Cannes Film Festival 2025: Panahi Triumphs, and Other Highlights

⁣ Updated May 26, 2025

When the competition program of the seventy-eighth Cannes Film Festival was announced several weeks ⁢ago, many ⁢predicted that the⁢ Iranian director Jafar panahi would win the Palme d’or, the event’s highest honor, for his new film, “It ⁢was Just an Accident.” After ⁣viewing the film in Cannes, that prediction felt even more certain. In ‍the past two decades, Panahi has faced continual persecution by the Iranian government, including detention, imprisonment,⁢ house arrest, a ban from leaving the country, ⁤and a ban from ⁤filmmaking. He ⁢has circumvented this last restriction numerous times,with great courage and ingenuity. Today, living in Tehran, he is a free⁣ man, a free artist, and a Palme d’Or winner; he was in Cannes to pick up his prize on Saturday evening, at a thrilling and moving closing ceremony.

Panahi’s triumph capped off one of the ‍strongest editions of the ⁣festival in years. The richness of the selection was reflected in the ⁣wide range of prizes handed out ⁤by the competition jury,⁣ presided over by the actor Juliette Binoche. ⁢Ranking all the films in the ⁣competition, from best to worst, has become a tradition, and never⁢ has the task been more arduous. ⁢assigning an order of preference imposes a useful discipline, but it can also feel arbitrary and provisional. Many of these films will⁤ likely appear at other festivals and/or open in U.S. theatres in the coming months.

Here are the top films ⁣of the 2025 Cannes Film Festival competition:

1. ⁤“Sirât”

oliver Laxe’s “Sirât” begins with a rave in the Moroccan desert, possibly at ⁤the end of the world. This pre-apocalyptic odyssey produced the competition’s most sustained and enveloping experience. It draws you out of your seat with sonic rumbles, then knocks you⁢ back into it with tragedy.The title refers ‍to a narrow bridge between Paradise and Hell, fitting⁤ as Laxe’s movie is both a nightmarish⁣ and exhilarating ordeal underpinned by love and tenderness. Laxe’s filmmaking has triggered comparisons to “The Wages of Fear” and “sorcerer.”

2. “It Was Just⁣ an Accident”

The premise of Panahi’s⁤ Palme d’Or winner—several folks cram into a rickety van, arguing ‍over where to go and what⁤ to do—might at ‍first suggest a dysfunctional-family road-trip comedy. But, tho there are farcical‍ elements⁤ aplenty, as well as an ‍acid vein of social critique, this deftly tone-shifting film soon reveals itself as a‍ powerful moral thriller about⁢ the uncertainty of the truth, the abuses of the Iranian regime, the consequences of physical and psychological torture, and the choice⁢ between revenge and mercy. It builds to⁢ an astoundingly cathartic⁣ sequence, a one-take release of fury‍ and horror ⁢that ⁢leaves you genuinely shaken—and unable to stop thinking about Panahi himself, a great dissident filmmaker who, not for the first time (or, I hope,⁣ the last), has ⁤turned the struggle of a lifetime into galvanizing art.

3. “Resurrection”

Bi‍ Gan’s “Resurrection” leads the audience on a multi-part odyssey through a⁢ century’s ⁢worth of film history. starring Jackson Yee and Shu Qi, it riffs on “Blade Runner” and ⁢“Holy Motors”; pays homage to the Lumière brothers, F. W.Murnau, and Georges Méliès; and burrows deep⁤ into the landscape of genre, where spies, gangsters, spirits, monsters, and vampires hold the keys to cinema’s enduring popularity and its capacity for renewal.⁢ What makes “Resurrection” more than just⁢ another facile love letter to the medium is a melancholy awareness ‍that such magic always comes ⁢at ⁣a cost—to the filmmakers who practice their art and the film lovers who bask in it. What⁢ the movies give, they also take away.

4. “Sound of Falling”

Mascha Schilinski’s “Sound of Falling” marries ethereally elegant form to a⁤ damning thesis about the continuity ⁣of female suffering across the generations. The movie hopscotches among four constellations of characters, all of them occupying⁢ the same rural German farmhouse at different eras across⁣ roughly a ⁣century. It sometimes suggests “The⁢ Turn of the Screw” as directed by Michael Haneke, but Schilinski proves herself to be her own filmmaker. Her touch⁤ is more playful and tender than punishing.

5. “the‍ Secret Agent”

Kleber Mendonça Filho’s ⁢”The Secret‍ Agent” deploys the language of gangster pictures, monster movies, and shark-attack‍ thrillers to navigate the human wreckage of Brazil’s military dictatorship. It’s a maximalist affair, ⁣with a story that’s in no hurry to reveal its destination; it twists, bends, and folds in on itself, to ever more engaging effect. Wagner Moura,⁢ playing a ‍former university researcher who has already endured one tragedy and who seeks to avert another, gives a star turn of revelatory magnetism.

6. “Woman and Child”

Saeed Roustaee’s “Woman and Child” is one of ⁣the finer men-are-trash movies of recent vintage. A widowed mother of two (Parinaz izadyar) suffers an unspeakable loss—and responds by⁢ exacting a measure of justice from the many men who, through cruel entitlement or thoughtless neglect,⁣ have‍ contributed to her grief. As the living embodiment of that rage, the mesmerizing ⁤Izadyar comes⁢ to resemble a⁤ furious, wide-eyed wraith—an almost mythical agent of retribution.

7. “The Mastermind”

Kelly⁤ Reichardt’s “The Mastermind” ⁣is an exquisite grounded art-heist movie. The planner of the heist is a small-town⁣ Massachusetts family man (Josh O’Connor) who,amid the upheaval of the early nineteen-seventies,becomes ⁣desperate to counter his own mediocrity. The crime he commits ⁣is a foolish, bumbling, desultory affair, but Reichardt observes every moment of it—and the ensuing fallout—with her usual dolorous, low-key mastery.

8. “Two Prosecutors”

Sergei Loznitsa’s “Two Prosecutors” unfolds like the bleakest of thought experiments: What if, amid the terrors ‍of stalin’s Russia, in 1937, a courageous, newly appointed state prosecutor took it upon ‍himself to investigate a prisoner’s complaints of injustice and violence? Into the prison goes the young lawyer, ⁤named Kornyev (Alexander Kuznetsov); whether he will ever emerge is far from certain.

9. “New wave”

Richard Linklater’s “New ‍Wave” is an ‍impeccably crafted behind-the-scenes account of how Jean-Luc Godard made “Breathless” and⁢ ignited a cinematic revolution. ⁣The three central performances, by guillaume Marbeck (as Godard), Zoey Deutch (as Jean Seberg), and Aubry Dullin (as Jean-Paul Belmondo), hit‍ their difficult marks with great skill and nary a whiff of self-congratulation.

What’s next

Many of these films are expected to be released⁣ in US theaters and at other film festivals in the coming months.Keep an eye out for these award-winning movies.