Cannes Film Festival: A Quick Guide to Festival History
The first Cannes Film Festival took place in 1946, and except for the cancellation years of 1948, 1950, and 1968, a diverse roster of international filmmaking has been screened and honored every year since. 1949 marked the first year in which a single film was honored by the festival jury as the year's best. In 1955, this honor was officially christened the Palme d'Or, or Golden Palm, a title that was briefly retired from 1964 through 1974. Despite the name changes, a top prize has been bestowed upon one or, in the case of jury ties, two films every year since. (Special Jury Prizes and Jury Prizes are often conferred as runner-up designations or as consolation prizes to divisive entries; confusingly, when the Grand Prize of the Festival was re-renamed the Palme d’Or after 1974, the runner-up citation was christened the Grand Prize of the Jury.)
What follows is a list of the top prize winners from each year of the festival's history. Clicking on the individual titles will take you further down the page, where I have supplied an excerpted list of other high-profile contenders from each year's Main Competition. Obviously, my own view of "high profile" is skewed toward the films, directors, and national traditions most familiar to me. The entire list of contenders for each year is supplied through a link to the official Cannes Film Festival website. Please e-mail me if you feel that one of the Main Competition selections from a given year deserves to be included here as an annual highlight.
Please Click Here for My Reviews and Rankings of the Palme d'Or-Winning Films.