Film Budgets

As The Cannes Film Festival approaches we decided to take a look back at the winners of the ‘Palme d’Or Award’ since the turn of the century.   We have listed the year, film title, director, country of origin in order to review what were the  film budgets of each production that the jury selected as the best film of the year.

We wanted to know, is there a correlation between the size of the movie budget and the best film selection?  Are lower film budgets preferred to higher cost motion pictures?   Did one country dominate that last decade in terms of garnering the most favorite films?

The FilmBudget.com Cannes Film Festival Winners Film Budget List

2000 Dancer in the Dark  Lars von Trier  Denmark                                 $12,500,000

2001The Son’s Room (La stanza del figlio) Nanni Moretti Italy                   n/a

2002 The Pianist (Pianista) Roman Polanski Poland                             $ 35,000,000

2003 Elephant Gus Van Sant United States                                                $  3,000,000

2004 Fahrenheit 9/11 [7] Michael Moore  United States                        $  6,000,000

2005 L’enfant (The Child) Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne Belgium    €  3,600,000

2006 The Wind That Shakes the Barley [unanimously] Ken Loach  United Kingdom                                 $  8,000,000

2007 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (4 luni, 3 săptămâni şi 2 zile) Cristian Mungiu * Romania           €    600,000

2008 The Class (Entre les murs) [unanimously] Laurent Cantet  France                                                        €  2,480,000

2009 The White Ribbon (Das weiße Band, Eine deutsche Kindergeschichte) Michael Haneke Austria €12,000,000

2010 Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (ลุงบุญมีระลึกชาติ / Lung Bunmi Raluek Chat) Apichatpong Weerasethakul * Thailand                 n/a

2011 The Tree of Life Terrence Malick  United States                                                                                             $32,000,000

Results:  Of the nine years for which film budget data was available the average budget level was determined to be around $13,454,000 (excluding currency fluctuations and utilizing only the current year value of funds.)

While the two films with data unavailable would most likely have pulled down the average, it remains fair to say that the level of production costs associated with the last decade of Palme d’Or winners was at the higher end of the ‘art house’ range.

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