Cannes Critics Back La Bola Negra for Palme d'Or
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- Six films — Minotaur, Fjord, The Dreamed Adventure, Fatherland, La Bola Negra, and La Gradiva — have been called back to the Palais for the Cannes closing ceremony, according to festival buzz.
- Both Deadline critics — Pete Hammond and Damon Wise — picked La Bola Negra (Javier Calvo & Javier Ambrossi) for the Palme d'Or and Pawel Pawlikowski's Fatherland for the Jury Prize.
- Park Chan-wook is presiding over the jury, and Hammond suggested a technical achievement prize for his countryman Na Hong-Jin's sprawling sci-fi Hope as a 'tip of the hat' from the jury president.
- James Gray's Paper Tiger, starring Scarlett Johansson, marks the director's sixth time in competition at Cannes with 'not a single prize to the man,' per Hammond.
- Damon Wise flagged Valeska Grisebach's The Dreamed Adventure as his 'stealth bomb,' predicting it for Best Director and noting it could also take Grand Prix and Best Actress.
- Cristian Mungiu's Fjord — from a returning Palme winner — drew some of the festival's strongest buzz, with Hammond predicting it for the Grand Prize.
- Thursday's back-to-back screenings of Spain's La Bola Negra and Belgium's Coward, both centered on the gay experience, received the biggest ovations of the festival, per Hammond.
Why it matters: Two critics landing on the same Palme d'Or pick is rare for a festival Hammond calls 'almost impossible to predict' — he went 2 for 7 last year. Their shared choice, La Bola Negra, received one of the festival's biggest ovations Thursday, and Wise notes Cannes juries often diverge sharply from critics, meaning consensus from Deadline doesn't guarantee consensus from the jury.
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