Iranian dissident filmmaker Jafar Panahi received the top honor for 'It Was a Simple Accident.'
After 12 days packed to the gills with some of the best cinematic offerings to be found around the world, the jury of the 2025 Cannes Film Festival announced this edition's big winners.
French screen icon and jury president Juliette Binoche announced the winner of the coveted Palme d'Or at the star-studded closing ceremony on Saturday. Jafar Panahi -- the Iranian dissident filmmaker who has been arrested, jailed, and banned from filmmaking numerous times in his home country due to his powerful and provocative work -- took home the top prize. It was Panahi's first time back at Cannes in over 20 years after a 15-year travel ban imposed on him by the Iranian government was lifted in 2023.
Panahi accepted the award from Binoche and co-presenter Cate Blanchett.
"What's most important now is our country and the freedom of our country," the prolific 64-year-old writer, director, and editor said in his acceptance speech. "Let us join forces. No one should dare tell us what kind of clothes we should wear, what we should do, or what we should not do."
The other big winners at this year's edition of Cannes included Danish-born, Norwegian filmmaker Joachim Trier's Sentimental Value, tipped by many as a shoo-in for the Palme. The family drama starring Elle Fanning, Stellan Skarsgård, and Renate Reinsve -- the star of Trier's previous, highly-lauded 2022 film The Worst Person in the World -- took home the Grand Prix, the fest's most prestigious award behind the Palme.
The Jury Prize, often awarded to early-career filmmakers and films with a greater degree of experimental verve, was split this year between Galician filmmaker Oliver Laxe's desert-tripping odyssey Sirât, and the form-bending, century-spanning Sound of Falling, from rising German director Mascha Schilinski.
Joining Binoche on the jury were two American actors, Halle Berry and Jeremy Strong; Payal Kapadia, the Indian filmmaker whose All We Imagine as Light won last year's Grand Prix; Alba Rohrwacher, the Italian star of many Cannes premieres and sister to Grand Prix and Best Screenplay winner Alice Rohrwacher; the prolific Korean auteur Hong Sang-soo; Moroccan writer Leïla Slimani; Dieudo Hamadi, the Congolese filmmaker whose Downstream to Kinshasa became the first film from the Democratic Republic of the Congo to compete at Cannes in 2020; and the Mexican master director Carlos Reygadas, who has won several prizes at previous editions of the festival.
Narcos fans will be thrilled to see Pablo Escobar himself, Brazilian actor Wagner Moura, listed among the big winners as the recipient of the Best Actor prize. Moura stars as Marcelo, a tech expert desperate to escape hitmen during Carnival in the Brazilian metropole of Recife in The Secret Agent, the Competition entry that also won Kleber Mendonça Filho the Best Director prize.
Read on for the full list of winners at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival.
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The Cst Award for Best Artist-Technician is presented to Ruben Impens, director of photography, and Stéphane Thiébaut, mixer of Alpha, directed by Julia Ducournau
The Cst Award for Best Young Female Film Technician is presented to Éponine Momenceau, director of photography of Connemara, directed by Alex Lutz
More information on each winner can be found on the Cannes Film Festival official site.