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.
2000 winner
Danish director Lars von Trier's only Palme d'Or win in nine tries came for his hugely divisive (aren't they all?) 2000 musical drama starring Björk as a single mother who is going blind. The singer also collected a best actress award at the festival, but she hasn't acted again since (though she is scheduled to appear in the 2022 film The Northman from The Lighthouse director Robert Eggers). Plenty of critics hated von Trier's stylistic decisions and pretentiousness (as well as the film's oppressively depressing subject matter), but many more found it moving and thrilling, at least in parts. And the Luc Besson-led Cannes jury obviously fell into the latter category, giving Dancer the festival's top honor over other better-reviewed contenders like In the Mood for Love, Yi Yi, and even another quasi-musical, O Brother Where Art Thou.
“Both stupefyingly bad and utterly overpowering; it can elicit, sometimes within a single scene, a gasp of rapture and a spasm of revulsion.” —Dana Stevens, The New York Times
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