Cannes 2024 Awards: ‘Anora’ Starring Mikey Madison Wins the Palme

Cannes 2024 Awards: ‘Anora’ Starring Mikey Madison Wins the Palme

by Alex Billington
May 25, 2024
Source: Cannes

Winners of the 2024 Cannes Film Festival awards, including the coveted Palme d’Or, were revealed at a glamorous ceremony in Cannes, France this weekend. The awards included many of my favorite films at the festival, and this year THE BEST film of actually won the top prize. Huzzah!! This doesn’t always happen, but I loved Anora and had a feeling it would win ever since the screening on Tuesday earlier this week (read my full review). American filmmaker Sean Baker and his NYC film Anora won the Palme d’Or this year, following up Justine Triet’s win for for Anatomy of a Fall last year. Congrats to Sean Baker and star Mikey Madison! I also would’ve been happy with Rasoulof’s The Seed of the Sacred Fig winning, but it took home a special prize. Jacques Audiard’s musical Emilia Perez also won two awards, and Jesse Plemons won the Best Actor award for his three performances in Yorgos Lanthimos’ Kinds of Kindness. I’m impressed and mostly happy with this year’s selection of winners from the competition. Recap all the Cannes 2024 awards below.

Here’s the full list of Cannes 2024 winners, with most of the key awards listed below, including Un Certain Regard. I’ll get into my own commentary after the winners. Visit the official Cannes website for more info.

Palme d’Or (Golden Palm):
Anora directed by Sean Baker

Grand Prix (Runner Up):
All We Imagine as Light directed by Payal Kapadia

Jury Prize:
Emilia Perez directed by Jacques Audiard

Best Director:
Miguel Gomes for Grand Tour

Best Screenplay:
Coralie Fargeat for The Substance

Special Award:
Mohammad Rasoulof for The Seed of the Sacred Fig

Camera d’Or (First-Time Filmmaker):
Armand directed by Halfdan Ullmann Tøndel

Best Performance by an Actress:
Karla Sofía Gascón with Zoe Saldana, Selena Gomez, Adriana Paz in Audiard’s Emilia Perez

Best Performance by an Actor:
Jesse Plemons in Yorgos Lanthimos’ Kinds of Kindness

Un Certain Regard

Un Certain Regard Prize:
Black Dog directed by Guan Hu

Jury Prize:
The Story of Souleymane (L’histoire de Souleymane) directed by Boris Lojkine

Best Director:
Roberto Minervini for The Damned
(tied with) Rungano Nyoni for On Becoming a Guinea Fowl

Best Actress:
Anasuya Sengupta for The Shameless

Best Actor:
Abou Sangaré for The Story of Souleymane (L’histoire de Souleymane)

Youth Award:
Holy Cow (Vingt Dieux) directed by Louise Courvoisier

Special Mention:
Norah directed by Tawfik Alzaidi

That’s all the big winners at Cannes this year. Congrats to all of the 2024 festival films! As for my thoughts, oh this is fantastic!! Great picks!! By the end of the festival, I was rooting for Anora, or Emilia Perez, or The Seed of the Sacred Fig to win. And they all got some prize!! The rest of the Main Competition selection in Cannes this year was rather lackluster – a big batch of mediocre or bad films to start, along with a few good ones that weren’t the greatest. Not exactly a banner year – most of it was a big let down. It wasn’t until these three debuted that I started to think we might have a real winner now. I couldn’t be happier for Sean Baker’s victory!! What a moment. I also loved Black Dog, one of my faves in the Un Certain Regard section, and not just because I love dogs but it’s also a really wonderful film (read my full review). Two other stand-outs: The Substance (which did win an award) and The Girl with the Needle, which premiered on the first night last week to mixed reviews, though I think it’s an impressive film (with a score that I am still thinking about 12 days later). Keep an eye out for all of these winners from Cannes + many more from the selection.

The 2024 jury was lead by American actor / filmmaker Greta Gerwig as President, with: Ebru Ceylan, Lily Gladstone, Eva Green, Nadine Labaki, J.A. Bayona, Pierfrancesco Favino, Hirokazu Kore-eda, Omar Sy. This brings us to the end of our 2024 updates, another year covering Cannes wraps up with the festival awards.

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