[2][3][4] American filmmaker David Lynch served as jury president for the main competition.

[5] French-Polish filmmaker Roman Polanski won the Palme d'Or, the festival's top prize, for the drama film The Pianist.

While American filmmaker Woody Allen was awarded with the inaugural Honorary Palme d'Or, given to a director who had achieved a notable body of work but who had never won the regular Palme d'Or.

The festival opened with Hollywood Ending by Woody Allen, [7] and closed with Claude Lelouch's And Now... Ladies and Gentlemen.

The organizers of the 2002 festival assembled a jury of six members, including Dieter Kosslick and Alberto Barbera, to watch seven of the twelve features which had been entered in the 1939 competition, namely: Goodbye, Mr. Chips, La piste du nord, Lenin in 1918, The Four Feathers, The Wizard of Oz, Union Pacific, and Boefje.