A Closer Look at the Cannes 2025 Critics’ Grids

The 78th Cannes Film Festival wrapped this past Saturday, and Hammer To Nail’s newest contributor, Savina Petkova, attended the festival and covered some of its buzzed-about and under-the-radar titles, which you can read reviews of HERE. We at HtN have also been keeping track of what our fellow critics have been saying about these arthouse gems and possible 2025 awards contenders. Every year, our friends over at Screen International (Screen) and IONCINEMA (ION) each assemble a critics panel featuring publications and writers from all over the world. Each critic rates the film on a star-based system (Screen out of 4 and ION out of 5). Their assessments are tallied up, giving each competition title an average rating.

See the completed critics’ jury grids below. No critics appear on both lists.

IONCINEMA’s Cannes Critics Panel’s Top 10 Rated Films:

1. Sirǎt (Oliver Laxe) – 3.9
2. The Secret Agent (Kleber Mendonça Filho) – 3.6
3. It Was Just An Accident (Jafar Panahi) – 3.5
4. Sentimental Value (Joachim Trier) – 3.5
5. Nouvelle Vague (Richard Linklater) – 3.3
6. Young Mothers (The Dardenne Brothers) – 3.3
7. Sound of Falling (Mascha Schilinski) – 3.2
8. Resurrection (Bi Gan) – 3.2
9. The History of Sound (Oliver Hermanus) – 3.0
10. *Tie* Woman and Child (Saeed Roustaee) – 2.8; Dossier 137 (Dominik Moll) – 2.8

Screen International’s Critics Panel’s Top 10 Rated Films:

1. It Was Just An Accident (Jafar Panahi) – 3.1
2. Two Prosecutors (Sergei Loznitsa) – 3.1
3. Sound of Falling (Mascha Schilinski) – 2.8
4. The Secret Agent (Kleber Mendonça Filho) – 2.8
5. Nouvelle Vague (Richard Linklater) – 2.7
6. Romeria (Carla Simon) – 2.7
7. Sentimental Value (Joachim Trier) – 2.7
8. Young Mothers (The Dardenne Brothers) – 2.7
9. The Mastermind (Kelly Reichardt) – 2.7
10. *Tie* Sirǎt (Oliver Laxe) – 2.5; Renoir (Chie Hayakawa) – 2.5; Die, My Love (Lynne Ramsay) – 2.5

Both critics groups had high praise for Jafar Panahi’s Palme d’Or-winning revenge thriller, It Was Just An Accident. It charted as Screen’s highest-rated film (along with Sergei Loznitsa’s Two Prosecutors), while IONCINEMA has it tied for their 3rd highest-rated. ION’s No. 1 rated title was Oliver Laxe’s Jury Prize-winning road thriller, Sirât, scoring a tremendous rating of 3.9 (out of 5). Screen, on the other hand, gave it a 2.5, which places it around 10th place on their chart. A startling difference.

The Secret Agent came in 2nd place on ION, and tied for 3rd on Screen. The ION critics also loved Sentimental Value, tying with Panahi for 3rd. On Screen, Joachim Trier’s latest ended up with a 2.7 rating, which was good enough for a 5-way tie for 5th through 9th place. Richard Linklater’s Nouvelle Vague and the Dardenne Brothers’ Young Mothers had matching scores on both charts (2.7 on Screen and 3.3 on ION), placing them in the top portion, if not the peak of both critics’ charts.

The lowest-rated film on ION’s chart is Julia Ducournau’s polarizing Alpha, which scored a 1.9 average. Screen International has Mario Martone’s docudrama Fuori placed at the bottom with a 1.1 average rating.

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