The best of Cannes: 5 unforgettable Palme d'Or winners that defined modern cinema
As Cannes 2025 rolls out the red carpet this week, we revisit 5 Palme d’Or winners from the past 25 years that truly left their mark - from Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite to Gus Van Sant’s haunting Elephant.
READ MORE : http://www.euronews.com/2025/05/12/the-best-of-cannes-5-unforgettable-palme-dor-winners-that-defined-modern-cinema
Spark your senses, wake your wonder. Euronews Culture seeks to show creativity in action and inspire our audience to explore the world through the five senses. Start your journey through the best of Europe's arts, gastronomy, traditions and high-end craftsmanship.
As Cannes 2025 rolls out the red carpet this week, we revisit 5 Palme d’Or winners from the past 25 years that truly left their mark - from Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite to Gus Van Sant’s haunting Elephant.
READ MORE : http://www.euronews.com/2025/05/12/the-best-of-cannes-5-unforgettable-palme-dor-winners-that-defined-modern-cinema
Spark your senses, wake your wonder. Euronews Culture seeks to show creativity in action and inspire our audience to explore the world through the five senses. Start your journey through the best of Europe's arts, gastronomy, traditions and high-end craftsmanship.
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00:00The Cannes Film Festival starts this week, so we're taking this opportunity to look back at some of the best Palme d'Or winners of the last 25 years.
00:08Joining me now is my colleague David Morriconde, our specialist in film and many, many, many other things.
00:15David, if you had to put your money on it, what would you be choosing?
00:19What should we be looking back at? What for you have been the best Palme d'Or winners of the 21st century?
00:25Well, I did the top five because it's not easy to kind of limit it.
00:31And yeah, there have been some absolutely fantastic films that have won the Palme d'Or.
00:36And, you know, it just goes to show quite to what extent this festival really does make its mark on cinematic culture and has done over the past 25 years.
00:46So in at number five, I think it's Juliette du Corneau's Titan, which won the Palme d'Or.
00:54She became the first woman to ever win solo for the Palme d'Or because Jane Campion won in 1993, but with somebody else.
01:03And yeah, to my mind, it's one of the most uncompromising, surprising, unpredictable films to ever win the Palme d'Or.
01:11For those who haven't seen it, it tells this story, this modern metamorphosis story through the codes of body horror of this model who has a sexual fixation on automobiles and who goes on a killing spree.
01:27And essentially, many people tend to kind of, you know, just look away and shy away from this film because it is violent.
01:37It is incredibly intense. It pulls absolutely no punches, but it is a film that is really big hearted at its core and is rather surprising in how optimistic it is towards the end,
01:49specifically because it is about metamorphosis, as I said, but also acceptance and about the birth of a new world, a stronger world in which nonconformity is accepted, embraced and loved in an unconditional way.
02:06And it is, for me, just one of the best Palme d'Or winners in the last 25 years.
02:13So what makes number four on your list?
02:14Number four, I was hesitating between Kore-ed as The Shoplifters and Bong Joon-ho's Parasite, and it kind of had to go to Bong Joon-ho just purely because of the success story that Parasite has had after the Palme d'Or win.
02:31It became the first Korean film to win the Palme d'Or and the first non-English language film to win the Best Picture Oscar.
02:40And, you know, in telling this story of these very talented grifters, this family of grifters that infiltrate a richer family,
02:48Bong Joon-ho very satirically just creates this excoriating kind of criticism missile against not only entrenched social strata,
03:01but the dehumanizing effect of South Korea's cultural levels.
03:07And it's, no, it's an incredibly powerful film.
03:10It's also a film that's quite unclassifiable because it's satirical, it's absurd, it's funny, it's Hitchcockian at points in its suspense.
03:19And I think also its lasting legacy is the fact that Bong Joon-ho, when accepting, I think it was the Golden Globe that year,
03:27made this incredibly powerful speech because many people are turned off by films with subtitles, by foreign films, quote-unquote.
03:38And here he made this fantastic speech saying, you know, once you overcome the one-inch-tour barrier of subtitles,
03:45you'll be introduced to so many more amazing films.
03:47And no truer word has ever been spoken.
03:49And I think that is its lasting legacy.
03:52Indeed. And what I particularly loved about it was I could watch it with all the family,
03:56and they wanted to watch it again and again and again.
03:58Well, great.
04:00And it's only number four on the list.
04:01So while that's getting closer to the top, what's your number three?
04:05My number three is The White Ribbon by Michael Haneke, who won in, I think, 2009 for this one.
04:13And, I mean, he won later on, actually, for the film Amour, which is a devastating film.
04:20But I think this one, in terms of scale and scope, is his masterpiece.
04:25It's this black and white gem that is set in 1913 in a small rural Protestant village in Germany,
04:35where this baron, this doctor, and this judge essentially rule this community with an iron fist.
04:45But this is a community that's plagued with these mysterious occurrences,
04:49these strange happenings, and the children of the village are blamed for them.
04:54And essentially what Haneke does, and I think rather brilliantly, is explore the root of the evil
05:00and shows that when human beings deal with absolutes, whether they're religious or political,
05:10it just brings out the worst in humanity.
05:12And as a parable for the rise of Nazism, I think the white ribbon works very, very well.
05:19But more than that, it's just this very cryptic, very sinister little riddle
05:25that offers absolutely no answers, and it's stronger for it.
05:29And, yeah, it's very much one of my favourites to ever win a Palme d'Or.
05:34OK, so getting even closer to the top now, what could be that? What's number two?
05:38Number two? Number two, I've...
05:40This one's a really tough one to recommend.
05:42It's called Uncle Bunme, who can recall his past lives.
05:46And the thing is, it's from this Thai director, Apichapon, Vera Selakul.
05:51And essentially it's this very challenging, very avant-garde execution of a very simple story.
05:59At its core, it's a man who's dying, who is visited by the ghosts of his loved ones.
06:04And it just induces this dream-like state.
06:09It's hyper-realist. It's surrealist.
06:13It makes sense without making any, but it is an incredibly sensual film.
06:18It's not an easy one to recommend because of its languid pace, and it is out there.
06:23But at the same time, there's an incredibly original and incredibly moving story of making peace with not only the material world, but the spiritual world.
06:34It is one of those films that has really stuck with me.
06:37So that's my number two pick.
06:38Where we go to movies, to be moved, to feel something.
06:41And that sounds like the perfect description.
06:43If you want to have something completely different happen to you over two hours or more, what could be better than that, in your opinion?
06:51In my mind, the best film to ever win the Palmyra of the last 25 years is Elephant by Gus Van Saint.
06:58This came out in 2003, and yeah, it's based on the Columbine high school massacre.
07:05And what Gus Van Saint does with this film, he films it almost like a documentary, very minimal dialogue, these long tracking shots where the camera just glides, and it gives this poetry to every frame.
07:21But at the same time, this claustrophobia, especially when you know what's going to happen.
07:26And as a portrait of teenage life, of adolescent angst, but also as a portrait of America sleepwalking into the oblivion, into tragedy, it is incredible.
07:40And it's all kind of there in the title Elephant, because what Gus Van Saint does is address the elephant in the room.
07:48Gun violence, violence in schools, and the way that it is not being addressed, not properly.
07:54Not when you have just thoughts and prayers.
07:59And also, it works as a parable, a little bit like the elephant and the blind men parable, where some blind people go in a room with an elephant, touch various parts, and essentially describe an animal that is completely different.
08:16And it shows to what extent that humanity has this toxic manner of dealing in absolutes, but also believing to have absolute truth from very subjective points of view, from very limited points of view.
08:34And I think this film does it in such a beautiful way, and in such a scarring way.
08:40And it is, for me, not only the best film to win the Palme d'Or in the last 25 years, but certainly the most haunting film to do so.
08:47Yeah, and one which is, again, fun perhaps is not the right word, but certainly something which the whole family, I think, should be watching.
08:54I certainly had watched that with my kids, and they were very moved.
08:57We have a lot of, we spend so much time going through making lists like this for our own pleasure.
09:04We can talk about this for all day.
09:07But, you know, why is it important, would you say, to remind people that these films are out there, you know, they're more easily accessible now than perhaps they've ever been before in terms of, you know, you can stream, you can download them.
09:21So, you know, it's really good to look back and remind ourselves of, you know, just how beautiful cinema is.
09:27Absolutely.
09:28And the thing is, and this isn't a quote by me, but it's cinema is an empathy machine.
09:35It's the closest thing we have to magic, essentially.
09:38It's the closest thing we have to be able to put ourselves in other people's shoes, to be empathetic, to learn, and to feel, to just feel emotion.
09:51And, yeah, and these films, whether it's Elephant, talking about issues which sadly are still very relevant to this day,
09:58The White Ribbon, talking about history, maybe its origins of history, and how we can understand even issues that are happening today.
10:06And also, when it comes to something that's a little bit more out there, like Titan, it is just incredible to feel, to shake, but also to realise that these films work on different levels.
10:20You can have a body horror film that tells you everything you need to know about unconditional love, like Juliette de Corneau does so well.
10:27Or you can have Michael Haneke depressing the absolute shit out of you during two hours, but it absolutely telling you everything you need to know about a certain period in history.
10:38It's these films, I think, say a lot about the time that they were released, but in some cases speak enormously to the times we live in still now, and in some cases, very depressingly so.
10:51David, and those films say a lot about us as well. Thank you for that look back at your personal recommendations for the Palme d'Or winners for the last 25 years.
11:00Do stay with us on Euronews Culture.