Last Year’s Cannes Winners Won Big at Oscars. Can the 2025 Crop Do the Same?

Awards strategists used to be wary of the Cannes Film Festival, claiming it came too early in the calendar to launch a lasting Oscar campaign.

They don’t say that anymore.

The last two editions of Cannes have proved to be a veritable gold rush, producing three best-picture nominees each. The 2024 festival proved particularly fruitful, as films that premiered at Cannes — including “Emilia Pérez,” “The Substance,” “Flow” and the eventual best-picture winner, “Anora” — won a combined nine Oscars.

But this year’s crop of Cannes contenders may have a harder time hitting those highs. The three films with the strongest best-picture potential are all primarily in a language other than English, and the academy has never nominated more than two such films in a single year for the top Oscar. Still, as the academy grows ever more global, it’s possible all three could break through.

The first big contender is Jafar Panahi’s “Un Simple Accident,” a taut moral drama about former Iranian prisoners who believe they’ve tracked down their old torturer. The winner of the Palme d’Or, “Un Simple Accident” is the most accessible movie yet from Panahi, a dissident filmmaker who has twice been imprisoned by Iranian authorities. And like the last five Palme winners, the film will be distributed by Neon, which has a track record of steering them to Oscar glory.

Only one thing gives me pause. Neon also handled last year’s Cannes entry “The Seed of the Sacred Fig,” which had a similar back story: It, too, was directed in secret by an Iranian dissident, though even with that compelling narrative, it couldn’t muster more than an international-film nomination. Hopefully, Panahi’s Palme win will nudge Neon to campaign even harder for “Un Simple Accident,” which could factor into the picture and director categories with the right push.