There are few honors more prestigious for filmmakers and movie stars than ascending the red-carpeted stairs of the Grand Auditorium Lumière while a million flashbulbs go off all around them, right before the gala premiere of a new work. It’s the first thing you think of when you think of Cannes — more than the great view of the Mediterranean Sea, more than the luxury yachts filling up the harbor, more than crowded streets and cafes serving endless carafes of Rosé. The international film festival that lords over all other film festivals is synonymous with the French Riviera town, and the glamor and glitz that happens when, for two weeks in May, it’s transformed into the epicenter of cinema.
This is the place where you might see Tom Cruise working the crowd while stumping for a blockbuster — like, say, his latest (last?) Mission: Impossible movie, which he’s bringing to the festival this year. It’s also the place where you have your mind blown by a six-hour documentary about shepherds, bask in the work of a bona fide auteur with decades of masterworks under his or her belt, and come upon the future giants of filmmaking making their debuts. (Or, as recent years have shown, be the first step to a major awards campaign — just ask the creators of Parasite and Anora, to name but two examples.) It’s where discoveries and disappointments sometimes happen in equal measure, and waiting in one long line after another is de rigueur, and you’re constantly chasing that sense of bliss you get when you’ve just seen a mindblowing, soul-shaking work of art. Which, in a good year, can occur once every few days during the fest.
And the lineup of 2025 edition looks like it has more than its share of potential landmark works. Here are the 20 films we can’t wait to catch at Cannes once the festival kicks off on May 13th — from directorial debuts by big-name actors (Scarlett Johansson, Kristen Stewart, Harris Dickinson) to the latest from the brand-name auteurs (Richard Linklater, Spike Lee, Ari Aster, Wes Anderson) to the cream of the world-cinema crop.
‘Alpha’
French filmmaker Julia Ducournau made serious ripples when she premiered her debut feature — the modern-horror masterpiece Raw — at Cannes back in 2016; when she came back to the festival with her 2021 follow-up Titane, Ducournau went home with the Palme d’Or. So expectations are high for her return to the Croisette with this latest provocation, which centers around a 13 year-old named Alpha who comes home from school with a tattoo. The shit apparently proceeds to hit the fan — and judging from the filmmaker’s previous works involving self-actualization through cannibalism and sex with motor vehicles, we can only guess what that means exactly. Tahar Rahim (A Prophet), Emma Mackey (Sex Education), and Golshifteh Farahani (Paterson) costar.
‘Bono: Stories of Surrender’
After Paul Hewson — a.k.a. the Fly, a.k.a. MacPhisto, a.k.a. Bono — published his 2022 memoir Surrender: 40 Songs, One Song, he did a 14-date tour in which he read portions of the book, sang stripped-down versions of a half dozen U2 songs, and recounted how a Ramones-loving kid in Dublin grew up to be an iconic frontman. Thankfully, filmmaker Andrew Dominik (The Assassination of Jesse James, Once More With Feeling) was at Bono’s shows at New York’s Beacon Theater with his camera crew and captured the whole thing for posterity, which means those who missed out can now see the singer in full raconteur mode. Fingers crossed that he shows up at Cannes to introduce the documentary and breaks into an impromptu, a cappella version of “11 O’Clock Tick Tock.”
‘The Chronology of Water’
It’s a big year for big-name actor’s showcasing their directorial debuts at Cannes — you’ll notice more than a few dotting this list — and we’re extremely curious to see what Kristen Stewart does with her take on writer Lidia Yuknavitch’s memoir, who finds liberation through both swimming and the written word. This has been a labor of love for the star for quite a while now. Imogen Poots plays Yuknavitch; Kim Gordon, Jim Belushi, Thora Birch and Tom Sturridge round out the cast.
‘Die My Love’
Scottish filmmaker Lynne Ramsay had brought all of her previous films (Ratcatcher, Morvern Callar, We Need to Talk About Kevin, You Were Never Really Here) to Cannes. So it was no surprise when the festival announced — albeit after the original Competition lineup had been unveiled — that her adaptation of Ariana Harwicz’s novel, about a recent mother (Jennifer Lawrence) slowly losing her sanity, would be premiering here as well. Robert Pattinson plays her husband, who doesn’t seem to suspect that his wife may be a little more unstable than he thought.
‘Eddington’
The year is 2020 (remember that totally-kickin’-back-no-big-deal year?). The town is Eddington, New Mexico. The battle is between this Southwestern hamlet’s “law and order sheriff” (Joaquin Phoenix) and its mayor (Pedro Pascal) — and because the man behind the camera revisiting this tumultuous moment in American history is writer-director Ari Aster (Hereditary, Midsommar, Beau Is Afraid), things are likely to get good and weird. It’s Aster’s first movie in competition at Cannes, and if there’s anyone we’d like to see weigh in on the state of currently fractured nation, it’s a filmmaker fluent in both absurdity and abject horror. Emma Stone, Austin Butler, Yellowstone‘s Luke Grimes and Clifton Collins Jr. are also on board.
‘Eleanor the Great’
Scarlett Johansson adds “director” to her resumé with this tale of a cross-generational friendship between an elderly woman (the also-quite-great June Squibb) mourning the recent death of an old pal and a 19-year-old college student (Erin Kellyman) in New York City. This sounds like the sort of modest, character-driven drama that Johansson specialized in when she was starting out as an actor, and we’re curious to see what creative muscles she’ll be flexing while behind the camera. Chiwetel Ejiofor and Jessica Hecht costar.
‘Highest 2 Lowest’
Spike Lee returns to the festival with his fifth collaboration with Denzel Washington, in a “reinterpretation” of Akira Kurosawa’s 1963 police procedural extraordinaire High and Low. He’s set his take on a businessman negotiating a kidnapping and ransom demand in the world of the music industry, which adds a whole other level of intrigue and, we’re willing to bet, an inside-man commentary at how the entertainment world treats its royalty. Washington is the mogul under pressure; Jeffrey Wright is his dear friend and driver, whose son has been abducted in the name of criminals after a big score; A$AP Rocky, Ice Spice, Ilfenesh Hadera and The Wire‘s Michael Potts, among others, round out the cast.
‘The History of Sound’
Casting either Paul Mescal or Josh O’Connor in a period-piece love story is enough to get hearts aflutter. Pairing the Gladiator II and the Challengers stars as two men capturing recordings of the testimonials and songs of everyday citizens in post-WWI America — and who end up falling in love with each other — is pretty much enough to set the internet ablaze. Expect some hot and heavy scenes involving two of the finest actors of their generation and a lot of tweed outfits. South African filmmaker Oliver Hermanus (Living) adapts Ben Shattuck’s award-winning novel for the screen.
‘Honey Don’t!’
Filmmaker Ethan Coen and cowriter/editor/life-partner-in-crime Tricia Cooke bring the second of their proposed “lesbian B-movie trilogy” to Cannes for a special midnight screening; this one features Margaret Qualley (Drive-Away Dolls) as hardboiled detective Honey O’Donoghue, a throwback gumshoe with both moxie and verve. She’s investigating a case that involves a burnt corpse in a car, a local preacher (Chris Evans), and a cop (Aubrey Plaza) who may be a femme fatale, a potential love interest, or possibly both. No word on whether Demi Moore shows up as a slightly older version of Honey who has to switch places with her every seven days. Little joke for you Substance fans out there.
‘Magellan’
Filipino filmmaker Lav Diaz likes to take his time in terms of storytelling — his long, lovingly languorous movies regularly clock in somewhere between five to eight hours long. (A reminder that no great movie is too long, and no god-awful movie is too short.) At a shade under three hours, his biopic about Ferdinand Magellan, starring Gael García Bernal as the 16th century Portuguese explorer, is one of his more relatively concise statements on life, death, and the human experience. Rumor has it that this will focus on Magellan’s relationship with his wife Beatrice (Angela Azevedo) and the period leading up to his ill-fated expedition to the Philippines, and that this chapter is part of an eventual nine-hour cut Diaz hopes to do, which will include both Ferdinand and Beatrice’s side of the story. Honestly? Bring it. We’re so there for this.
‘The Mastermind’
Heist flicks? We dig ’em. Thrillers set in the 1970s? We like ’em a lot. Films directed by Kelly Reichardt, the Pacific Northwestern director whose character studies of bohos, outcasts, social misfits, and margin dwellers has made her one of the most significant American moviemakers working today? We love ’em. A heist flick directed by Reichardt, starring Josh O’Connor, Alana “One Third of HAIM” Haim, John Magaro, Bill Camp, Hope Davis and Gaby Hoffmann? It’s like we’ve been granted three wishes, and they’re all coming true at once.
‘Mirrors No. 3’
The pride of the Berlin School film movement, Germany’s Christian Petzold (Phoenix, Transit, Afire) heads to the south of France with this Director’s Fortnight entry, in which a woman (Paula Beers) survives a rather intense car accident. A local (Barbara Auer) offers to take care of her while she convalesces, much to the suspicion of the woman’s husband and their adult son. Still, the caregiver comfortably settles into the family’s home. Maybe too comfortably. The fact that “Mirrors” is in the movie’s title gives us a strong hint as to where this is going.
‘Nouvelle Vague’
Where better to see a movie about the making of the French New Wave classic Breathless than at Cannes? Richard Linklater pays homage to Jean Luc-Godard’s gamechanging 1960 debut, i.e. the movie that rewrote the rules of cinema, inspired a generation of film nerds to pick up cameras, and forever made self-conscious crime flicks cooler than cool. Newcomer Guillaume Marbeck gets the privilege of donning those iconic dark shades and spreading the word of God(ard); Aubry Dullin is Jean-Paul Belmondo; Zoey Deutch rocks a blond pixie cut as Jean Seberg.
‘Orwell: 2+2=5’
Raoul Peck (I Am Not Your Negro, Exterminate All the Brutes) looks back at the work of George Orwell — specifically, how the author of Animal Farm and 1984 tackled the subject of totalitarianism in the 20th century, which regrettably did not magically disappear once the odometer turned over to 21st century. If anything, it’s become a lot worse… and way more close to home for a lot of us. We imagine this one’s going to be a huge conversation starter at Cannes.
‘The Phoenician Scheme’
Writer, director and Cannes mainstay Wes Anderson — who was just at the film fest last year with Asteroid City — is back with another ensemble movie, brimming with meticulous production design and movie stars. (A partial cast list includes Tom Hanks, Scarlett Johansson, Michael Cera, Bryan Cranston, Benedict Cumberbatch, Willem Dafoe, Riz Ahmed, Rupert Friend, and Charlotte Gainsbourg; Bill Murray, naturally, plays God.) The focus of the cult auteur’s latest comedy-drama, however, is largely on two characters: Anatole “Zsa-Zsa” Korda (Benicio Del Toro), an international business magnate and celebrity industrialist; and Liesl (Mia Threapleton), the heir to his fortune who yearns to join a convent. The father and daughter must trot the globe to secure one last deal before Korda retires or is assassinated, whatever comes first.
‘Sentimental Value’
Norwegian writer-director Joachim Trier reunites with his The Worst Person in the World star Renate Reinsve for this family drama about an actor named Nora and her sister (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas) reconnecting with their father Gustav (Stellan Skarsgård), a famous filmmaker whose career has been on the skids. The good news is he’s in the middle of plotting his comeback via a film project with a lead role that Nora would be absolutely perfect for. What better way to bond with Dad? The bad news is that he’s decided to cast an American star (Elle Fanning) in the part instead, and she’s going to stay with all of them while they film it. Ouch.
‘A Simple Accident’
Jafar Panahi once had to smuggle a film into Cannes while under house arrest, via a USB drive hidden inside a cake — thankfully, the Iranian filmmaker won’t have to resort to such drastic measures with his latest meditative work, though he remains in perpetual hot water with the powers that be in his home country. The program notes describe his new project as: “What begins as a minor accident sets in motion a series of escalating consequences.” It may sound cryptic, but given this world-cinema giant’s track record, we’re betting this continues his winning streak of the last decade or so.
‘Slauson Rec’
A last minute addition to the festival via the “Cannes Classics” sidebar, this documentary about Shia LeBeouf’s controversial acting school in South Central Los Angeles had tongues wagging the minute it was announced. One of the free academy’s students, Leo Lewis O’Neill, brought a camera along to many of the sessions that the Honey Boy star oversaw, and was given carte blanche to film whatever happened in class for a potential doc. “Warts and all” is apparently a mild description for the end result, which is said to not show LeBeouf in the best light. The former mentor to O’Neill has given his blessing to the project, however, and will be at Cannes alongside the filmmaker to introduce the premiere. This should be interesting.
‘Urchin’
British actor, Babygirl star and current contender for No. 1 Internet boyfriend Harris Dickinson steps behind the camera for this tale of a young man (Frank Dillane) living on the streets of London and desperately trying to turn his life around. This sounds very much like the sort of rough-edged, clear-eyed drama that would come out of the Ken Loach School of Social Realism graduate course, which speaks well to Dickinson’s influences and sense of storytelling as a filmmaker.
‘Yes!’
Israeli filmmaker Nadav Lapid (Synonyms) brings what will assuredly be one of the highlights of this year’s Director’s Fortnight lineup: a satirical comedy centering on a couple who has decided to say “Yes” to whatever offer comes their way. The result is …well, you can only imagine how potentially wild and fucked up the notion of instant, no-holds-barred agreement might get in this day and age. A colleague compared this to “an especially high-octane episode of Euphoria,” which, y’know, yikes!
From Rolling Stone US.
Source:https://rollingstoneindia.com/20-most-anticipated-movies-of-cannes-2025/