If you’ve ever wandered the Croisette during the Cannes Film Festival, dodging beachside photo calls and espresso-fueled critics, you might’ve seen a curious grid published by Screen International. It’s called the Screen Jury Grid, and it’s one of those festival rituals that feels both essential and oddly precarious.
A group of hand-picked international critics sit through every Competition film and assign it a score—up to four stars. The grid is then updated daily, printed in columns like horse race odds, with films rising and falling as critics weigh in. What you’re left with is not a review, not exactly—but something more ephemeral: the critical temperature of the festival, taken in real time.
So far, only six Competition titles have unspooled at this year’s Cannes, with 22 slated to screen by the time the curtain falls on May 24. But already, one thing seems certain: we may have found our basement. Ari Aster’s “Eddington” has landed with a thud on the Screen Jury Grid, scraping together a 1.5 out of 4 stars —a score that suggests bafflement more than outright disdain.
Now, numbers aren’t everything—especially at Cannes, where a film can be booed at breakfast and hailed as a masterpiece by dinner. But that 1.5 isn’t just a number; it’s a signal flare. It tells us that Aster’s latest is provoking strong reactions, just not the kind most directors hope for.
Now, some might bristle at the idea of reducing a film—art, emotion, sweat—to a mere star rating, and I sympathize. But what the grid captures, in its own imperfect way, is that delicious hum of disagreement that gives Cannes its heartbeat. It’s rarely predictive of the Palme d’Or (and thank goodness for that), but it often tells us where the critical conversation is headed.
Some years, a film no one expected breaks out; other times, a so-called “master” crashes to the bottom. The grid reminds us that cinema is alive and, just as importantly, that criticism is too.
