For the second time in six years — and only the fourth in its 78-year history — the movie that cinched the Palme d’Or at Cannes went on to win best picture at the Oscars.

When it happened to “Parasite,” it was easy to look on that as a fluke. Not since “No Country for Old Men” (another film launched at Cannes) had a genre film earned the Academy’s top prize. And of course, no South Korean movie had ever won (or even so much as been nominated) for best picture before.

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But the triumph of “Anora” this year suggests a possible pattern … or perhaps, the inevitable result of a concerted effort by the Academy to diversify and globalize its membership (a move that inevitably benefits international and non-English-language cinema at the Oscars). Either way, the celebrated film festival — which takes place every May along France’s Côte d’Azur — has clearly been giving Venice a run for its money in attracting the kind of movies the Academy takes seriously.

That power shift — namely, challenging the perception that premiering on the Croisette in Cannes could be a liability come Oscar season, while a bow on the Lido in Venice positioned films (like “Birdman,” “Spotlight” and “The Shape of Water”) for successful campaigns — makes this morning’s announcement of the 2025 official selection doubly intriguing. Among the films tapped for competition, could we be looking at a future Oscar winner?

It’s probably the wrong way to look at the Cannes lineup, which gives auteurs — who make art for reasons other than trophies or box office success — a respected platform on which to launch their latest offerings. But it’s surely a welcome development for Cannes, whose official X feed still hasn’t updated to reflect this morning’s press conference, cluttered instead with congratulatory tweets for the many international awards won by films featured in the 2024 Cannes lineup. The festival has been losing key sponsorship coin in the years since the COVID-19 pandemic, and Oscar prestige (and anything that draws top international stars) goes a long way in wooing back the big brands.

So, what to make of the official selection? Like all festivals, Cannes is limited by what’s available, though top dog Thierry Frémaux gets first crack at any movie looking to premiere in such a context — a number nearing 3,000 this year. (That was confirmed to me by Variety freelancer Jessica Kiang, who joined the Berlin Film Festival programming team this year, and who wasn’t happy that Cannes had poached one of her favorites after it had been invited to Berlin.)

Not every movie wants the exposure. For a time, Hollywood studios got cold feet about debuting at Cannes, where critics can be harsh to commercial movies (like Kevin Costner’s ill-received “Horizon: An American Saga”). But Tom Cruise isn’t shy, returning to the Croisette (where he screened “Top Gun: Maverick” in 2022) with franchise capper “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning” this year.

A blockbuster like that obviously isn’t an Oscar contender, although the future looks bright for the 19 films selected for competition this year (a figure that could climb as high as 22, Frémaux suggested today). It’s a crop heavy with American talent: Wes Anderson and his ever-growing ensemble will be there with “The Phoenician Scheme,” Ari Aster brings his Western “Eddington,” Kelly Reichardt has the art heist movie “The Mastermind” and Richard Linklater pays homage to the French New Wave with “Nouvelle Vague” (pictured below), about the making of Jean-Luc Godard’s “Breathless.”

Nouvelle Vague (New Wave)

Barely an hour after the Paris-based presser, Spike Lee took to social media to announce that he’d also been invited, claiming his film “Highest 2 Lowest” (inspired by Akira Kurosawa’s “High and Low,” and hopefully better than his “Old Boy” reimagining) would screen out of competition. Sounds like another case of Lee jumping the gun with Cannes: Let’s not forget how he spoiled the 2021 awards ceremony, when he was president of the jury, by announcing the Palme d’Or winner first.

Reichardt is just one of six women in competition this year — a respectable number, but still far from the #5050×2020 parity demanded in 2016. Julia Ducournau (whose “Titane” won the Palme from Lee four years back) returns with “Alpha,” which co-stars the two best actors of their generation in any language, Golshifteh Farahani and Tahar Rahim. That’s the film I’m most excited about, even if Ducournau’s aesthetic can be a bit extreme for my taste (although it’ll be hard to top Coralie Fargeat’s “The Substance” last year in that respect).

When it came time to announce Un Certain Regard (the parallel section reserved for younger directors and slightly more experimental work, where actors Harris Dickinson and Scarlett Johansson’s directorial debuts will premiere), Frémaux described a return to genre cinema in the films they’d selected. That seems less evident in the main competition, where new features from well-established auteurs — such as Jafar Panahi’s “It Was Just an Accident” and “Young Mothers” from the Dardenne brothers — play alongside less familiar names, including a few, I confess, to being completely unfamiliar with (like Spanish directors Carla Simon and Oliver Laxe).

Personally, I see these less-familiar inclusions as encouraging — a sign that the Cannes selection team is doing its job of watching everything and choosing what they feel to be best, as opposed to simply going with the safe (or predictable) choices. At the same time, it’s always exciting to imagine what proven filmmakers might have in the way of follow-up projects. I’m personally looking forward to “Plan 75” director and 2022 Camera d’Or winner Chie Hayakawa’s second feature (“Renoir”), as well as new films from Brazilian helmer Kleber Mendonça Filho (“The Secret Agent”) and “The Worst Person in the World” auteur Joachim Trier (“Sentimental Value”).

Even sight unseen, I bet all three prove to be serious contenders come Oscar time. But what do I know about such things? A year ago, it would have struck me as inconceivable that Netflix would spend upwards of $50 million trying to convince the world that “Emilia Pérez” was an Oscar frontrunner. (At Cannes, where the identity-crisis musical premiered, no one was treating it like the best anything.) This year, Chilean director Sebastián Lelio, who made a superior trans-themed movie with “A Fantastic Woman,” is bringing a politically charged musical called “The Wave.” Color me curious about that one.

I’m also dying to see “The Triplets of Belleville” director Sylvain Chomet’s latest animated feature, “A Magnificent Life,” a biopic of French director Marcel Pagnol that will bow in Cannes. Last year, Frémaux stuck his neck out by putting Michel Hazanavicius’ Holocaust-themed “The Most Precious of Cargoes” in competition. I quite admired that film and somewhat cynically predicted it would win the Oscar (for animated feature), mostly because of the subject matter. I never could have imagined that the Latvian-made “Flow,” which debuted under the radar in Un Certain Regard, would go on to make such an impression with the Academy.

But after seeing multiple Oscar wins for “Anora,” “Emilia Pérez,” “Flow” and “The Substance” — and an equally spectacular Razzie showing by Francis Ford Coppola’s “Megalopolis” — Hollywood’s sure to be watching this year’s selection with heightened interest.

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