This is an extended version of the article I wrote for Pipe Dream.

There are three major European Film Festivals: Berlin, Venice, and Cannes. Of those three, Cannes (pronounced “kan”) is the most prestigious. The May, coast-of-France setting attracts both the best arthouse filmmakers in the world and high-wattage stars. February’s Berlin Film Festival features movies that tend to be forgotten by the time critics write their best-of-year lists and the films of Venice are sometimes lost in the shuffle of other fall fests like Toronto and Telluride. Cannes is just right – a date that lets movies marinate in the mind for months before critics sit down to write their lists.

The most famous best-of-year event of cinema is, of course, the Oscars. The Oscars tend to celebrate English-language movies for the most part, and Cannes is an international festival, so Cannes and Oscar have had an interesting relationship over the years. Only two movies have won the top prize at Cannes and repeated that feat with the Academy Award for Best Picture: Billy Wilder’s “The Lost Weekend” for 1945 and Delbert Mann’s “Marty” a decade later.

Those two movies are decades old, but film festivals have played an increasingly large role in the cinema industry in recent years. They are events that spread word-of-mouth, which can lead to increased ticket sales. “Crash,” “The Hurt Locker,” and “The Artist,” all from the last decade, are the only three festival acquisitions to win Best Picture. Furthermore, “No Country for Old Men,” “Slumdog Millionaire,” and “The King’s Speech” all premiered at festivals before winning Best Picture.

“The Artist” and “The Tree of Life” both premiered at Cannes last year, with the latter winning the Palm d’or (the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival) but losing to the former in the Best Picture category at the Oscars. Jean Dujardin won Best Actor at both Cannes and the Oscars. “Midnight in Paris” also had a Cannes premiere and ended up with an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.

At the 65th festival, there’s a staggering eight English-language movies competing for the Palme d’Or, far more than in recent years. Not all of them have release dates yet, but you can expect them to hit theaters stateside by the end of 2012. Most of these movies will inevitably be too highbrow for the Academy’s taste, but here are a few movies competing for the jury’s attention that we might be talking about later this year:

1.      “Moonrise Kingdom” by Wes Anderson

With his heartfelt tones and distinctly quirky humor, Wes Anderson is popular among film lovers and hipsters. His latest film is about a pair of young lovers who flee and prompt a search party to look for them. The movie stars Anderson regulars like Bill Murray and Jason Schwartzman as well as intriguing actors such as Edward Norton, Bruce Willis, and Frances McDormand.

Based on the trailer, this looks like it might be one of Anderson’s best movies yet, among “The Royal Tenenbaums” and “Fantastic Mr. Fox.” The May release date, however, might not help the movie much at the Oscars since the Academy tends to go for movies with fall release dates. Nonetheless, the screenplay, written by Anderson and Roman Coppola, has gotten strong advance buzz, and could end up competing in the Original Screenplay category where “The Royal Tenenbaums” did ten years ago.

2.      “Cosmopolis” by David Cronenberg

David Cronenberg is best-known for his body-horror movies such as 1986’s “The Fly,” but his recent work is more accessible. DeLillo is one of America’s most celebrated authors, and “Cosmopolis” is the first time one of his novels has been translated to film. If Cronenberg can pull this off, as the visceral trailer suggests he can, this movie might end his dry run with the Oscars.

“Cosmopolis” is about a young billionaire (surprisingly played by Robert Pattinson) who travels across the city in a white limousine one day to get a haircut. If Cronenberg trumps the novel’s narrative oddities (there is an extended part where the main character discusses how he wants to shove a bottle up a woman’s parts) and wins the Palme d’Or, the critical acclaim and Cronenberg’s fanbase in the Academy may be enough to nab him a Best Picture nomination just as Terrence Malick did with “The Tree of Life.”

3.      “Lawless” by John Hillcoat

John Hillcoat sees Pattinson and raises Shia LaBeouf. Yeah, seriously. Adapted by Australian rock star Nick Cave (yeah, seriously), the movie is based on Matt Bondurant’s well-received historical novel “The Wettest County in the World.” It is about three brothers getting in trouble with gangs and Amish women while running a bootlegging business during the prohibition. The trailer’s period and Western crime mood evokes the Oscar-winning “No Country for Old Men,” but the movie’s Oscar success is most likely to come in the form of its distributors. The Weinstein Company, who distributed both “The King’s Speech” and won a few Oscars for a black-and-white silent film filled with French actors, so this movie certainly has a solid shot as well.

4.      “The Paperboy” by Lee Daniels

Lee Daniels sees the Pattinson and LaBeouf and raises Zac Efron and Matthew McConaughey. I don’t get it either. The actor getting the most buzz in this movie, though, is Nicole Kidman, who could win Best Actress at Cannes and compete in that category come Oscar time. Aside from that, there’s no trailer to go by so it’s difficult to predict if this movie is Oscar-y. Despite the mystery around the movie, Lee Daniels headed “Precious,” which was one of the big Oscar players a few years ago, so you can’t count him out. Not to mention that Pete Dexter adapted his own bestselling novel about a team of people looking for evidence to exonerate someone on death row, so if this becomes an “issue movie” then the Academy could go for it.

5.      “Killing Them Softly” by Andrew Dominik

Not much is known about this movie either, but it’s a crime film directed by the man who made the well-received Western “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford” five years ago. The cast is very solid, with Brad Pitt, James Gandolfini, Sam Shepard, and Richard Jenkins. The primary reason to watch out for this, though, is because it has the same backer as “Lawless:” The Weinstein Company.

6.      “On the Road” by Walter Salles

After a long road to the big screen (pun kinda intended), “On the Road” is finally a movie. Walter Salles is a Brazillian director, but his previous film, “The Motorcycle Diaries,” nabbed two Oscar nominations at the 77^th Academy Awards. Since this movie is based on the classic American Jack Kerouac novel and has a huge cast of English-speaking stars like Sam Riley, Garrett Hedlund, Kristen Stewart, Kirsten Dunst, Viggo Mortensen, Amy Adams, Steve Buscemi, and more, it could be special enough to be a serious competitor at the Oscars.