Cannes 2. 01. 7: Palme d'Or predictions . The first, charitable view is that while festivals have the responsibility of selecting good films, they are ultimately at the mercy of what's in the pipeline. In the case of a festival as prestigious as Cannes, which, more than most festivals, has its pick of whatever it wants, a weak year can only be a function of bad timing. Great films simply weren't ready. The other point of view on programming is that if a festival can't find enough top- notch movies to fill out a 1. The festival isn't looking hard enough.

Cannes is chided annually for lacking gender, racial, and geographic diversity in its competition, and homogeneity is certainly part of the problem. But this year's competition, more than most, felt overwhelmed by a kind of tyranny of classicism. Anything too experimental, too outr. Maybe looking to new auteurs is the way to go. Or even reshuffle your own lineups: Valeska Grisebach's . Ditto Sean Baker's terrific .

Ben Kenigsberg makes his predictions for the 2017 Cannes awards.

The closest equivalent in competition, Josh and Benny Safdie's . Kvetch, kvetch. No movie in this year's competition approached the awfulness of . But even that competition yielded Abbas Kiarostami's masterpiece . Nothing in 2. 01. To be fair, in a sea of bad- to- pretty- good, there was still room for some competition films to be underrated. Brian Selznick's book .

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Michael Haneke's . And Ruben Ostl. Sunday night's big prize may be less of a Palme d'Or than a Palme Default. Before I get to my predictions, I should note that there are three competition titles I haven't seen: Michel Hazanavicius's . Even so, it should be noted that the jury president, Pedro Almod. He's competed five times and has always gone home Palme- less.

Every other director in competition has yet to win a Palme. Palme d'Or: . His latest, a portrait of a separated couple whose child goes missing, pulls off several difficult balances. It's classical and modern, accessible and ambiguous, austere and beautiful, leisurely yet compelling, and allegorical yet concrete. It's the sort of film, in other words, that could bridge divides across a jury. As a movie that seems likely to grow with repeat viewings, it also has one eye on eternity. Advertisement. Grand Jury Prize (second place): . It's stylistically quite similar to .

But it's almost certain to win something, so I'm placing it here. Jury Prize: Sergei Loznitsa, . It could go to anything, but Loznitsa's rigorously controlled portrait of a woman trying to find out what's happened to her imprisoned husband in a bottomless pit of corruption in Russia is the sort of film that will impress formally minded jurors and repel anyone eager for a film to hit more than one note over two and a half hours.

Best Director: Lynne Ramsay, . A spare, glancing portrait of a bearded, laconic New York man (Joaquin Phoenix) who rescues young women from sex traffickers, it's as oblique as . Working a typically fragmented style, Ramsay (. The jury may also want to send a message to the festival by giving Best Director to a woman—particularly since she actually did the competition's best directing. Best Actress: Nicole Kidman, .

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And it has enough defenders that it will probably prevail somewhere. Kidman, as the matriarch of a girls' boarding school in 1. Buy Rumble (2017) Online. Virginia, has the showiest role.

She was also at Cannes this year with four films. Forget her (typically) excellent acting; anyone who endures that many press conferences deserves an award just for good sportsmanship. Possible upsets: Diane Kruger in Fatih Akin's . Possible upsets: Claes Bang for his layered self- effacement as a museum director in . In 1. 98. 7, jurors gave an award to an out- of- competition film, Federico Fellini's . In 2. 00. 7, Gus Van Sant received a more conventional award for .

Cannes, for all its flaws, remains fervently devoted to superb theaters and projection. Next Article: Cannes 2. Palme de Whiskers. Previous Article: Cannes 2. In the Fade,” “You Were Never Really Here,” “Directions”Reveal Commentscomments powered by.