We’re a week away from this year’s Cannes film festival, and I’m among those tensing with excitement. With new works from Martin Scorsese, Jonathan Glazer, Alice Rohrwacher and Todd Haynes, among others, it’s a tasty lineup. Twenty-one films – seven by female directors, a record for the fest – are jostling for the Palme d’Or, with reigning champion Ruben Östlund leading the jury to determine his successor.
Arguably the most prestigious prize in world cinema, the Palme d’Or nonetheless has a curious legacy. It is subject first to the biases of a festival selection committee that picks the annual handful of contenders, and second to the whims of nine celebrity jurors, who change every year. Though it has a loftier reputation than the best picture Oscar – with which it has only aligned twice in 75 years – it likewise has a history of eccentric calls: take 1986, for example, when Andrei Tarkovsky’s shattering swansong The Sacrifice was pipped by Roland Joffé’s starchy The Mission. David Lynch’s Palme came for one of his most uneven films, Wild at Heart; David Cronenberg has never won one.
