Phoenix 24
Cinema’s greatest symbol begins in silence.
Geneva, May 2026
Before Cannes becomes a global theater of cameras, celebrities and red-carpet spectacle, one of its most powerful symbols is shaped far from the noise. The Palme d’Or, the festival’s highest prize, is created in Switzerland by Chopard, whose workshops have carried the responsibility for nearly three decades. The trophy’s prestige does not come only from the films it crowns, but from the rare convergence of cinema, jewelry, ritual and artisanal discipline.
Caroline Scheufele, Chopard’s co-president and artistic director, has become central to that transformation. Her connection with the trophy began almost by accident, after a meeting with former Cannes president Pierre Viot opened the door to redesigning a prize that needed more elegance, movement and symbolic force. What followed was not merely a luxury intervention, but the reinvention of a cultural object that had to remain recognizable while acquiring a more contemporary aura.
The process begins with gold, heat and precision. Chopard says the Palme d’Or is made with ethical 18-karat gold, which is cast, shaped, cleaned, filed, finished and polished through a sequence of highly controlled manual operations. Each stage can take hours, and the final result is mounted on a unique piece of rock crystal, making every trophy slightly singular despite its iconic continuity.
The detail that reveals Chopard’s signature is subtle: a small heart at the base of the palm leaf. It is not decorative excess, but a discreet mark of authorship inside an object that belongs symbolically to cinema more than to any brand. That tension explains the trophy’s power. It is luxurious, but not loud; commercial, but almost ceremonial; material, yet inseparable from artistic memory.
The 79th Cannes Film Festival, scheduled from May 12 to 23, will again turn that crafted object into a global verdict. Under the presidency of South Korean filmmaker Park Chan-wook, the jury will decide which film enters the symbolic lineage of winners. By the time the Palme appears on stage, its technical history will disappear behind applause, but that is precisely the point. The best symbols are built so carefully that their labor becomes invisible.
La narrativa también es poder. / Narrative is power too.