Once again, it’s time to Moneyball Da Movies. That’s right, festival season means one thing and one thing only: measuring the standing ovations each film gets and then using that as data point #1 in building your MFL team come September. All the trades “count those claps” (in the words of Deadline), because as we all know, more applause = better movie. Last year, the most clapped film of Cannes was The Substance, which got 11 minutes of ovation. That did actually correlate to beaucoup noms and wins for the MUBI original throughout awards season (though Demi Moore wound up losing out on the most anticipated statuette).
Just like we did last year at Venice, we are taking averages on the timing for these O’s. Usually, Variety tends to be a little stingier than The Hollywood Reporter and Deadline. Wanna see our math? Too bad! But please trust, math has been done. Here are the longest standing ovations at Cannes 2025, ranked from shortest to longest.
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Sound of Falling only heard the sound of clapping for ~4 minutes
Vulture is calling Sound of Falling potentially the best film of the festival, but you wouldn’t know it from the standing ovation. This is the second film from writer-director Mascha Schilinski. Maybe she’ll get longer O’s the longer she’s at it.
Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning: a stuntacular 5.8 minutes
The big three trade’s clap count on Tom Cruise’s farewell to Ethan Hunt shows exactly why we take an average for our ranking. Deadline claims folks were on their feet fr for FR for 7.5 minutes, while THR says it wasn’t even 5. But both agree that people were whooping it up during the screening.
