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.
2022 winner
Concluding a trilogy of films "about being male in our times," in the words of Swedish director Ruben Östlund, Triangle of Sadness won the Palme d'Or at the 75th Cannes Film Festival, repeating the achievement of its predecessor, 2017's The Square, despite a more muted reception from critics. (The first film in the set, 2014's Force Majeure, received outstanding reviews and screened at Cannes in the Un Certain Regard category rather than the main competition, though it, too, was a winner.)
Triangle offers a three-part satire of the uber-rich that introduces viewers to a fashion model couple, follows them onto a mega-yacht (where Woody Harrelson plays the Marx-spouting captain) and then to an island where they are shipwrecked with a Russian oligarch, a British arms dealer and the crew. Some critics felt the satire too blunt and obvious, but others were on board.
“Triangle of Sadness needn’t be a fair film, nor one that readily delivers the simple righteousness of have-nots triumphing over have-lots. A more carefully shaped argument would have been appreciated, though. And one that didn’t dissolve so quickly into a juvenile snicker.” —Richard Lawson, Vanity Fair
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