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.
2004 winner
One of only three documentaries to screen in competition at Cannes in 50 years—and the first nonfiction film to win the festival's highest honor since 1956's The Silent World—Michael Moore's examination of the (second) Bush administration's actions following the 9/11 attacks up to and including the invasion of Iraq impressed not only festival attendees but also the Quentin Tarantino-led jury. Admittedly, it was a relatively lackluster competition slate—even Shrek 2 screened in competition that year—but the jury nevertheless selected Moore's film over better-reviewed titles like Hirokazu Koreeda's Nobody Knows, Wong Kar-wai's 2046, Walter Salles' The Motorcycle Diaries, Park Chan-wook's Oldboy, Olivier Assayas' Clean, and, well, Shrek 2.
“More often than not, Moore goes for the guffaw, and as enjoyable as that can be, it falls short of producing the kind of devastating, in-depth analysis that might really challenge the hearts and minds of ALL audiences, left and right. At the very least, this approach undercuts the effectiveness of Moore’s own case.” —Peter Rainer, New York Magazine
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