Who will win the Palme at Cannes? [2024 edition]

Coppola

lol only joking

Rooting for Jia Zhangke, but prepared for it to go to Jacques Audiard again

After seeing the trailer I'm 100% rooting for Miguel Gomes. But Jia Zhangke would be great as well.

yeah Jia Zhangke's the one i most want to see, but there's a few that look interesting

two musicals, i spy a trend :D

Since this is a thread of who WILL win and there seems to be an ascending hierarchy of importance placed on directors over time based on their histories at Cannes, here is a run-down of the directors’ histories at the festival:

Payal Kapadia - 1st time in main competition, winner of Golden Eye for best documentary in 2021 for A Night of Knowing Nothing in Directors’ Fortnight. As Eric has said, this is Neil Young’s prediction to win the Palme (for what it’s worth)

https://www.jigsawlounge.co.uk/film/reviews/cannes-2024/

Sean Baker - 2nd time in main competition, the first was Red Rocket (2021)

Ali Abbasi - 2nd time in main competition, winner of Best Actress for Holy Spider (2022) and Un Certain Regard award for Border (2018). I’m looking forward to this fictionalization of Trump’s life winning something EVEN LESS than I’m looking forward to Audiard winning something. Also highly tipped by Young

Gilles Lellouche - 1st time in main competition, winner of a short film award in 2003

Andrea Arnold - 4th time in main competition, winner of the Jury Prize (third place) THREE TIMES IN A ROW. I would be rooting for her, and the new film may be great, but it features Barry Keoghan and Franz Rogowski, and after seeing Saltburn and Passages I’m really very very much off of both of those actors

Jia Zhangke - 6th time in competition, including for Unknown Pleasures (2002), 24 City (2008), A Touch of Sin (2013), Mountains May Depart (2015), and Ash Is Purest White (2018). He has only won Screenplay for A Touch of Sin. His leading lady Tao Zhao is mesmerizing! I am very much hoping he has a strong entry and will win something big this time (he and she both deserved a prize for Ash Is Purest White in 2018)

Jacques Audiard - 6th time in main competition, has won Screenplay (A Self-Made Hero, 1996), Grand Prix (A Prophet, 2009), and Palme d’Or (Dheepan, 2015), as well as the Queer Palm for (Paris, 13th District, 2021). He seems over-awarded to me

Magnus von Horn - 1st time in main competition, a previous film (The Here After, 2015) screened in Directors’ Fortnight

Miguel Gomes - 1st time in main competition. Tabu (2012) was an incredible film which won the FIPRESCI prize at Berlin and as far as I know is available on Kanopy and Mubi. As Frederick B. said, the trailer for this looks very promising! He was previously in Directors’ Fortnight with Our Beloved Month of August (2008)

Yorgos Lanthimos - 3rd time in main competition, previous winner of Queer Palm (The Lobster, 2015) and Screenplay (The Killing of a Sacred Deer, (2017). I just hated Poor Things, to the point where I’m not looking forward to this film

Kirill Serebrennikov - 4th time in main competition and once before that in Un Certain Regard, hasn’t won anything. None of his films have sounded that interesting to me except maybe Leto (2018), but I haven’t seen any of them

to be continued, it's a lot to type out and I may have gotten my facts wrong about some of it…

Serebrennikov is approaching Naomi Kawase levels of being waved in despite critics’ relative indifference

Christophe Honoré - 3rd time in Main competition (including Love Songs from 2007 and Sorry Angel from 2018), also twice in Un Certain regard and once in Directors’ Fortnight, hasn’t won anything yet, I’ve not seen any of his films

Francis Ford Coppola - 4th time in main competition, once in Directors’ Fortnight, WINNER OF TWO PALME D’ORS! (for The Conversation and Apocalypse Now). This film may be great, but he doesn’t need another award

Michel Hazanavicius - 3rd time in main competition, Jean Dujardin won Best Actor for The Artist in 2011. This is a rare animated film submitted for the Palme

Karim Aïnouz - 2nd time in main competition after Firebrand (2023). Previously won Un Certain Regard (Invisible Life, 2019) and was in Directors’ Fortnight (The Silver Cliff, 2011)

Paul Schrader - 3rd time in main competition, first time since the 1980s, won Best Artistic Contribution for Mishima (1985)

Paolo Sorrentino - 7th time in main competition, previously for The Consequences of Love (2004), The Family Friend (2006), Il Divo (2008), This Must Be the Place (2011), The Great Beauty (2013), and Youth (2015). He previously won the Jury Prize for Il Divo. This Must Be the Place won the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury

Mohammad Rasoulof - 1st time In main competition, previously nominated 3 times for the Un Certain Regard Award, won in 2017 for A Man of Integrity, and won best director in UCR for Goodbye in 2011

David Cronenberg - 7th time in main competition after Crash (1996), Spider (2002), A History of Violence (2005), Cosmopolis (2012), Maps to the Stars (2014), and Crimes of the Future (2022). Previously won a ‘Jury Special Prize’ (whatever that means) in 1996 for Crash … that’s it

Coralie Fargeat - 1st time in main competition and first time at Cannes

Lumii Emanuel Parvu (who is the young Romanian director Emanuel Parvu) - 1st time in main competition and 1st time at Cannes

Agathe Riedinger - 1st film

History of Violence perpetually aside, I kind of love that that's the list of Cronenberg films that Cannes booked

kapadia's shorts are pretty strong, haven't caught night of knowing nothing yet

I have to admit I’m kind of curious about the Audiard film Emilia Perez, a musical starring Selena Gomez, Zoe Saldana, and Edgar Ramirez.

Besides Audiard’s film the other French filmmaker in competition making a musical is Gilles Lellouche with Beating Hearts (l’Amour ouf), a music-filled romance starring Adèle Exarchopoulos and François Civil, and featuring choreography by (La)Horde, based on the 1997 novel Jackie Loves Johnser OK? by Neville Thompson and reported to be 3+ hours long

Previously won a ‘Jury Special Prize’ (whatever that means) in 1996 for Crash

“Coppola was totally against it,” Cronenberg said. “I think he was the primary one. When I’m asked why [‘Crash’] got this Special Jury Award, well, I think it was the jury’s attempt to get around the Coppola negativity, because they had the power to create their own award without the president’s approval. And that’s how they did it, but it was Coppola who was certainly against it.”

It reminds me of 2016, when apparently Xavier Dolan threw a fit and refused to allow Toni Erdmann to get a prize

some tidbits from Variety:

Fargeat makes her feature debut with The Substance, a bloody genre movie featuring Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley.

Indian director Payal Kapadia will unveil her narrative feature All We Imagine As Light, about Prabha, a nurse who receives an unexpected gift from her long estranged husband that throws her life into disarray. This comes three years after Kapadia won the festival’s documentary prize.

Hailing from the south of France, Agathe Riedinger brings her debut feature Wild Diamond, a contemporary coming-of-age story about a young girl who blossoms through a virtual persona on social media.

Paul Schrader’s Oh Canada with Richard Gere is based on Affliction, a novel by the late Russell Banks

also, the IMDB summary of Cronenberg's The Shrouds - "Karsh, an innovative businessman and grieving widower, builds a device to connect with the dead inside a burial shroud" - sounds very Cronenbergian

Schrader already made an adaptation of Affliction... named Affliction?!?

Oh:

based on the 2021 novel Foregone by Russell Banks

ok, sorry

besides Toni Erdmann being shut out and Ash Is Purest White not any winning awards, the other most recent egregious omission from awards at Cannes in my opinion is the Lee Chang-dong film Burning in 2018, which was relegated to the FIPRESCI prize (International Federation of Film Critics), where he graciously acknowledged that maybe it was fitting that the film was otherwise unacknowledged.

If you all don't know Lee Chang-dong's films, they are all amazing, and you can start anywhere

i would say asako i and ii or the image book were far stronger films in that selection. though neither is one that i think ever would win

Looking forward to catching a screen of Evil does not exist next week

again this time there are only 4 women as directors in the official line-up of 22 films

- Payal Kapadia, Andrea Arnold, Coralie Fargeat and Agathe Riedinger, the last two of whom are presenting debut feature films

kapadia's shorts are pretty strong, haven't caught night of knowing nothing yet

― devvvine, 24. april 2024 14:59 (four days ago) bookmarkflaglink

A Night of Knowing Nothing is fantastic. Kapadias might be the film I'm most interested in. There's a couple other directors that I assume will be great as usual, but the Kapadia can go either way.

would be rooting for her, and the new film may be great, but it features Barry Keoghan and Franz Rogowski, and after seeing Saltburn and Passages I’m really very very much off of both of those actors

You're, like, the fourth gay I know who recoiled from Rogowski (or his character), and I can't get a reason why other than maybe he hit too close to home?

Never mind, Dan, I thought Eric H posted that. Sorry.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to the Jia, Honoré, and Arnold flicks. Dan, I've liked Honoré's last three films very much, with Sorry Angel one of my favorite of recent gay films.

Sorry Angel is really good, but I thought On A Magical Night was rubbish, so I'm a bit worried.

Haha, I was def pro-PASSAGES

the members of the main competition jury have been announced:

Greta Gerwig, American actress and filmmaker - Jury President
J. A. Bayona, Spanish filmmaker
Ebru Ceylan, Turkish actress and screenwriter
Pierfrancesco Favino, Italian actor and producer
Lily Gladstone, American actress
Eva Green, French actress
Hirokazu Kore-eda, Japanese filmmaker and producer
Nadine Labaki, Lebanese actress and filmmaker
Omar Sy, French actor

Voted Paolo

I'm surprised to read that Meryl Streep was only ever involved with one film that was at the Cannes festival, Evil Angels, for which she won best actress (the film is known in the US as A Cry in the Dark; I was impressed by it at the time but haven't revisited)

She is now to receive an honorary Palme d'Or

Trailer for the Kapadia:

https://x.com/mubinotebook/status/1788230214603976906

And a clip from Megalopolis:

https://x.com/erdemtatar/status/1786751830757699981

And for the noiseniks out there: The Girl With The Needle has a soundtrack from Puce Mary.

Bad news about Mohammad Rasoulof

https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/award-winning-director-mohammad-rasoulof-sentenced-prison-iran-110066757

lashed!

I'm surprised to read that Meryl Streep was only ever involved with one film that was at the Cannes festival, Evil Angels, for which she won best actress (the film is known in the US as A Cry in the Dark; I was impressed by it at the time but haven't revisited)

She is now to receive an honorary Palme d'Or

― Dan S,

One of her very best and one of her least seen performances here.

i would say asako i and ii or the image book were far stronger films in that selection. though neither is one that i think ever would win

― devvvine, Thursday, April 25, 2024

Jean-Luc Godard won a Special Palme d'Or for The Image Book (the award was given for that film specifically as far as I know, and it was not the same as an honorary award)

50% Coppola imo

There are grids somewhere I guess, but doesn’t sound like the Coppola is wowing them

Magnus Von Horn's The Girl With the Needle sounds interesting.

"Set in Denmark during World War I, the film stars Vic Carmen Sonne as Karoline, a young seamstress whose soldier husband is missing in action. Through a series of mishaps, Karolin falls pregnant, loses her job, and meets a mysterious woman named Dagmar (Trine Dyrholm) who runs both a candy store and an adoption agency."

Von Horn, about his own life:

"What we went through sent us on a an emotional journey beyond politics. I felt regret and doubt even if I knew we had done the right thing. I find this conflict reflected in the story of Karoline, who gives away a child she doesn’t want — and yet there is also something in her that regrets that decision. I have always been pro-choice, I support abortion. But we live in Poland, and in 2020 the right-wing government introduced some of the strictest abortion laws in the world and especially in Europe. The abortion we had would have been impossible today and my wife would have been forced to carry a child that would have no chance of surviving.

That’s torture. If there is no legal support for women in such difficult situations, alternatives are created in the shadows of society. This is one of the main topics of the film."

Yeah, they've showed it already to Danish journalists. It's very good, strikingly aesthetic, and the actresses are two of the best in Denmark. Don't think Vic Carmen Sonne has ever been better.

J. Romney in Film Comment (email):

As for the saturnalian excesses that you usually hope Cannes will provide, none this year can possibly be more opulently jaw-dropping than Francis Ford Coppola’s long-awaited dream project, Megalopolis. A parallel-world vision of America poised at the crossroads between utopia and dystopia, it’s set in a version of Manhattan—“New Rome,” in fact—and stars Adam Driver as an idealistic architect, scientist, and all-around futuristic genius whose Promethean drive puts him in conflict with the forces of conservatism and entrenched corruption (mayor Giancarlo Esposito), sexy Mammon-worship (incarnated by Aubrey Plaza, putting on her best “you’re-kidding-right-but-what-the-hell” smirk), and Trumpian populism (Shia LaBeouf, sometimes in drag). A wild, cod-Shakespearian indulgence with a grandiloquently nonsensical script (“Only those in a nightmare are capable of praising the moonlight”), it does have some piquant ideas—like a Roman vestal virgin reimagined as a Taylor Swift–style pop star. And there are a few undeniably voluptuous, strange images. But pile them all up and you realize that the word “visionary” isn’t necessarily a compliment. It’s as if Ed Wood had risen from the grave to remake The Fountainhead on an infinite budget.

But pile them all up and you realize that the word “visionary” isn’t necessarily a compliment. It’s as if Ed Wood had risen from the grave to remake The Fountainhead on an infinite budget.

Obviously I haven't seen the film, but as a general principle, perfectly articulated.

Nicholas Rapold's podcast with Eric Hynes regarding Megalopolis was interesting I thought:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-243-cannes-2024-eric-hynes-on-megalopolis-plus-napoleon/id1512801510?i=1000655858296

His impression was the it was somewhat outwardly embarrassing, that the trans thing didn't work at all, and that the vision was futuristic, see-through and ephemeral but also kind of tacky, with a city entirely digitized. He saw this as more of a green screen film than a studio film like One From the Heart, and it made it hard for him to like, but he still thought it was interesting.

From others' impressions, it seems like Adam Driver was doing a lot of work, but every actor was in their own world in this film, with their own accents, time period and milieu in their line readings

In the theater at Cannes Hynes was sitting behind someone wearing a Tesla long-sleeve t-shirt and Oscars hat, who he thought was recording the whole film through whatever the new version of google/apple eyeglasses is. He was irked, but thought that that added a whole other layer of weirdness to his experience watching this already strange film

Needless to say, my anticipation levels are rising accordingly

It also kind of seems like a Fellini film, outwardly unintentionally but also inwardly intentionally very camp.