the festival, while others thought that Jennifer Lawrence’s blistering turn in Lynne Ramsay’s Die, My Love would emerge victorious. But this was not the Americans’ year on the Croisette; they left entirely empty-handed.

With Cannes done, we must now turn to the future—as is our grave duty every year—and wonder just what this all might mean for the Oscars. On this week’s episode of Little Gold Men, our hosts discuss many of those possibilities. Is Lawrence’s campaign dinged by a Cannes loss? Not necessarily. The bigger question might be whether this year’s crop of competitors will continue the Cannes-to-Oscars success rate seen, in unprecedented fashion, in 2023 and 2024. In each of those years, three Cannes competition films were nominated for best picture. And the Palme d’Or winner has been nominated for best picture four times since 2019, winning twice for Parasite and Anora.

It Was Just an Accident will certainly have mighty support from the international branch of the Academy—and seems a shoo-in for an international-feature nomination—but no Iranian film has ever been nominated in best picture. That could all change this year, but could take some stern stumping on the part of the film’s distributor, the now six-time Palme-predicting Cannes juggernaut Neon.

Another viable contender is Norway’s Sentimental Value, a lush family drama from Joachim Trier, whose The Worst Person in the World was nominated for two Oscars in 2021. That film’s campaign will be aided by the Stateside star power of Stellan Skarsgård—warm off the success of Disney+’s Andor—and could get a delicate profile boost from supporting player Elle Fanning.

The other mighty possibility is Richard Linklater’s Nouvelle Vague, a sprightly and winsome bit of historical fiction chronicling the making of Jean-Luc Godard’s seminal New Wave film Breathless. While Nouvelle Vague didn’t pick up any trophies at Cannes (though we hear Binoche was gaga for it), Netflix acquired the film out of the festival and is sure to give it a huge push in the fall, including replays at huge September festivals. Think of the film—black-and-white, nostalgic for the film industry of the past—as this year’s The Artist. Only without any of the bad Weinstein Company associations.