Cannes Download.
Big, bold and risky work continues to stand out across Cannes Lions jury rooms, according to Australian jury members.
Presenting on a panel at Advertising Council Australia’s Cannes Download Sydney, BMEOF founder and film juror Micah Walker said the plethora of work meant that good, acceptable pieces of work often got lost before the jury could judge them.
“If you take one step back from being in the room, there's so much film that's submitted that there's actually a pre-jury, so we didn't judge every single piece. The hardest part of Cannes is making the short list,” Walker said.
“The alchemy is always different. There’s different voices, backgrounds, experiences and points of view. We would start judging at 9 am, and finished at 2 am.
“You never get everything you want as a jury. There are disagreements, there are things that people understand, things that you think are great and funny that someone else doesn't.
“You have to trust in that honesty and hope that you have the right kinds of conversations and say your piece.
“It's important for people to not be embarrassed and to stand up and talk about why they think something's great.”
The film category included 1,464 entries and 149 shortlisted. There were 20,000 entries at Cannes.
The Grand Prix went to ‘A Time and a Place’ by Mother for Claude.
“The name 'A Time and a Place' reflects the AI conversation everyone’s having,” Walker said.
“They picked the right director who took the right staff and wrote something really great. So everything about it is a masterclass.
“Whether you doubt the moral code of Claude, to take a position and say we're not going to put ads on there is a good and bold one.
"There's a lot of stuff we saw that was AI that didn't make it through.
“I don't believe the jury work is purely subjective. There should be an understanding of the foundations that make something okay, good, and great, and we have to keep coming back to that.”
However, Revolver ep, partner and Film Craft juror, Pip Smart, said that the jurors come to Film Craft with their initial subjective response.
The Film Craft Grand Prix was awarded to ‘Your Way Out’ by Isle of Any for Coinbase.
“It‘s from there you need to dig down, because a lot of the categories can overlap,” Smart said.
“It's important to make sure that we're awarding work that is doing the hard work for businesses and isn't just award fodder.
“What we were trying to do in Film Craft is inspire people, agencies and clients to continue investing in craft, and so for that we wanted to make sure that the work we awarded was doing exactly that.”
Motion Sickness NZ ECD, founder and Creative B2B juror, Sam Stuchbury, won the 2025 Grand Prix for Good for ‘The Best Place in the World to Have Herpes.’
He recounted needing to present a 10-minute time frame after being shortlisted.
“It was hard for us because most of the jury hadn't heard of a Maori person before, and we were the last presentation of two days, so they were pretty bored,” Stuchbury said.
"We made the call to do the Haka at the start of the presentation, which woke the room.
“It's the only presentation I've ever done where I learnt the presentation word for word and didn't go off the cuff.
“I think that was incredible to try and pitch to a jury that hadn't heard of it, but also a jury you really respected. It was good pressure.”
Closing the panel, Walker posed that there needs to be a balance of excellent work for small projects and large brands.
“Every jury sends a message to the industry in the choices that we make,” Walker said.
“It's important that we show our best on big brands.
“It doesn't mean that all the best work is only ever done by big brands, but I think it's important that we're not only ever doing award-winning work on the stuff that sits on the side.
“It's important to showcase what we're capable of on real problems and real grants.
“It's easy to underestimate how big of a leap you need to take to really stand out in the massive work, and the hardest thing about Cannes is making the shortlist.
“You have to stand out early with what you make. Don't underestimate how difficult it is to really stand up in and amongst so much work.”
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