Before Parasite was an Oscar winner, it was a Palme d'Or. Before Moonlight was a cultural landmark, it was a Toronto premiere. Before Xavier Dolan was an auteur, he was a twenty-year-old at Cannes with a debut film and no credentials. Film festivals have always been where the industry meets its own future, awkwardly, not always graciously, but consistently ahead of everywhere else. The question is why. Why are festivals structurally better at discovering new voices than the m

The Palme d'Or has gone to films governments tried to suppress. To directors working in exile. To stories with no commercial home and no obvious audience. Cannes has never optimised for what sells. It has consistently, sometimes stubbornly, sometimes infuriatingly, optimised for what matters.