How Cannes Film Festival became the Oscars' secret launchpad in 2025
The 2025 Oscars saw a strong connection to the Cannes Film Festival, with 19 nominations coming from films first shown there. This trend highlights how premiering at Cannes in May has become a key strategy for awards success. The festival’s influence grew even further as Anora, last year’s Palme d’Or winner, took home four Academy Awards.
Sean Baker’s Anora won the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 2024. The film went on to secure the best picture Oscar in 2025, making it the second Palme d’Or winner in five years to achieve this. The first was Parasite in 2019, which also broke new ground as the first non-English-language film to win best picture.
Neon, the studio behind both *Parasite* and *Anora*, has played a major role in this trend. The company acquired multiple Cannes films that later earned Oscar nominations in 2025. Earlier examples like *Roma* (2018) and *Cold War* (2018) also followed this path, gaining traction in multiple Oscar categories after their Cannes premieres. The strategy for awards campaigns now often involves a Cannes debut in May, followed by a return to other festivals in the autumn. This double push helps maintain publicity momentum. Meanwhile, changing habits—like the rise of text messaging—have made audiences more comfortable with subtitles, boosting the appeal of international films at the Oscars.
Cannes has cemented its position as a launchpad for Oscar contenders, with 19 nominations in 2025 alone. Anora’s success continues a pattern where Palme d’Or winners secure top Academy Awards. The approach of premiering at Cannes and revisiting festivals later in the year has become a proven route to awards season recognition.
Read also:
- American teenagers taking up farming roles previously filled by immigrants, a concept revisited from 1965's labor market shift.
- Weekly affairs in the German Federal Parliament (Bundestag)
- Landslide claims seven lives, injures six individuals while they work to restore a water channel in the northern region of Pakistan
- Escalating conflict in Sudan has prompted the United Nations to announce a critical gender crisis, highlighting the disproportionate impact of the ongoing violence on women and girls.
