Last year, in IndieWire’s 2024 Cannes Critics Survey, there was startling unanimity, with Sean Baker’s “Anora” winning Best Film, Best Screenplay, and Best Director. The 2025 Critics Poll couldn’t be less unanimous, with different films topping each of those categories this time. (Read the IndieWire’s staff’s own picks for the best films of Cannes 2025 here.) Even though the 48 critics who voted, representing four continents, largely overlapped with those who voted last year (see Page 2 for the list of all who participated), they seemed insistent upon spreading the wealth this time. For instance, Bi Gan’s “Resurrection” topped the Best Director voting, without appearing at all on the Best Film or Best Screenplay lists.
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Best Film in this 2025 edition of the Cannes Critics Survey went to Oliver Laxe’s “Sirât,” the French-Spanish co-production filmed in Morocco about a father searching for his daughter, who goes missing while attending a music festival in the southern part of that country. Widely hailed as beguiling, unexpected, and unlike anything else, “Sirât” also had Pedro Almodóvar as a producer. It was not a runaway win, though: Of the 48 voters, 11 named it Best Film, with 10 votes going to Jafar Panahi’s “It Was Just an Accident,” and Joachim Trier’s “Sentimental Value” getting nine. The voters were not all of one mind this year.
“Sirât” was one of Neon’s three pickups from the festival itself for North America — along with “It Was Just an Accident” and Kleber Mendonça Filho’s “The Secret Agent — and in addition to the multiple titles it had acquired prior to the festival, such as Trier’s “Sentimental Value,” which IndieWire’s Anne Thompson thinks will be an Oscar contender in multiple categories. Needless to say, Neon is well represented on the list of films below.
As are Competition titles overall. And among those, the winners Juliette Binoche’s jury picked are represented even more still. Of the top five named in Best Film below, all received an award: “Sirât” and “Sound of Falling” tied for the Cannes Jury Prize. Runner-up on our survey, “It Was Just an Accident,” of course won the Palme d’Or itself. “Sentimental Value,” which also topped our Best Screenplay list, won the Grand Prix. And “The Secret Agent” won Best Director for Kleber Mendonça Filho.
The one major point of deviation was the jury’s Best Screenplay winner, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne’s “Young Mothers,” not appearing anywhere in our top five for that category.
Only three titles from a section other than Competition appear below: The Un Certain Regard entries “Urchin,” Harris Dickinson’s debut feature that topped our Best First Film list, “My Father’s Shadow,” and “Pillion.” And only one film from any of the parallel sections is represented below, the Directors’ Fortnight title “The President’s Cake,” which also won the Camera d’Or and placed second on our best first film list.
Read the winners in every category below.
BEST FILM
1. “Sirât,” Oliver Laxe
2. “It Was Just an Accident,” Jafar Panahi
3. “Sentimental Value,” Joachim Trier
4. “Sound of Falling,” Mascha Schilinski
5. “The Secret Agent,” Kleber Mendonça Filho
BEST SCREENPLAY
1. “Sentimental Value,” Eskil Vogt and Joachim Trier
2. “The Secret Agent,” Kleber Mendonça Filho
3. “Two Prosecutors,” Sergei Loznitsa
4. “It Was Just an Accident,” Jafar Panahi
5. “Sirât,” Santiago Fillol and Oliver Laxe
BEST DIRECTOR
1. “Resurrection,” Bi Gan
2. “It Was Just an Accident,” Jafar Panahi
3. “The Secret Agent,” Kleber Mendonça Filho
4. “Sound of Falling,” Mascha Schilinski
5. “Die My Love,” Lynne Ramsey
BEST FIRST FILM
1. “Urchin,” Harris Dickinson
2. “The President’s Cake,” Hasan Hadi
3. TIE: “Pillion,” Harry Lighton/”My Father’s Shadow,” Akinola Davies, Jr.
Click to Page 2 for the full list of critics who voted.
Continue Reading: 2025 Cannes Critics Survey: The Best Films and Performances, as Picked by 48 Critics
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