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Cannes 2022 Palme d’Or Contenders: Here’s a Look at the Likely Winners

After the Oscars, the Palme d’Or is the most prestigious film award in the business, and it’s a lot less predictable. Coming from a jury usually comprised of actors and directors, it arrives as the outcome of furious debate and often conflicting values about the nature of the art form. There is no mathematical formula for predicting the Palme d’Or, and educated guesswork can be misleading, but it’s still worth a shot.

Handed out at the festival since 1955, the golden prize represents the pinnacle of prestige for the filmmaker who receives it. As Cannes presents itself as the nexus of the greatest cinema on the planet, the prize is an extension of that mentality, and it invites winners into an exclusive club that spans film history. Recipients of the Palme d’Or have ranged from “Black Orpheus” and “La Dolce Vita” to “Apocalypse Now.” In some cases, the prize has anointed emerging talent, such as Apichatpong Weerasethakul with “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives” or Ruben Ostlund with “The Square”; at other times, it has provided the opportunity to celebrate a veteran filmmaker at the top of their game, from Terrence Malick (“The Tree of Life”) or Ken Loach (“The Wind That Shakes the Barley,” “I, Daniel Blake”). 

The Palme has been handed out to filmmakers from a wide array of backgrounds, though only two women have won the award before: Jane Campion (“The Piano”) and, last year, Julia Ducourneau (“Titane”). The absence of parity is one of many representational issues for the festival, but the jury is at the mercy of the program and must work with its options. 

The outcome can go a lot of different directions. The year Steven Spielberg headed the jury, several members wanted to give the Palme to the grim Russian drama “Leviathan,” but the prize went to lesbian romance “Blue is the Warmest Color.” And in the year that “Toni Erdmann” was a critical favorite, jury president George Miller reportedly hated it; the prize went to “I, Daniel Blake.” When Pedro Almodovar served as president, he was a blatant fan of the queer period piece “BPM,” but the award went to “The Square.” The president may be a prominent voice at the table, but gets one vote along with the rest of the jurors, and it’s impossible to know whether they can find common ground until the penultimate day of the festival when deliberation takes place.

What will this year’s jury do? Again, that question has no obvious answer, but there are some clues that will help inform possibilities as this year’s 21-film competition unfurls over the course of the festival. The jury is headed by French actor Vincent Lindon, who was at Cannes last year with a daring physical turn in “Titane,” but is generally known for starring in socially-conscious dramas told from more traditional points of view (like 2016’s “The Measure of a Man,” which landed him a Cannes prize for Best Actor). Penelope Cruz was initially supposed to head the jury, but had to drop out due to scheduling issues.

Often, actor-driven juries are inclined to anoint more accessible emotional undertakings, while filmmakers advocate for ambitious cinematic gambles, and they actually outnumber Lindon on his own jury. Most of them have premiered recent films in competition at the festival: Asghar Farhadi (“A Hero”), Ladj Ly (“Les Miserables”), Jeff Nichols (“Mud”), and Joaquim Trier (“The Worst Person in the World”), and they all make complex work that juggles filmmaking artistry with emotional weight. There’s also an actor-turned-director in Rebecca Hall, whose “Passing” premiered at Sundance last year, in addition to actors Deepika Pauline, Noomi Rapace, and Jasmine Trinca. 

The jury generally watches between two and three films a day over the course of the 12-day festival on the same timeline as the rest of the exclusive crowd. That means the Palme d’Or race has a tendency to evolve each day, and this list will be updated throughout the festival to reflect the changing narrative. The ranking from least to most likely to win. The ranking is a reflection of the quality of the competition, the presumed preferences of the jury, and whatever Cannes gossip happens to be making its way around the Croisette. Keep checking back here for updates in the days ahead. The Palme d’Or will be handed out at the closing ceremony on Saturday, May 28. 

1. “Brother and Sister”

   

“Brother and Sister”

Wild Bunch

French director Arnaud Desplechin is a Cannes regular who tends to make talky family dramas, and his latest is no exception. The grim story of adult siblings (Melvin Poupaud and Marion Cotillard) who argue about jealousy over each other success gets exacerbated when their parents wind up in the hospital and they’re forced to attempt reconciliation. Critics have been unkind to the melodrama at the core of the movie, and with its unadventurous plot, the movie is unlikely to make much of an impact on this year’s jury. Read IndieWire’s review here.

7. “The Eight Mountains”

Belgian director Felix van Groeningen was nominated for an Oscar for “Broken Circle Breakdown,” but makes his first appearance in Cannes competition with this adaptation of the 2016 novel, co-directed by Charlotte Vandermeersch in her debut. The gorgeous, pensive drama looks at a pair of men who befriend each other in a remote mountain town during childhood and develop a complex adult relationship informed in part by the gap in privilege that impacts their maturation. At two-and-a-half hours, this voiceover-heavy character study lacks much in the way of conflict, so it’s hard to imagine it leaving much of a lasting effect on this year’s jury. Read IndieWire’s full review here.

6. “Tchaikovsky’s Wife”

“Tchaikovsky’s Wife”

Russian director Kirill Serebrennikov has been making controversial headlines due to the oligarch who helped finance the film, and its very presence in this year’s competition has elicited backlash due to the war in Ukraine. If the movie was a frontrunner for the Palme d’Or, that discussion would get a lot more complicated with this year’s jury, but it’s unlikely they’ll give the top prize to this moody look at the famed composer’s first wife, who went mad after discovering his sexuality. Though some members of the jury may appreciate the surreal flourishes and an attempt to complicate Russian cultural history, that response is more likely to yield another category win like screenplay. Read IndieWire’s review here.

5. “Eo”

“EO”

Cannes

At 84, Polish auteur Jerzy Skolimoski has lost none of his penchant for cinematic ambition, and this modern update of Robert Bresson’s “Au Hasard Balthazar” is unexpected treat: a nearly-wordless story of the titular donkey (the title translates as “Hee Haw”) as he endures a vignette-like journey through different human hands as his constant case takes on metaphorical value. A vegan-friendly saga akin to “Cow” and “Gunda,” Skolimoski meditation on animal intelligence amidst human indifference isn’t exactly complex, but it’s poignant and engaging all the same. The jury might be inclined to reward the movie for its astute use of film language and Skolimoski’s longstanding reputation, but some might find it too slight for the big prize. Read IndieWire’s review here.

4.  “Triangle of Sadness”

“Triangle of Sadness”

Swedish director Ruben Ostlund’s first English-language feature (and first directing credit since his Palme d’Or winner “The Square”) is a wild and provocative class satire designed to make its audiences squirm. Ostlund delivers a riotous skewering of the fashion world that finds a young pair of celebrity influencers (Harris Dickinson and Charlbi Dean) as two of several unfortunate passengers on a cruise ship on the verge of catastrophe at the helm of its Marxist captain (Woody Harrelson). The movie begins at a leisurely pace before careening into chaos in a slew of bodily fluids as everything goes ridiculously wrong onboard and a few survivors find themselves washed up on a deserted island. Ostlund’s kooky style and obvious symbolism isn’t for everyone, and it’s hard to imagine that this pisive title would win over enough jury members to convince them that the director deserves another Palme. But it’s a very Cannes sort of crowdpleaser, and one that will almost certainly lead to furious debates that could yield some sort of prize at the end of the festival. Read IndieWire’s review here.

3. “Boy From Heaven”

“Boy from Heaven”

Cannes Film Festival

Swedish-Egyptian director Tarik Saleh (“The Nile Hilton Incident”) makes his Cannes debut with this tense critical look at corruption within Cairo’s religious institutions. The story of a fisherman’s son (Tawfeek Barhom) from a remote town who gets a scholarship to go to school in Cairo, the movie finds the young man drawn into a conspiratorial scenario in which a government agent attempts to turn him into an informant and influence the election of the new imam. Critics have compared the movie to John Grisham and John le Carré alike, as the film utilizes a sophisticated thriller aesthetic to explore complex questions about the potential for religious institutes to exert power over facets of society. Saleh (who has been banned from Egypt) is the kind of socially conscious filmmaker whose work may strike some jurors as Palme-worthy, though the film’s rather straightforward plot (and some plot holes) could hold it back from consensus. Read IndieWire’s review here.

2. “Armageddon Time”

“Armageddon Time”

Focus Features

Over the years, Cannes has been a far more receptive audience to James Gray than his audiences back home in the U.S. The festival has screened five of his eight features at the festival: “The Yards,” “We Own the Night,” “The Immigrant,” “Two Lovers,” and now “Armageddon Time.” As an American director with European sensibilities, Gray’s penchant for intimate family dramas has often performed well with festival audiences, though the Palme d’Or has been elusive all that time. His latest may get him closer than his previous efforts, if only because it’s such an obvious personal project designed to make its emotions accessible to the audience. The Queens-set 1980s set ensemble piece follows a young Jewish boy (Michael Banks Repeta) who befriends a young African American classmate (Jaylin Webb) while contending with the menacing expectations of his parents (Anne Hathaway and Jeremy Strong) as well as his immigrant grandfather (Anthony Hopkins). Even as a familiar, emotionally resonant nostalgia piece, “Armageddon Time” has a lot on its mind about the impact of class and privilege on modern America, so it’s possible the Cannes jury might find some consensus on that front. At the same time, the movie’s narrow perspective (it’s a white perspective on racism) may rub some of the jurors the wrong way, and it lacks the kind of cinematic ambition that may be more likely to excite the filmmakers among them. Read IndieWire’s review here.

1.  “RMN”

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p id=”caption-attachment-1234725539″>“R.M.N.”

IFC Films

Fifteen years ago, Romanian director Cristian Mungiu won the Palme d’Or for “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days” at the height of the Romanian New Wave, and has maintained a steady output of Cannes successes since then. His 2012 drama “Beyond the Hills” scored him a Best Screenplay award and 2016’s “Graduation” won him Best Director. Few filmmakers win the Palme more than once, but Mungiu’s effective blend of social realism and bleak-but-gripping scenarios have been so consistently strong that it wouldn’t be unthinkable for him to bag the gold once more. That’s certainly a possibility for “RMN,” another grim and insightful look at provincial life and uncomfortable power structures from a director who digs into them better than anyone. The story of a dyspeptic man who quits his job in Germany to return to his village in Transylvania, “RMN” initially focuses on his efforts to help his young child while developing a romance with a local woman, but eventually it expands to look at the way the community reacts to the arrival of several immigrant workers. While the protagonist faced xenophobia in his old job, the new arrivals face the same racism here, an irony that leads to a series of taut showdowns and gripping conversations about personal values and bias. Blending jittery naturalism with thrilling showdowns and even a surreal climax, “RMN” is Mungiu’s most fully realized work since “4 Months,” and one likely to have a lingering effect on this jury for the way its formalism, timeliness, and emotional impact all work in harmony. Though other films may come along with less cerebral qualities that could give them the edge, this one’s an early lead contender for the Palme.