I am sitting on an airplane zooming over the Atlantic, having just watched Anaconda (2025), a real change of pace from the often heavy, sometimes artful stuff I spent the last two weeks watching. The movie is really not good, but it was kind of nice to let something dumb wash over me, the same way I will do tomorrow (well, today when you’re reading this) at The Mandalorian and Grogu in the Rue Morgue. I’m finding myself quite ready to give into a summer of silliness, before the serious stuff starts up again in Venice.

But first we must close the book on Cannes. It was awards night on the Croisette on Saturday, a star-studded affair (Tilda Swinton! Zoe Saldaña! Every gay man from Spain and Belgium!) during which the jury—chaired by Park Chan-wook and balloon-gowned by Demi Moore—handed out their prizes. I watched the simulcast of the ceremony in the theater next door, with all the press at their hootiest and hollerest. People seemed mostly happy with the winners, though I certainly heard some grumbling (and I did my own version of grumbling) about all the split decisions. 

Best actor went to both leads from Lukas Dhont’s perfectly fine but wholly basic gay war drama Coward, when I think only one of them (Valentin Campagne, who plays the queeny one) deserved it. Best actress went to Virginie Efira and Tao Okamoto, who play the totally featureless, stultifyingly uncomplicated central characters in Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s All of a Sudden. 

Most egregious, though, was that the jury could not make up their mind on best director, so they gave it to both Los Javis (the Javiers Ambrossi and Calvo) for The Black Balloon and Pavel Pawlikowski for Fatherland. Those were two of the best films I saw at the fest, so I would be happy with either of them winning, but I don’t like them having to share. It feels like a noncommittal cop-out, and Pawlikowski joked about how messily the whole thing played out during the ceremony. My based-on-absolutely-nothing suspicion is that the jury was like, “can we really give best director to these two hip young gay guys? Don’t we need a more serious director to balance things out?” Or, they were totally, immovably split in the room and Park said fuck it, everyone wins. 

I guess you could also call Cristian Mungiu’s Palme d’Or win for Fjord a kind of doubling up, as he previously won the top prize, for 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days. I don’t love a repeat winner; it’s way more exciting when it’s someone new joining this most elite class of international filmmakers. But, whatever, Fjord was one of the stronger titles at the festival, even if it was enshrouded with some dumb discourse about its politics. I’m happy that mostly movies I liked won things, and that I managed to see the Palme winner while at the festival this time around. (A feat I was not able to accomplish in 2014, 2015, 2016, 2023, and 2025. I really can be quite bad at selecting movies to see at Cannes.) 

But what happens to those movies, and others from the festival, now that Cannes has wrapped up and they’ll have to expose themselves to the outside world? Let’s do a little analysis.