Cannes Dispatch – Will Win / Should Win

It took a while, but after seeing all 22 films in competition at the 77^th Cannes Film Festival, I can report that we have a race alright. As previously noted, there’s a clear divide in this year’s lineup between mainstream and arthouse-leaning titles. Will jury president Greta Gerwig, who’s now of course best known for directing Barbie, be inclined to favor films that are more commercially viable, or will she stick to her indie roots and support more challenging auteur fares? Well, here are my best guesses.

Best Screenplay
Will win: Anora
Should win: All We Imagine as Light

Unless this jury is completely humorless, Sean Baker’s sharp, wildly entertaining romcom should win something. If not one of the biggies, then most likely actress or screenplay. I have other ideas for actress, so screenplay it is.

Purely on merits, I’d say the best screenplay of the festival is between All We Imagine as Light and The Seed of the Sacred Fig, more on those later.

Best Actor
Will win: Sebastian Stan (The Apprentice)
Should win: Yura Borisov (Anora)

There are not many obvious choices for male lead performance this year, the exceptions being:
Sebastian Stan (The Apprentice)
Jesse Plemons (Kinds of Kindness)
Ben Whishaw (Limonov – The Ballad)

Awarding Stan may cause some controversy because of the Trump-association, but I do think it makes the most sense. His finely calibrated performance sets the tone for a film that tries very hard to stay clear of both parody and heroization. There’s more going on than meets the eye.

If the jury is willing to look beyond leading roles (see last year’s best actress winner from About Dry Grasses), we could be looking at Franz Rogowski from Bird and my personal favorite Yura Borisov, who plays a limited but pivotal part in Anora.

Best Actress
Will win: Zhao Tao (Caught by the Tides)
Should win: Malou Khebizi (Wild Diamond)

An interesting thing about the best actress category this year is that we have many female co-leads:
Demi Moore & Margaret Qualley (The Substance)
Vic Carmen Sonne & Trine Dyrholm (The Girl With the Needle)
Karla Sofía Gascón & Zoe Saldana & Selena Gomez (Emilia Perez)
Kani Kusruti & Divya Prabha (All We Imagine as Light)

Any of which could conceivably take home the prize. If the jury sticks with a solo winner, Mikey Madison is your best bet for Anora, followed by my personal pick Malou Khebizi from Wild Diamond (which people may have already forgotten). But for whatever reason my thoughts keep coming back to Zhao Tao. Although she has less screen time than her competitors, this is an epically wordless performance that stretches over two decades, where she does so much with very little. It’s the kind of acting that really impresses and I’m betting on this actor-heavy jury feeling the same.

Best Director
Will win: Coralie Fargeat (The Substance)
Should win: Miguel Gomes (Grand Tour)

Once again this is the category that I’m most curious about. After Trần Anh Hùng for The Taste of Things last year, we could very well be getting another surprise winner here. In my eyes the most likely candidates include:
Coralie Fargeat (The Substance)
Miguel Gomes (Grand Tour)
Francis Ford Coppola (Megalopolis)
Jia Zhangke (Caught by the Tides)
Payal Kapadia (All We Imagine as Light)

But if the jury wants to recognize the craft of mainstream filmmaking, watch out for Jacques Audiard (Emilia Perez), Gilles Lellouche (Beating Hearts) and of course Sean Baker (Anora).

Prix du Jury
Will win: Bird
Should win: The Substance

By now it’s become a running joke that Andrea Arnold will just keep on winning the Jury Prize at Cannes – she has won it three times already, for Red Road, Fish Tank and American Honey. And I could actually kinda see it happening again this year. Bird is a queer-coded mix of social drama and fantasy, it’s a standout from the first half of the festival and remains – at least to me – memorable all these days later.

If this doesn’t pan out, I could see the jury using this second runner-up prize to recognize one of the more mainstream films mentioned above.

Grand Prix
Will win: All We Imagine as Light
Should win: All We Imagine as Light

I think Payal Kapadia’s lovely, poignant sophomore feature will and should win something. Screenplay is likely, perhaps director. But if the jury really felt it the way I did, it’s totally possible that we will get the first-ever Palme d’Or winner from India this time tomorrow. In fact, I only settled for the runner-up prize in my predictions because of something that literally premiered hours ago…

Palme d’Or
Will win: The Seed of the Sacred Fig
Should win: Grand Tour

Screening at the very end of the festival, Iranian weiter/director Mohammad Rasoulof’s latest film has so much going for it. First of all, it’s a damn good film. Took a while to find its groove, sure, but when the story finds its focus, the rest becomes a relentlessly tense, nail-biting ride. Secondly, this fantastic thriller about one man’s descent into madness also packs such a urgently relevant political message about radical ideologies, particularly those of the oppressive Iranian regime. Rasoulof, who was recently sentenced to jail time for making this film and had to flee his country to attend today’s premiere, received the most ecstatic ovation and it feels simply irresistible for the jury to crown this narrative with the festival’s highest honor. It wouldn’t be my pick but I would be fine with awarding this ferociously written, muscurlarly directed film which happens to also be “important”.

Two things that bother me about the above list of predicted winners: 1) I couldn’t find a place on it for my favorite film of the festival – Miguel Gomes’ uniquely poetic and romantic Grand Tour; 2) it does not include the name Francis Ford Coppola. Coppola had won two Palme d’Or’s before Greta Gerwig was even born and his work has no doubt influenced everyone on that jury. Will Megalopolis really leave Cannes empty-handed?

That and more questions will be answered when the winners of the 77^th Cannes Film Festival are announced at the awards ceremony tomorrow, May 25, at 7:15 PM (CET).