Romanian filmmaker Cristian Mungiu won his second Palme d’Or at the 79th edition of the Cannes Film Festival on Saturday night for Fjord, extending US distributor Neon’s record run at the festival.
The victory marks Neon’s seventh consecutive Palme d’Or winner at Cannes. The distributor’s streak began with Bong Joon Ho’s Parasite in 2019 and continued with Julia Ducournau’s Titane (2021), Ruben Östlund’s Triangle of Sadness (2022), Justine Triet’s Anatomy of a Fall (2023), Sean Baker’s Anora (2024) and Jafar Panahi’s It Was Just an Accident (2025).
Neon entered this year’s festival with pre-festival deals for six competition titles — All of a Sudden, Fjord, Hope, Paper Tiger, Sheep in the Box and The Unknown.
Fjord is Mungiu’s first feature film in English and Norwegian instead of Romanian. The director had earlier won the Palme d’Or in 2007 for 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days.
The competition jury this year was headed by South Korean director Park Chan-wook and included filmmaker Chloe Zhao, actor Demi Moore and actor Stellan Skarsgård.
Actress Tilda Swinton presented the Palme d’Or during the ceremony held at the Grand Théâtre Lumière.
In other awards, Lukas Dhont’s World War I drama Coward saw actors Emmanuel Macchia and Valentin Campagne jointly win the best actor prize.
Best actress honours were shared by Virginie Efira and Japan’s Okamoto Tao for their performances in Hamaguchi Ryusuke’s All of a Sudden.
Emmanuel Marre won the best screenplay award for A Man of His Time.
Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Minotaur received the Grand Prix, while Valeska Grisebach’s The Dreamed Adventure won the jury prize.
The best director award was shared by Spanish filmmakers Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi for The Black Ball and Polish filmmaker Pawel Pawlikowski for Fatherland.
Marie Clémentine Dusabejambo won the Camera d’Or for best first feature for Ben’Imana, while Federico Luis received the short film Palme d’Or for For the Opponents. Teenage Sex And Death At Camp Miasma won the Queer Palme.
The ceremony also featured an honorary Palme d’Or for Barbra Streisand. Unable to attend due to a knee injury, Streisand delivered her acceptance speech through a video message, with Isabelle Huppert presenting the award.
