2025 Cannes Film Festival Winners: I Saw the NEON Glow
Jafar Panahi has won the Palme d’Or of the 78th Cannes Film Festival for his politically and personally inspired film It Was Just an Accident, which marked the first top Cannes win for an Iranian film since Abbas Kiarostami’s Taste of Cherry shared the Palme with Shōhei Imamura’s The Eel in 1997 and marked the astonishing achievement of a sixth Palme win in a row for the studio NEON.
It Was Just an Accident details how an unrelated minor accident creates a domino effect and follows five people who think they’ve identified the prosecutor who tortured them during their own arrests but none can be entirely certain their captive is the same man as they were all blindfolded at the time. After Panahi’s own first arrest and conviction for “propaganda against the regime” in 2010, the director has continued to defy the government to make films in secret, at great risk of arrest. In 2011, he sent a flash drive to Cannes with his movie, This Is Not a Film. Last year, director Mohammad Rasoulof had to be secretly smuggled into Cannes to screen his competition film The Seed of the Sacred Fig, also a NEON pick up.
Panahi thanked his family for its support, as well as the team that made such a risky project possible. “I think it’s the moment to ask everyone, all the Iranians with opinions different from others, in Iran and throughout the world…: he said. “I’d like to ask them one thing: Put all the problems and differences aside. The most important thing is surely our country and the freedom of our country.”
Halfway through the festival, NEON, which already had Julia Ducournau’s Alpha and Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value in its pocket, went deeper, buying three more competition titles, all of which won major awards. Trier’s film won the Grande Prix of the festival (the defacto second place), while Oliver Laxe’s Sirât shared a Jury Prize win. The late pickup of Halfway through the festival, NEON, which already had Julia Ducournau’s Alpha and Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value in its pocket, went deeper, buying three more competition titles, all of which won major awards. Trier’s film won the Grande Prix of the festival (the defacto second place), while Oliver Laxe’s Sirât shared a Jury Prize win. The late pickup of Kleber Mendonça Filho’s The Secret Agent paid off handsomely as the film won Filho Best Director and Best Actor for star Wagner Moura. The film was also the FIPRESCI winner of In Competition films.
The Palme win marks the sixth in a row for boutique studio NEON, which started in 2019 with Parasite, which would go on to become the first non-English language film to win the Best Picture Oscar, to 2021’s Titane, 2022’s Triangle of Sadness, 2023’s Anatomy of a Fall and last year’s Anora, which would go on to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards earlier this year. All of NEON’s Palme winners save Titane have won or been nominated for Best Picture.
Mascha Schilinski Sound of Falling, which was picked up by MUBI, shared the Jury Prize award and the ever-present Dardennes picked up the Screenplay award for their newest film, Young Mothers. For the second year in a row, a Special Jury Prize was given, this year to Bi Gan’s epic ode to filmmaking with Resurrection.
Newcomer Nadia Melliti won Best Actress honors for Little Sister, in which she plays a tough Paris teenager trying to navigate her sexuality in a conservative immigrant community. Hafsia Herzi’s film also won the Queer Palm.
The Un Certain Regard prizes went for Harris Dickinson’s Urchin, Harry Lighton’s Pillion and Diego Céspedes’ The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo, among others. Urchin was also the FIPRESCI winner for UCR.
Alice Rohrwacher presented the Camera d’Or trophy for first feature to The President’s Cake director Hasan Hadi, who accepted the first award ever presented to an Iraqi film in Cannes. A Special Mention was given to My Father Shadow by Akinola Davies Jr., the first Nigerian film ever in Cannes.
It was a little touch and go before the beginning of the Closing Ceremony when the entirety of Cannes lost power just hours before it was set to begin; lights, screenings, internet, all were down and reportedly at the hand of sabotage (maybe the festival needs an Ocean’s 8 type of telling of this story), but all returned to normal in time for the jury to convene on stage and give out their prizes.
The Jury of the 78th Festival de Cannes, chaired by Academy Award-winning French actress Juliette Binoche, surrounded by Academy Award-winning American actress and filmmaker Halle Berry, Indian director and screenwriter Payal Kapadia, Italian actress Alba Rohrwacher, French-Moroccan writer Leïla Slimani, Congolese director, documentarist and producer Dieudo Hamadi, Korean director and screenwriter Hong Sangsoo, Mexican director, screenwriter and producer Carlos Reygadas and American actor Jeremy Strong, presented its winners’ list among the 22 films presented in Competition this year.
Here are the complete winners of the 2025 Cannes Film Festival.
MAIN COMPETITION
Palme d’Or: It Was Just an Accident by Jafar Panahi
Grand Prize: Sentimental Value by Joachim Trier
Jury Prize: Sirât by Oliver Laxe and Sound of Falling by Mascha Schilinski
Best Director: Kleber Mendonça Filho for The Secret Agent
Best Actor: Wagner Moura for The Secret Agent
Best Actress: Nadia Melliti for The Little Sister
Best Screenplay: Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne for Jeues Mères
Special Prize: Resurrection by Bi Gan
A CERTAIN REGARD
Un Certain Regard Prize: The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo by Diego Céspedes
Jury Prize: A Poet by Simón Mesa Soto
Best Director: Tarzan and Arab Nasser for Once Upon a Time in Gaza
Best Actor: Frank Dillane for Urchin
Best Actress: Cleo Diára for I Only Rest in the Storm
Best Screenplay: Harry Lighton for Pillion
SHORT FILM PALME D’OR
Short Film Palme d’Or: I’m Glad You’re Dead Now by Tawfeek Barhom
Special Mention: Ali by Adnan Al Rajeev
CAMERA D’OR
Winner: The President’s Cake by Hasan Hadi
Special Mention: My Father Shadow by Akinola Davies Jr.
FIPRESCI
In Competition: The Secret Agent by Kleber Mendonça Filho
Un Certain Regard: Urchin by Harris Dickinson
Parallel section (first features): Dandelion’s Odyssey by Momoko Sato
PRIZE OF THE ECUMENICAL JURY
CRITICS’ WEEK
Grand Prize: A Useful Ghost by Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke
French Touch Prize of the Jury: Imago by Déni Oumar Pitsaev
Louis Roederer Foundation Rising Star Award: Théodore Pellerin for Nino
Leitz Cine Discovery Prize for Short Film: L’mina by Randa Maroufi
Gan Foundation Award for Distribution: Left-Handed Girl by Shih-Ching Tsou
SACD Award: Guillermo Galoe and Víctor Alonso-Berbel for Sleepless City
Canal+ Award for Short Film: Erogenesis by Xandra Popescu
DIRECTORS’ FORTNIGHT
Audience Award: The President’s Cake by Hasan Hadi
Europa Cinemas Label Award for Best European Film: Wild Foxes by Valéry Carnoy
SACD Prize for Best French Film: Wild Foxes by Valéry Carnoy
Carrosse d’Or: Todd Haynes
L’ŒIL D’OR
Winner: Imago by Déni Oumar Pitsaev
Special Jury Prize: The Six Billion Dollar Man by Eugene Jarecki
QUEER PALM
The Little Sister by Hafsia Herzi
Best Short Film: Bleat! by Ananth Subramaniam
CANNES SOUNDTRACK AWARD
Kangding Ray for Sirât
PRIX FRANÇOIS CHALAT
Two Prosecutors by Sergei Loznitsa
PRIX DE LA CITOYENNETÉ
Citizenship Prize: It Was Just an Accident by Jafar Panahi
PRIX DES CINEMAS ART ET ESSAI
AFCAE Art House Cinema Award: The Secret Agent by Kleber Mendonça Filho
Special Mention: Sirât by Oliver Laxe
PALM DOG
Panda for The Love That Remains
Grand Jury Prize: Pipa and Lupita for Sirât
Mutt Moment: Hippo for Pillion
TROPHEE CHOPARD
Finn Bennett
Marie Colomb
He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Critics Choice Association (CCA), San Francisco Bay Area Film Critics Circle (SFBAFCC) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.
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