Cannes 2026: What to watch for ahead of Palme d'Or ceremony

The 79th Cannes Film Festival draws to a close Saturday with the presentation of one of cinema’s highest honors, the Palme d’Or.

This year, the race may be wide open.

By wide consensus, it hasn’t been a banner festival.

Hollywood largely sat out this year’s edition.

Many of the selections struggled to bowl over critics.

The global buzz that Cannes typically generates was fitful at best.

But the lack of a clear front-runner should give the nine-member jury, headed by Korean filmmaker Park Chan-wook, a range of possibilities for the Palme.

Winning Cannes' top honor almost immediately raises the international profile of a film, and likely sets it up as an Oscar contender, too.

Some of the festival’s best received films include Polish filmmaker Pawel Pawlikowski’s “Fatherland,” a black-and-white postwar rumination on art and politics; Japanese auteur Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s “All of a Sudden,” a tender three-hour elder care opus; Russian director Andrey Zvyagintsev’s “Minotaur,” a drama of crime and punishment in contemporary Russia; and Romanian filmmaker Cristian Mu