Cannes Aftermath: Any Impact On Awards Season? - Awards Outlook
Photo from Cannes Film Festival
Awards analysis is provided by Sean from @MathTeacherMovies.
Because you Cannes, Cannes, Cannes!
The recent Cannes Film Festival just wrapped and for most of its history this meant nothing to the Oscars with the exceptions movies that made into both the arthouses and the zeitgeists like Taxi Driver and Pulp Fiction, this mainly has to do with the unpredictability of the Cannes awards with a different jury judging every year and that jury being populated by an internationally diverse group of people with more international films recognized. In addition, some of the awards heavy hitters are usually not a part of competition as they respectfully allow smaller films to win, like this year’s Asteroid City and Killers of the Flower Moon.
However, recently, the winners at the Canne Film Festival and the Oscars have begun to intersect more in the Venn Diagram. Parasite obviously was a huge winner back in 2019 in both awards bodies. The Palme d’Or winner grew and grew in popularity to become undeniable at the Oscars. Also this previous year, Triangle of Sadness got a surprise Picture and Director nomination. This is most likely due to the expansion of the Academy to a more international audience while also having a younger average age and therefore gravitating to more independent films.
It is not a guarantee that Cannes will be forecasting the Oscars, there will be always be years where Titane or Uncle Boonmee will be honored and never come close to getting a ticket to the Oscars, but the tide seems to be turning toward these films being at the very least receiving Oscar buzz and therefore the Cannes film festival should be examined in the forecast for the Oscars.
As previously stated, Killers of the Flower Moon and Asteroid City were not in competition but both received fairly positive reactions and while they were already front runners for the Oscars, this just all the more confirms it. Especially Asteroid City which some have said is Anderson’s best film since The Grand Budapest Hotel which was his last big awards heavy hitter and this could be a return for him.
May December is Todd Haynes’ next film and he is famous for grabbing nominations for himself and more notably the performances within it. This seems likely this year as Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman are both previous Oscar winners. This film was also recently acquired by Netflix and while the studio has not taken home the Best Picture award, Netflix could still help draw a lot of Oscar buzz and a possible win.
The legacy sequel of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny and the newest Pixar film Elemental, got more mixed to negative reactions, but this does not necessarily mean they will be unsuccessful as Cannes is not the best audience for those types of films.
The film that was talked about the most throughout the festival was Zone of Interest, which is the long awaited return of respected director Jonathan Glazer and this received the runner up prize and is being distributed by A24 which spells success come award season. What will be holding this back is that it has been considered a very artsy film that dives into a lack of legibility with a very controversial subject from a very unlikable perspective.
The winner of the screenplay award was Monster which was directed by Hirokazu Kore-eda who’s previous film Shoplifters was prevalent throughout the Best International Film category at the Oscars and therefore could end up there and be this year's international film that sneaks into the Best Picture race.
The winner of the Palme d’Or was Anatomy of a Fall which for the fourth year in a row where the Cannes winner was picked up by the studio Neon, which is a studio that has frequently helped the Cannes winner at the very least arrive in the Best Picture Nominations with Triangle of Sadness and a win for Parasite.
While she did not win the award for Best Actress, Sandra Huller was in Anatomy of a Fall and Zone of Interest and therefore she will be quite prevalent throughout the award season and could catch a nomination if one of those films especially if they hit it big come award season.
The Cannes Film Festival may be its own separate entity but it has been lately considered an interesting barometer for the rest of the awards season and these will definitely be films to observe.