Every Cannes Palme d'Or Winner Since 1990, Ranked
Updated May 27, 2023 with the 2023 Palme d'Or winner, Anatomy of a Fall.
A best picture Oscar may be film's peak honor, but a Cannes Palme d'Or win isn't far behind. Though it didn't adopt its current name (which translates to "Golden Palm" in English) on a permanent basis until 1975, the top award at the globe's most prestigious film festival has been handed out in nearly every year since 1946, with occasional interruptions (most recently in 2020, when the festival was canceled during the COVID pandemic).
Is the latest Palme d'Or winner a favorite with critics as well? Not every Palme d'Or recipient is, as Cannes juries (typically composed of actors and directors, and different every year) don't always have the same tastes as reviewers. In the gallery on this page, we rank all of the Cannes winners since 1990. They are arranged from worst to best by Metascore, which reflects the consensus of professional critics for each film.
1999 winner
The Dardenne brothers' first of two Cannes Palme d'Or trophies came for this 1999 drama centering on the titular teen girl (Émilie Dequenne, who tied for an acting award at Cannes) who searches for a job in order to raise enough money to move away from her alcoholic mother. Shot in a documentary style with handheld cameras, the film collected mostly favorable reviews from critics as well as the unanimous support of the Cannes jury, which picked Rosetta ahead of fellow Cannes entries like Pedro Almodóvar's All About My Mother, David Lynch's G-rated experiment The Straight Story, and Bruno Dumont's Humanité.
“The film's loose, scaled-down technique never turns gimmicky...but enhances the tension and intimacy of Rosetta's struggle.” —Edward Guthmann, San Francisco Chronicle
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