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.
2009 winner
The first of two Palme d'Or wins for Austrian/German filmmaker Michael Haneke came for this dark and occasionally violent black-and-white drama set in a northern German village of the eve of WWI where events seem to foreshadow the eventual rise of the Nazi regime. Critics rewarded the film with excellent reviews, though they had even greater praise for Cannes competitor A Prophet, which settled for the second-place Grand Prix.
“A kind of mashup of 'Our Town' and 'Village of the Damned,' the film is both draining and enthralling.” —Richard Corliss, Time
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