How Cannes supplanted the fall festivals as the place to launch an Oscar campaign

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If you ask Sean Baker which honor he cherishes the most — the four Oscars he won for writing, directing, producing and editing the 2025 best picture winner “Anora” or the Palme d’Or he took at the Cannes film festival 10 months earlier — you’d need to have a considerable amount of patience as you wait out the long pause as he considers the question.C’mon ...

how do you choose? The Cannes prize started the momentum for Baker’s chaotic Cinderella story.I’m describing the movie, though since Baker had never earned a single Oscar nomination during his celebrated career, it could also describe his own journey to the Oscar record books.

“Winning the Palme was surreal and exciting beyond belief,” Baker told me.“You look at the films and the filmmakers who have won that prize over the years, and it blows your mind.

There’s a reason Cannes is considered the most prestigious film festival in the world.It’s still hard to process that we actually won.”“Anora” was the second Palme d’Or winner to win the best picture Oscar in a five-year stretch, following Bong Joon Ho’s acclaimed 2019 hit “Parasite,” the first non-English-language movie to win motion picture academy’s top prize.The Cannes-to-Oscars pipeline continued this year with Joachim Trier’s family drama “Sentimental Value” and Kleber Mendonça Filho’s political thriller “The Secret Agent” making the best picture cut and “It Was Just an Accident” and “Sirât” each earning two nominations.

Only “Sentimental Value” came away with an Oscar, but Cannes could still boast that it led all festivals with 19 nominations.Movies premiering at Venice picked up 15, while two other fall festivals, Telluride and Toronto, largely programmed the Cannes features, alongside films that didn’t land with voters.

(Telluride did premiere “Hamnet,” which netted eight nominations and a...