Cannes - Palme d'Or
The Cannes Film Festival is the world's most prestigious film festival, first held in 1946 in the resort town of Cannes, in the south of France. Since then, it has been held annually in May with a few exceptions. Given massive media exposure, the non-public Festival is attended by many movie stars and is a popular venue for movie producers to launch their new films and attempt to sell their works to the distributors who come from all over the globe. The most prestigious award at Cannes is the Palme d'Or (Golden Palm) for the best film, sometimes shared by multiple films in one year.
Below are the past winners of this most cherished trophy.
Right: Michael Moore gets his for Fahrenheit 9/11.
The Third Man (1949)
8.2/10
Director: Carol Reed
Starring: Joseph Cotten, Alida Valli, Orson Welles, Trevor Howard
Joseph Cotten is pulp fiction writer Holly Matins, who arrives in Vienna to work for his friend Harry Lime (Orson Welles), only to be told that Lime h... Read more
Taxi Driver (1976)
8.3/10
Director: Martin Scorsese
Starring: Albert Brooks, Cybill Shepherd, Harvey Keitel, Jodie Foster, Peter Boyle, Robert...
A disturbingly brutal depiction of a lonely, unstable New York City cab driver (Robert De Niro) who stalks a presidential candidate, then turns his vi... Read more
Pulp Fiction (1994)
8.9/10
Director: Quentin Tarantino
Starring: Samuel L Jackson, Uma Thurman, John Travolta, Harvey Keitel, Tim Roth, Amanda Pl...
An audacious crime thriller that won 'Best Picture' at the Cannes Film Festival and is one exhilarating ride from start to finish. John Travolta and S... Read more
Apocalypse Now (1979)
8.5/10
Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Starring: Sam Bottoms, Robert Duvall, Martin Sheen, Marlon Brando, Laurence Fishburne, Har...
A flawed masterpiece, intended as the definitive Vietnam film, based on Joseph Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness'. With Martin Sheen, Robert Duvall, Dennis... Read more
The Conversation (1974)
7.9/10
Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Starring: Teri Garr, John Cazale, Harrison Ford, Gene Hackman, Frederic Forrest, Cindy Wil...
Gene Hackman is brilliant as Harry Caul, the surveillance man who becomes the object of surveillance himself. Coppola's great achievement is evoking a... Read more
Dancer in the Dark (2000)
8/10
Director: Lars von Trier
Starring: Bjork, Catherine Deneuve, Joel Grey, David Morse
Winner of the Palme d'Or at the Cannes film festival, Lars Von Trier's brilliant film inspires adulation and scorn. This neo-musical is set in an earl... Read more
I, Daniel Blake (2016)
7.9/10
Director: Ken Loach
Starring: Briana Shann, Hayley Squires, Dave Johns, Dylan McKiernan
British cinemas social realist enters his eighties with a second Palme d'Or to his name after the Cannes Jury this year awarded his feisty new film... Read more
Winter Sleep (2014)
8.2/10
Director: Nuri Bilge Ceylan
Starring: Haluk Bilginer, Melisa Sozen, Demet Akbag
Aydin, a former actor, runs a small hotel in central Anatolia with his young wife Nihal with whom he has a stormy relationship and his sister Necla wh... Read more
Barton Fink (1991)
7.7/10
Director: Joel Coen
Starring: John Turturro, John Goodman, Judy Davis, Jon Polito
The 44th winner of Best Film at Cannes was this dark comedy/thriller in which a renowned playwright (John Turturro) comes to 1941 L.A. to write a scre... Read more
The Tree of Life (2011)
6.8/10
Director: Terrence Malick
Starring: Brad Pitt, Sean Penn, Jessica Chastain
Written and directed by Terrence Malick, this complex and thought-provoking exploration of the human condition stars Brad Pitt as the patriarch of a M... Read more