With the most prestigious film festival in the world happening this month, we celebrate world cinema with our collection of award winners from past editions of the glitzy event.

Anatomy of a Fall

One of the most talked-about movies of 2023, this French legal thriller directed by Justine Triet won the 2023 Palme d’Or and went on to win Best Adapted Screenplay at the 2024 Oscars. The movie centres on novelist Sandra (Sandra Hüller), who stands trial after her husband, lecturer Samuel (Samuel Theis), is found lying dead in the snow near their chalet. Alongside her lawyer, Vincent (Swann Arlaud), she faces off against a relentless prosecutor (Antoine Reinartz) as all eyes are on the trial and every detail of Sandra and Samuel’s relationship is excavated.

Among the film’s impressive list of accolades is a more unusual award: Messi, which performed as Snoop, the guide dog of Sandra’s sight-impaired son Daniel (Milo Machado Graner), won the Palm Dog (awarded at Cannes to dog actors).

The Zone of Interest

This historical movie is a striking portrait of the banality of evil. Adapted from Martin Amis’ novel of the same name, The Zone of Interest is set in 1943 and follows Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel), a Nazi SS commandant overseeing the Auschwitz Concentration Camp. He lives with his wife Hedwig (Sandra Hüller) and their five children in an idyllic house next to the camp, trying to shield their children from the horrifying acts that Rudolf is perpetrating. While Amis’ novel features fictional characters inspired by the Hösses, writer-director Jonathan Glazer opted to make the movie about the Hösses themselves, researching them for two years. At the 2023 Cannes Film Festival, the movie won the Grand Prix (the second-highest honour behind the Palme d’Or), the Cannes Soundtrack Award, and the International Federation of Film Critics Prize. It also went on to win the Best International Feature and Best Sound awards at the 2024 Oscars.

The Taste of Things

This delectable historical romance is a feast for the senses. Set in the French countryside in 1889, The Taste of Things revolves around a long-term romance between chef Eugénie (Juliette Binoche) and gourmand Dodin Bouffant (Benoît Magimel). Dodin is enamoured of Eugénie’s cooking and has asked her to marry him many times, but she prefers things the way they are. He tries to win her over by cooking for her instead of the other way around. This gently moving film is written and directed by French-Vietnamese filmmaker Trần Anh Hùng, who won the Best Director prize at Cannes in 2023.

Monster

One of Japan’s most prominent indie filmmakers, Hirokazu Kore-eda, follows up his critically acclaimed film Broker with this chilling and unexpectedly emotional mystery thriller. In a rural lakeside town, Saori Mugino (Sakura Andō) is a single mother raising her fifth-grader son Minato (Sōya Kurokawa). After Minato starts behaving strangely, Saori begins to suspect his teacher, Mr Hori (Eita Nagayama), of mistreating him. After a rainstorm, Minato disappears, casting suspicion on Mr Hori. Monster is a character-driven mystery that makes the audience gradually understand and empathise with its characters through its shifting viewpoints. The film won the Best Screenplay and Queer Palm awards at Cannes in 2023 and is also the final film scoring work of the late renowned composer Ryuichi Sakamoto.

Parasite

This dark comedy thriller, which astutely and scathingly comments on class inequality in present-day South Korea, took the world by storm. Directed by Bong Joon-ho, Parasite tells the tragicomic story of two families colliding: the impoverished Kims led by Kim Ki-taek (Song Kang-ho) and the wealthy Parks led by Park Dong-ik (Lee Sun-kyun). The Kims gradually infiltrate the Parks’ lives, but as they latch on to the latter to gain access to an affluent lifestyle previously out of their reach, things soon take a dark turn. Parasite premiered at Cannes in 2019 and won the Palme d’Or, becoming the first Korean film to nab Cannes’ top prize and the first movie to get a unanimous vote from the jury since 2013’s Blue Is the Warmest Colour. It went on to win Best Picture at the 2020 Oscars.