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.
1995 winner
A decade after winning his first Palme d'Or, Serbian director Emir Kusturica picked up his second for this epic dramedy (tracing Yugoslav history from WWII through the country's dissolution through the eyes of two friends) that was converted into a (nearly three-hour) feature film from a five-hour miniseries that aired on Serbian television. The film wouldn't reach American audiences until 1997, but critics had generally good things to say about the imaginative, darkly comedic film.
“A feverish pipe dream of a movie, fueled by an unbridled artistic imagination that serves as evidence of mad genius at work.” —Rene Rodriguez, The Miami Herald