What is the highest-grossing movie to have won the Palme d’Or at Cannes?
The Cannes Film Festival is an industry event for cinema that typically showcases films with critics and peers in mind. As such, movies that have managed to scoop the biggest prize at the festival, the Palme d’Or, aren’t usually celebrated for their box office takings.
As the film industry developed over the previous century, a marked division began to emerge between commercial blockbusters and critical darlings. Nothing has demonstrated this dichotomy better in recent years than New Hollywood pioneer Martin Scorsese’s derogatory comments towards multi-billion dollar Marvel movie franchises.
Yet, there are still some films that manage to effectively bridge the divide between arthouse cinema and box office-breaking mass entertainment. Films that won over the notoriously hard-to-please audiences and judges at Cannes, at the same time, brought in the bucks at public screenings around the world.
One such film was Michael Moore’s 2004 documentary about the United States of America’s so-called “war on terror” and the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Capturing the zeitgeist with movie critics and ordinary moviegoers alike, Fahrenheit 9/11 grossed over $220million at the box office and became only the second documentary to win the Palme d’Or at Cannes.
The movie received a standing ovation that lasted between 15 and 20 minutes at the end of its premiere screening, one of the longest in the history of the festival. Only 2006’s Pan’s Labyrinth by director Guillermo del Toro has received a longer round of applause for a screening on the French Riviera.
Yet neither of these films claims the title of the highest-grossing Palme d’Or winner in history. This honour belongs to a more recent winner of the award.
A trailblazer for East-Asian cinema
Between May 21st, 2019, and February 9th, 2020, Bong Joon-ho had quite the year. He received three Academy Awards for ‘Best Director’, ‘Best Original Screenplay’ and, best of all, ‘Best Picture’. In fact, his movie became the first foreign language to win the top prize at the Oscars.
In addition it grossed a whopping $262m in cinemas. And, of course, it won the most-feted prize of all for any director in pursuit of esteem. The South Korean satirical film Parasite won the 2019 Palme d’Or. Then, by the end of the year, it had taken more at the box office than any other winner of the main prize at the Cannes Film Festival.
It’s not bad for the first Korean film to be included in the major competition category of either of the Western world’s two most prestigious award ceremonies. Since then, three films featuring the Korean language have followed suit: Minari, Drive My Car, and Past Lives. Drive My Car also premiered at Cannes in 2021, where it received an award for ‘Best Screenplay’.
