[Cannes 2025 Film Festival: Movie Lineup Predictions

The insanely prolific Luca Guadagnino is unlikely to hit the Croisette: The Italian director is a loyal Venice festival regular and Amazon MGM has set an Oct. 10 domestic bow, suggesting After the Hunt will be going the Venice/Telluride/Toronto route. But Cannes has snatched titles from its Lido rival in the past, and there is already strong awards buzz surrounding the psychological thriller, which stars Julia Roberts as a college professor faced with an ethical dilemma when a star pupil (Ayo Edebiri) levels an accusation against one of her colleagues (Andrew Garfield) and a dark secret of her own threatens to come to light.

Cannes will be holding a competition spot for Julia Ducournau’s follow-up to her explosive, divisive and hugely influential 2021 Palme d’Or winner Titane. Neon pre-bought North American rights to Alpha in Cannes last year, and if the film is ready, a Croisette bow is all but assured. Golshifteh Farahani (Paterson) and Tahar Rahim (The Mauritanian) star. Production companies FilmNation and Charades have described Alpha as Julia Ducournau’s most personal film to date, but plot details are scarce, with reports that the movie is set in the 1980s and follows an 11-year-old girl who is rejected by her classmates after it is rumored she has been infected with a new disease.

Fatih Akin’s international breakthrough came in Berlin when Head-On won the Golden Bear in 2004. But Cannes has been a lucky charm for the German-Turkish filmmaker, who won the best screenplay honor here in 2007 with The Edge of Heaven and who helped Diane Kruger to a best actress Palme with In the Fade in 2017. Amrum reteams Akin and Kruger in a period drama set on the North Frisian Island of Amrum on the German North Sea coast in the final days of World War II. Warner Bros. in Germany has dated the film for a fall release, however, suggesting it could slide to Venice or Toronto.

As festival bets go, counting on the new Arnaud Desplechin film to premiere in Cannes is as safe as they come. Ten of Desplechin’s features have premiered in Cannes, including seven in competition, the last being Brother and Sister in 2022. His Filmlovers! received a special screening last year, and he’s screened films in Directors’ Fortnight (2015’s My Golden Days) and Un Certain Regard (2003’s En jouant ‘Dans la compagnie des hommes’). His latest is a romantic drama starring François Civil as a virtuoso French pianist who returns from Asia to his hometown of Lyon, only to be caught up in an impossible love story. Nadia Tereszkiewicz, Charlotte Rampling and Hippolyte Girardot co-star.

Norwegian filmmaker Mona Fastvold and her husband Brady Corbet have a deep connection with the Venice Film Festival, which has premiered all of their directorial output over the past decade. But Fastvold’s high-profile dramatic historical musical will be ready in the Cannes corridor should the Oscar-nominated duo choose to mix things up. The film stars Amanda Seyfried as Ann Lee, the founder of the Shaker movement. Lee’s followers deemed her the female Christ, and her worshippers prayed through song and dance, the basis of the movie’s musical elements. The project features original songs by Daniel Blumberg, who just won an Oscar for his score on Corbet’s The Brutalist. Fastvold and Corbet reportedly spent years researching Lee’s life and co-writing the script. The film was shot in Hungary right after production wrapped on The Brutalist.

If the rumors are true, Nicolas Winding Refn‘s first film since 2016’s body horror The Neon Demon could be on its way to Cannes. The Danish bad boy announced the project shortly after Neon Demon premiered on the Croisette (and split Cannes critics), pitching the film as his twisted take on the spy thriller. “Ian Fleming + William Burroughs + NWR = The Avenging Silence,” he posted on social media. After a long gestation — and excursions into television with Netflix’s Copenhagen Cowboy, the Amazon series Too Old to Die Young and the BBC-produced kids adventure tale The Famous Five — Refn reportedly shot The Avenging Silence on the down-low in Korea last year, meaning it should be ready for a festival bow in May.

Sony has already set South Korean-American filmmaker Kogonada’s latest feature for a May 9 release in the U.S., just days before Cannes opens, which rules out a spot in the festival’s competition. But a non-competitive gala screening could be in store thanks to the director’s ties with the festival (his last feature, After Yang, screened in Un Certain Regard in 2021) and the new movie’s marquee-ready cast led by Margot Robbie and Colin Farrell. Just a snippet of story summary has been released so far: “An imaginative tale of two strangers and the extraordinary emotional journey that connects them.”

Another unlikely, but possible, Cannes contender, this science fiction comedy from the phenomenally productive Yorgos Lanthimos is set for a November release via Focus Features, suggesting a fall festival premiere, likely Venice, where Lanthimos’ Poor Things won the Golden Lion in 2023. But Cannes, which welcomed the Greek auteur last year (with Kinds of Kindness in competition), could entice him back. The film is an English-language remake of the South Korean film Save the Green Planet! by Jang Joon-hwan, which premiered in Cannes in 2003.

Rising Moroccan filmmaker Maryam Touzani has carved out a position in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard section with her 2019 feature Adam and 2022’s The Blue Caftan — the latter taking the international critics’ FIPRESCI award. Her upcoming Spanish-language feature looks like a lock for the Croisette if it’s done on time. The film revolves around Maria Angeles, a septuagenarian woman, part of the Spanish community of Tangier, who resists her daughter’s attempt to sell her home and force her to change her life. Instead, she sets out to reclaim her home and the furniture that has been sold off to a vintage dealer, in the process rediscovering romantic feelings and a long-lost sensuality.

Kristen Stewart’s feature directorial debut, The Chronology of Water, which she also co-wrote, has all the makings of an Un Certain Regard standout. The acclaimed actress, a regular on Cannes’ red carpet for more than a decade, has been working on Chronology for more than five years and describes the film as a deeply personal passion project. Based on Lidia Yuknavitch’s bestselling 2011 memoir, the film stars Imogen Poots as the author at various points in her life, as the story “drifts in the water of Lidia’s memories.” “The Chronology of Water is an in-depth exploration of sexuality, of creativity, an unflinching stare at all the gory details of having a female body and a sensitive depiction of the emotional vocabulary of youth,” reads a synopsis. The eclectic supporting cast includes Thora Birch, Earl Cave, Michael Epp, Susannah Flood, Kim Gordon and Jim Belushi.

If Alice Winocour can stitch up her catwalk drama in time for Cannes, the film is all-but-guaranteed an official berth at the French festival, perhaps even in a competition slot. Winocour is a Croisette regular — three of her four feature films have premiered at the festival, and she was a co-writer on Deniz Gamze Ergüven’s 2015 Directors’ Fortnight breakout, Mustang. Her latest is a step up in budget and ambition, starring Angelina Jolie as an American film director on “a life-and-death journey, facing challenges and self-discovery” who crosses paths with a South Sudanese model, Ada (model Anyier Anei in her feature film debut), and French makeup artist Angèle (Ella Rumpf) in the frenzy of Paris Fashion Week.

Last year, Pathé used a prime out-of-competition slot in Cannes to launch the first film in Alexandre de La Patellière and Matthieu Delaporte’s two-part period epic The Count of Monte-Cristo, a strategy that paid off with massive box office success in France and across Europe. Expect the French distributor to follow the same playbook with Antonin Baudry’s two-part biopic on Charles de Gaulle. Part one follows de Gaulle, played by Simon Abkarian, as he leads the French resistance against Nazi Germany during World War II, eventually becoming president following liberation.

Lynne Ramsay does not make many movies, but when she does finish one, it goes to Cannes. Her 1999 feature debut, Ratcatcher, was in Un Certain Regard; her 2002 follow-up Morvern Callar premiered in Directors’ Fortnight; and We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011) and You Were Never Really Here (2017) were both in competition. Ramsay’s Cannes connection actually extends further, with shorts Small Deaths (1996) and Gasman (1998) both bowing on the Croisette. Robert Pattinson, Jennifer Lawrence and LaKeith Stanfield star in her latest, a psychological thriller adapted from a novel by Argentine writer Ariana Harwicz about a woman in rural France driven to the brink of insanity by marriage and motherhood.

Kirill Serebrennikov’s last four features — Limonov, Tchaikovsky’s Wife, Petrov’s Flu and Leto — all premiered in Cannes competition, and the Russian filmmaker is set to join the five-timer club with this feature. The historical drama, an adaptation of the nonfiction novel of the same name by Olivier Guez, stars Inglourious Basterds and A Hidden Life actor August Diehl as the infamous Nazi doctor Josef Mengele, who escaped Germany to South America after World War II and was never captured. Serebrennikov wrapped production on the film in Uruguay late last year, suggesting he’ll have a final cut ready for the Croisette in May.

German director Mascha Schilinski first attracted attention with her 2017 feature debut, Dark Blue Girl, which featured an astounding lead performance from Helena Zengel, the breakthrough star of Nora Fingscheidt’s System Crasher (2019). Her follow-up, which is being tipped for a Cannes bow, likely in Un Certain Regard, is an ambitious drama about the life of four girls from different generations linked through associative memories over a period of a hundred years.

Cannes has not always been kind to Luc Besson. He got a hero’s welcome when his free-diving action film The Big Blue screened out of competition in 1988 and became a crossover sensation, but a decade later, when his sci-fi epic The Fifth Element opened Cannes in 1997, critics tore into the French blockbuster director. Besson’s action-pop sensibility has always seemed a bit at odds with Cannes’ auteur tradition — he notably chose Venice for his 2023 comeback movie, DogMan — but his take on Bram Stoker’s gothic classic, starring DogMan’s Caleb Landry Jones, alongside Christoph Waltz and Matilda De Angelis, could mark his glorious return to the Croisette. SND has dated Dracula for a July 30 release in France, making an out-of-competition bow in Cannes a strong possibility.

Despite his art-house acclaim, Ari Aster has yet to debut a film in Cannes’ competition. Eddington could be the one. The star-packed film — led by Joaquin Phoenix, Pedro Pascal, Emma Stone and Austin Butler — is described as a black comedy Western thriller that pits a small-town New Mexico sheriff (Phoenix) against his mayor (Pascal) in a pandemic-era power struggle. Expect stylistic verve and thematic intensity from the director of Hereditary, Midsommar and Beau Is Afraid. A24 and Aster’s Square Peg banner have reteamed for the film, which was shot on location in New Mexico and is expected in U.S. theaters sometime in the summer.

Scarlett Johansson’s directorial debut follows 90-year-old Eleanor Morgenstein (the inimitable June Squibb) as she attempts to rebuild her life after the death of her best friend by moving back to New York City after many years in Florida. While struggling with loneliness and the difficulties of making new connections at her age, she eventually befriends a 19-year-old college student in the city, forming an unlikely bond that rejuvenates them both. Word of mouth around the project has been encouraging, and Johansson has debuted numerous films at Cannes as an actress.

Brad Pitt and co-star Damson Idris filmed their thrilling high-speed car antics and off-track interviews alongside the real-life athletes of the sport for Joseph Kosinski’s next blockbuster. The Top Gun: Maverick director will have fond memories of his time in the Riviera (remember 2022’s epic French Air Force fly-by?). Kerry Condon, Tobias Menzies, Kim Bodnia and Javier Bardem also feature in the hotly anticipated flick. The film is by no means a lock for the Croisette, but a buzzy debut at the fest would make a lot of sense with the prestigious Monaco race taking place just a little further down the coast.

Indie cinema hero and Cannes mainstay Jim Jarmusch returns with a triptych anthology film that examines family and intergenerational relationships across three stories set in three different countries. Packed with unforgettable faces — Cate Blanchett, Adam Driver, Vicky Krieps, Tom Waits, Charlotte Rampling and Mayim Bialik — the project’s official summary reads: “The film is a series of character studies, quiet, observational and non-judgmental. A comedy, but interwoven with threads of melancholy.” Jarmusch’s glorious gray bouffant is a familiar sight on the Cannes red carpet. He won the Caméra d’Or for Stranger Than Paradise in 1984 and the Grand Prix for Broken Flowers in 2005, last competing in 2019 with the delightfully offbeat zombie pic The Dead Don’t Die.

Mario Martone is another of Italy’s Venice-first directors, having screened seven features in competition at the Lido. But he’s made the trip to Cannes three times in the past, appearing twice in competition (with Nostalgia in 2022 and L’amore molesto in 1995), as well as in Un Certain Regard with Rehearsals for War in 1998. His new feature, a French-Italian co-production, sees Valeria Golino (Rain Man, Maria) playing a writer imprisoned for a “crazy and unexpected act” who develops a close bond with the women she meets inside, maintaining their friendship after she is released. It’s still likely to land in Venice, but Fuori could be a Cannes surprise.

Production wrapped on Hamnet just last fall, which could also make its completion better timed for a fall launch in Venice, but this Steven Spielberg-produced return to human drama by the director of Nomadland and Marvel’s Eternals could still become a Cannes coup. Based on the 2020 novel by Maggie O’Farrell, Hamnet imagines the life of William Shakespeare (Paul Mescal) and his wife, Agnes Shakespeare (Jessie Buckley), following the death of their 11-year-old son, Hamnet, with Joe Alwyn and Emily Watson playing supporting parts. The film would mark Zhao’s first trip to Cannes since her contemporary western The Rider won the Art Cinema Award in the festival’s Directors’ Fortnight section in 2017.

Here’s one to get excited about. Spike Lee’s relationship with Cannes stretches all the way back to his debut, She’s Gotta Have It, which won the Directors’ Fortnight section’s Prix de la Jeunesse (Award of the Youth) for best foreign debut at the 1986 festival. Highest 2 Lowest is Lee’s first narrative feature in five years and his first featuring Denzel Washington in the lead since Inside Man in 2006. The film is both a New York-set contemporary crime thriller and a reinterpretation of Akira Kurosawa’s 1963 classic High and Low, featuring Washington as a powerful New York record executive placed in a precarious moral quandary. The stellar supporting cast includes Ilfenesh Hadera, Jeffrey Wright, Ice Spice and A$AP Rocky.

Prepare for a potential Palais-sized swoon. South African director Oliver Hermanus’ latest, The History of Sound, pairs two of the moment’s most in-demand actors, Paul Mescal and Josh O’Connor, in a World War I gay romantic road movie. Penned by Ben Shattuck, adapting his own award-winning short story, The History of Sound follows two idealistic young men who set out to record the voices of American soldiers during the Great War — and fall in love along the way.

South Korean director Na Hong-jin stunned Cannes critics in 2016 with his visceral spiritual thriller The Wailing. His follow-up, and English-language debut, has been a long time coming but should be ready by May. The film’s cross-cultural cast includes Hwang Jung-min (The Wailing, Veteran) and Zo In-sung (Escape From Mogadishu) on the Korean side, and Hollywood couple Michael Fassbender and Alicia Vikander playing the English-language leads. Rising stars from each industry — Taylor Russell and Squid Game’s Jung Ho-yeon — appear in supporting roles. Hope has been described as a science-fiction thriller about a remote town that makes a mysterious discovery, plunging its residents into a fight for survival. Expectations are high for a gritty Korean arthouse freakout of the highest order.

The cult filmmaker’s first film in more than a decade, I Want Your Sex would be sure to generate chatter up and down the Croisette. The film stars Cooper Hoffman (Licorice Pizza) as a young assistant who lands a job working for a boundary-pushing performance artist played by Olivia Wilde. Initially, it seems the kid’s dreams have come true as the artist reveals she has hired him to become her “sexual muse” — but it’s not long before he’s out of his depth, drawn into a world of sex, obsession, power, betrayal and murder. Charli XCX co-stars in an undisclosed role. Often provocative and never dull, Araki previously appeared at Cannes in 2010 with Kaboom — a film reportedly inspired by a conversation he had with John Waters — which screened out of competition and won the inaugural Queer Palme.

Admittedly, this one is a perfect fit for Venice, but Cannes attendees can hope! (Schnabel won Cannes’ best director prize for The Diving Bell and the Butterfly in 2007, after all.) A years-in-the-making literary thriller epic, In the Hand of Dante is based on Nick Tosches’ 2002 novel of the same name, blending historical drama and modern crime story in two parallel narratives — one set in 14th-century Italy and the other in contemporary New York. Executive produced by Martin Scorsese (who is rumored to play a small role as well), the film stars Oscar Isaac, Jason Momoa, Gerard Butler and Gal Gadot, with Sabrina Impacciatore, Franco Nero, John Malkovich and Al Pacino in support. Shot on location across Italy, it is almost certainly Croisette- or Lido-bound.

It looks like the new feature from Russian auteur Andrey Zvyagintsev might not be done in time for Cannes, making a Venice bow more likely, but the French festival will be holding out hope it can secure Jupiter for a competition slot. Zvyagintsev’s 2017 feature Loveless won Cannes’ Jury Prize, and his 2014’s Leviathan took the best screenplay honor. Both went on to secure Oscar nominations. Set in the seemingly impenetrable world of an ultra-wealthy Russian oligarch, Jupiter promises to be a harder-edged companion piece to Sean Baker’s Palme d’Or (and Oscar) winner Anora.

Tsou would be a newcomer to Cannes as a director, but she’s already a familiar presence there thanks to her frequent producing work on the films of recent Oscar champ Sean Baker (The Florida Project, Red Rocket). Set against the bustling backdrop of Taiwan’s night markets, Left-Handed Girl tells the story of a single mother and her two daughters as they struggle to adapt to city life when they return to Taipei after several years living in the countryside. Tsou co-wrote the film with Baker, who also edited the film.

The buzz within the Beijing film industry is that actor-director Jiang Wen’s latest feature has China’s best shot at securing a Cannes slot in 2025. The director’s black comedy war film Devils on the Doorstep won the Grand Prix back in 2000, losing out on the Palme D’or to Lars Von Trier’s Dancer in the Dark. Jiang’s last three films comprised what he called his “gangster Beiyang trilogy” — Let the Bullets Fly (2010), Gone with the Bullets (2014) and Hidden Man (2018) — all commercially successful in China but not picked up by international festivals. The limited story summary released for the new film suggests it’s a musical drama about the sacrifices made by a family so their son can ascend to the highest levels of classical piano performance. Jiang stars in the film with Ma Li, Ge You, Zhao Benshan, Lei Jiayin and others. 

Keen-eyed Japanese auteur Koji Fukada — who made his breakthrough in 2016 with the Tadanobu Asano-starring Harmonium, winning Un Certain Regard’s Jury Prize — is expected to return to the Palais with Love on Trial, a piercing social drama about a young J-pop idol on the verge of big success who faces public scorn and an aggressive lawsuit after it’s discovered that she has violated her agency’s “no love” contract by dating a former high school classmate. Based on real legal cases from Japan, the film is “a powerful commentary on the complexities of idol culture, personal freedom and love, while highlighting the gender disparities and injustices that affect individuals, not only in Japan, but globally,” according to its French sales agent MK2.

Greengrass’ latest, starring Matthew McConaughey and America Ferrera, could hit extra hard for the American moviemaking community in the wake of recent events in Los Angeles. Based on Lizzie Johnson’s book Paradise: One Town’s Struggle to Survive an American Wildfire, the film is set during the disastrous 2018 Camp Fire that became the deadliest conflagration in California history. It’s probably not Cannes competition fare, but the red carpet appeal of the film’s leads and Greengrass’ innovative action chops (see his pioneering, kinetic work with the Bourne franchise) could help the film find a gala screening slot.

American master of indie minimalism Kelly Reichardt could be back in Cannes competition with this art-heist drama set against the backdrop of the Vietnam War. Josh O’Connor, coming off a highly distinguished 2024 thanks to his work in Challengers and La Chimera, leads the film alongside Alana Haim (Licorice Pizza) and Reichardt regular John Magaro (Showing Up, First Cow). Production concluded late last year, and details have mostly been kept under wraps. Reichardt’s most recent effort, Showing Up, was a critical favorite at the French festival in 2022, so expect Thierry Frémaux to try to make her the latest member of the “Cannes family” with a second competition berth if the new film is finished in time.

The follow-up to Celine Song’s 2023 breakout Oscar best picture nominee Past Lives, Materialists stars Dakota Johnson as a young New York City matchmaker “torn between the perfect match and her imperfect ex” — played by Luke Evans and Pedro Pascal, respectively. The high-brow rom-com recently received a U.S. release date from A24 on June 13, ideal positioning for a Cannes launch.

Cannes always makes a place for some Hollywood big-budget spectacle, and given the current state of the studios’ spring release schedules, it looks like Tom Cruise could again be the man for the job. The eternally energetic star certainly seemed to have a good time last time he was on the Croisette. When Top Gun: Maverick screened at the Palais in 2022, the actor was greeted by the aforementioned flyover of French fighter jets, an enormous fireworks show and an honorary Palme d’Or ceremony. How The Final Reckoning might top that iconic Cannes moment remains to be seen, but with rumors circulating that the film might be Cruise’s final run as IMF agent Ethan Hunt, expect Cannes and Paramount to pull out all the stops if the film indeed unfurls there.

With Elon Musk providing new material on a daily, almost hourly basis, Oscar-winning documentarian Alex Gibney (Taxi to the Dark Side, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room) must be constantly re-editing his “definite and unvarnished examination” of the South African tech billionaire, DOGE boss and Trump government troll-in-chief. If the film is ready in time for Cannes, it could be this year’s The Apprentice, with online attacks from Musk and his followers all but guaranteed. Unlike Ali Abassi’s movie, which came to Cannes without a U.S. distributor on board, Gibney’s doc has pre-sold domestically, with HBO Documentary Films taking North American TV and streaming rights and Universal Pictures handling the release internationally.

This hotly anticipated debut feature from British-Nigerian filmmaker Akinola Davies, whose Sundance-winning short film Lizard was a BAFTA nominee, would be a prime Camera d’Or contender if it makes the Cannes cut. Gangs of London and Slow Horses actor Ṣọpẹ Dìrísù stars in the semi-autobiographical tale set over the course of a single day in the Nigerian capital Lagos during the 1993 Nigerian election crisis. The story follows a father, estranged from his two young sons, as they travel through the massive city while political unrest threatens their journey home. Produced by Poor Things shingle Element Pictures, My Father’s Shadow has already been pre-bought by Mubi for much of the world.

Korean maestro Park Chan-wook is essentially guaranteed a place in Cannes’ competition if his dark comedy thriller No Other Choice is ready in time. An adaptation of Donald E. Westlake’s novel The Ax, the film reunites Park with Lee Byung-hun, star of their early career breakthrough Joint Security Area, in a story about an ordinary unemployed man driven to drastic measures to secure a job: namely, murdering the competition. The film is currently in postproduction, and sources close to the film say Cannes could come too soon. Considering that Cannes has yet to reward Park with a Palme for one of his many masterworks that have screened at the festival (Oldboy, The Handmaiden, Decision to Leave), he could also be forgiven for trying his luck in Venice with this one.

It’s hard to even imagine an American indie movie better suited for the Cannes Film Festival than Austin impresario Richard Linklater‘s forthcoming love letter to the French New Wave. Shot on location in Paris, Nouvelle Vague tells the story of Jean-Luc Godard taking the leap from critic at Cahiers du Cinéma to first-time director with the creation of Breathless. Guillaume Marbeck plays the young Godard, while Zoey Deutch portrays his star, Jean Seberg. Told entirely in French, the film was shot in Paris in black and white in the 4:3 aspect ratio. Linklater has said his mission in making the movie was “to show the absolute love of cineastes.”

PTA hasn’t hit Cannes since Punch-Drunk Love won him the festival’s best director prize back in 2002. One Battle After Another could continue that dry spell, as the film is reportedly the priciest project of Anderson’s career — with a budget north of $140 million — and already has been dated for theatrical release on Aug. 8 by Warner Bros. Landing the project would be a huge coup for Cannes. The film is said to be a riff on Thomas Pynchon’s 1990 novel Vineland, and the Leonardo DiCaprio-led cast includes Sean Penn, Regina Hall, Alana Haim, Teyana Taylor, Benicio del Toro and others.

László Nemes’ third feature — after his Academy Award-winning breakthrough Son of Saul, which took Cannes’ Grand Jury Prize in 2015 en route to Oscar glory, and his 2018 feature Sunset, which bowed in Venice — is a coming-of-age tale set against the historic backdrop of the 1956 Hungarian uprising. The film, said to be partially autobiographical, follows Andor, a 12-year-old boy being raised by his single mother after his father disappeared during the revolution. His life is disrupted when a man, a stranger to the boy, returns, claiming to be his father. Nemes shot Orphan on location in Budapest last year and should have the film ready for Cannes.

Award-winning Haitian filmmaker Raoul Peck (I Am Not Your Negro, Exterminate All the Brutes) directs Orwell, a comprehensive examination of the life, work and enduring legacy of Animal Farm and 1984 author George Orwell. Peck was given full cooperation by the Orwell Estate, allowing him to review and potentially include Orwell’s archives and rare materials. Rather than the typical biographical doc, Peck’s Orwell is expected to be an essayistic assessment of the great political writer’s origins and ideas — and their relevance to the contemporary world. Neon has already snapped up North American rights to Orwell, auguring well for its awards potential. Given the timeliness of the film’s themes and Peck’s Cannes history (he was on the festival’s jury in 2012, and I Am Not Your Negro screened in Directors’ Fortnight), Orwell feels a natural fit for a sidebar or even a special screening in the main selection.

Buzz has been building around Harry Lighton’s feature debut for some time, making it easy to picture in the Un Certain Regard or Directors’ Fortnight strands. A queer love story set against the backdrop of the British biker subculture of the 1970s, the film stars Alexander Skarsgård as the charismatic leader of a kinky motorcycle club who takes on a weedy wallflower, played by Harry Melling, to be his new submissive. Described as a “funny, filthy romance,” Pillion was a hot project at last year’s Cannes market before it was snatched up by A24.

Set for a late May release via Focus Features, Anderson’s latest can be counted on to deliver one of the largest and starriest ensemble casts to this year’s Cannes red carpet. Not much is known about The Phoenician Scheme’s story, which was co-written, as usual, by Anderson and Roman Coppola. It’s been described as an espionage-themed comedy-drama. The cast includes Benicio del Toro, Mia Threapleton, Michael Cera, Tom Hanks, Bryan Cranston, Riz Ahmed, Jeffrey Wright, Scarlett Johansson, Richard Ayoade, Rupert Friend, Hope Davis, Benedict Cumberbatch and Imad Mardnli. Anderson has unfurled films at Cannes on several occasions, including his two most recent releases, Asteroid City and The French Dispatch.

If a latter-day Tarkovsky is working somewhere in the world today, it might just be the 35-year-old Chinese wunderkind Bi Gan. The 59-minute 3D single-take shot that closed out Bi’s 2018 Cannes Un Certain Regard stunner Long Day’s Journey Into Night remains the stuff of film nerd legend, so hopes are high for this long-awaited follow-up. Starring two of Chinese-language cinema’s most beautiful people — Jackson Yee and Shu Qi — Resurrection is described as a sci-fi detective tale, set in the year 2068 and other time periods, that blurs dreams and reality. Recent production chatter suggests the director has returned to his experiments with stereoscopic 3D camera rigs, but he might run short of time to finish the immersive feature in time for Cannes’ 2025 deadline.

Brazilian filmmaker and visual artist Karim Aïnouz’s previous three features bowed in Cannes, and he is expected to continue the streak with Rosebush Pruning, a drama thriller featuring an ensemble cast of Riley Keough, Callum Turner, Elle Fanning, Lukas Gage, Pamela Anderson and others. Backed by The Apartment Pictures, Mubi and Fremantle, the film is a loose remake of Marco Bellocchio’s 1965 debut feature, Fists in the Pocket, a dark satire of patriarchal family values. The film is scripted by Yorgos Lanthimos’s regular collaborator, Efthimis Filippou (Kinds of Kindness, The Killing of a Sacred Deer, The Lobster), suggesting some deviously strange social satire could be in store.

French filmmaker Romain Gavras, son of Costa-Gavras, could be eyeing an out-of-competition slot for his English-language debut, an action-adventure media satire that was a hot seller at last year’s Cannes market. Boasting an all-star cast — Anya Taylor-Joy, Chris Evans, Salma Hayek, Vincent Cassel, Charli XCX, John Malkovich — the feature is set during a star-studded charity event that turns chaotic when a radical cult-like group crashes it, with a plan of sacrificing three people to fulfill an ancient prophecy to save humanity. Gavras grabbed international attention with his 2022 feature Athena, which premiered in Venice and was released on Netflix. Sacrifice looks to be just as propulsive. 

Norwegian director Joachim Trier has followed the tried-and-true Cannes school of festival progression. The Un Certain Regard bow for his sophomore feature Oslo, August 31st (2011) lead to his first competition entry, with 2015’s Louder Than Bombs, before he triumphed on the Croisette with The Worst Person of the World in 2021, which won best actress honors for star Renate Reinsve and netted two Oscar nominations. Reinsve and Trier return with Sentimental Value, with Reinsve playing Nora, an actress grieving the loss of her mother together with her sister, Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas), when their long-estranged father, Gustav (Stellan Skarsgård), suddenly returns to their lives. If Sentimental Value is finished in time, a Cannes bow is assured. 

Hungarian filmmaker Ildiko Enyedi is a potential competition contender with her latest, a drama set in Marburg, a medieval university town in Germany, that stretches over more than a century and is told from the perspective of a lonely old tree standing in the middle of the city’s botanical garden. Enyedi’s follow-up to her 2021 Cannes competition entry, The Story of My Wife, features a red-carpet worthy cast, including French star Léa Seydoux and Hong Kong legend Tony Leung Chiu-wai (In the Mood for Love).

Another hotly anticipated A24 auteurist exercise, The Smashing Machine is the junior Safdie bro‘s solo feature debut, following his hilarious and disquieting recent TV series work on The Curse with Nathan Fielder. The film chronicles the tortured and triumphant life of mixed martial arts legend Mark Kerr, aka “The Smashing Machine,” played by Dwayne Johnson. The Rock will no doubt nail the film’s feverish fight sequences, but there’s arguably even more excitement building around the notion of seeing the beloved action hero tackle an intense dramatic role. The Smashing Machine would mark Safdie’s first trip back to Cannes since he and his brother debuted Goodtime in competition in 2017.

Hong Kong artist, musician, fashion designer and filmmaker Juno Mak has been working on Sons of the Neon Night for the past decade. Various aspects of the project have piqued the curiosity of film buffs. The highly stylized crime drama takes place in a snow-blanketed, pseudo-futuristic version of Hong Kong and stars many of the city’s biggest names: Takeshi Kaneshiro, Tony Leung Ka-fai, Sean Lau, Louis Koo and Ritchie Jen, among others. The film reportedly had a budget of $50 million, making it one of the most expensive movies in Hong Kong cinema history. It also features a new score from the late, great Ryuichi Sakamoto. Mak impressed critics with his action-horror debut Rigor Mortis in 2013. Sons of the Neon Night was announced as his follow-up in 2015. Now, finally, it’s nearly here — and sources in the Hong Kong industry say hopes are high it will unfurl in Cannes, perhaps in a midnight screening section like the Hong Kong action throwback Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In last year.

Egyptian-Austrian filmmaker Abu Bakr Shawky, whose debut, Yomeddine, premiered to acclaim in competition in Cannes in 2018, could be returning to the Croisette with this period feature set between Europe and the Mideast. The story follows two pen pals: the Egyptian Ahmed and Austrian Liz, who begin a long-distance friendship starting in the summer of 1967 and continuing through the 1980s, through all the personal and political upheaval of the time. Amir El Masry (The Night Manager) and Valérie Pachner (A Hidden Life) star. The Stories should be finished in time for a May bow, and with backing from Cannes masters Goodfellas, it looks a lock for competition or Un Certain Regard.

Ukrainian director Sergey Loznitsa is currently in post on Two Prosecutors, his first narrative feature since 2018’s Donbass, which won the Un Certain Regard directing prize. His output of late has been nonfiction — including The Invasion (2024), The Natural History of Destruction (2022) and Babi Yar. Context (2021) — all of which premiered in Cannes. This 1937-set drama, based on Georgi Demidov’s novel of the same name, follows an idealistic law school graduate who is confronted with the brutal reality of Stalinism. If it gets picked for competition, it will be Loznitsa’s fourth Palme d’or contender, following My Joy (2010), In the Fog (2012) and A Gentle Creature (2017).

Haifaa Al Mansour‘s debut feature, Wadjda, represented a raft of historic firsts: It was the first film directed by a female Saudi filmmaker, the first movie shot entirely within Saudi Arabia and the Kingdom’s first submission to the Oscars. Al Mansour’s latest, described as an Arab-language mystery-thriller, begins when the body of a lifeless girl is found discarded in the desert without any identification. The film was acquired by Sony Pictures Classics in February and is expected to launch in either Cannes or Venice.

Rebecca Zlotowski’s French murder mystery tale could be this year’s Anatomy of a Fall. Jodie Foster, a fluent French speaker, plays a renowned psychiatrist who mounts her own private investigation into the death of one of her patients, whom she is convinced has been murdered. A who’s who of French talent, including Daniel Auteuil, Virginie Efira, Mathieu Amalric, Vincent Lacoste and Luana Bajrami, co-star. Zlotowski’s 2022 feature Other People’s Children launched at Venice, but the director is no stranger to Cannes, having premiered Dear Prudence (2010) in Critics’ Week and Grand Central (2013) in Un Certain Regard.

Sebastián Lelio‘s Spanish-language feminist musical — inspired by the mass demonstrations protesting violence against women that swept Chile in 2018 — has the potential to be this year’s Emilia Perez (minus the tweeting scandal). Lelio shot the feature under the radar in Chile last spring and should have it ready for Cannes. But, with the exception of his 2009 Directors’ Fortnight entry Navidad, the Chilean director has tended to favor Berlin — where both Gloria (2013) and A Fantastic Woman (2017) premiered — or Toronto, where he went with Disobedience (2017), Gloria Bell (2018) and The Wonder (2022), the latter also screening in Telluride. Chances are The Wave will land at one of the fall festivals (San Sebastian being another possibility), but that doesn’t mean it’s not a dark horse contender for the Croisette.

Another Cannes list means another year of waiting and hoping for Terrence Malick’s The Way of the Wind. The legendary auteur, winner of the Palme D’or in 2011 for The Tree of Life, reportedly captured nearly 3,000 hours of footage when the film was in production back in 2019 and he has been editing it ever since. A biblical epic about the life of Jesus, the film stars Géza Röhrig (Son of Saul) as Jesus, Matthias Schoenaerts as Saint Peter, Mark Rylance as Satan, Tawfeek Barhom as John the Baptist, Aidan Turner as Saint Andrew and Ben Kingsley, Joseph Fiennes and Douglas Booth in undisclosed roles.

French company Goodfellas, known as the Cannes whisperers, have boarded sales on this Iranian drama, Saeed Roustayi’s first film since his 2022 Cannes Palme d’Or contender, Leila’s Brothers, suggesting they expect Roustayi will be back on the Riviera come May. Described as a contemporary family drama of revenge and forgiveness, the film stars Parinaz Izadyar (Law of Tehran) as a widowed nurse struggling with her rebellious son. When a tragic accident occurs, she finds herself confronting feelings of betrayal even as she seeks justice.

Nadav Lapid, the Israeli director for Berlin 2019 Golden Bear winner Synonyms and Cannes 2021 jury prize winner Ahed’s Knee, looks set to return to the Croisette with his fifth feature, a drama revolving around a character who, much like Jim Carrey’s figure in 2008’s Yes Man, decides to answer everything in life in the affirmative. Yes also has a local lobbyist in the form of Paris-based Les Films du Bal, which produced Ahed’s Knee and Mati’s Diop’s Atlantics (a Cannes jury prize winner in 2019).

Another Cannes guarantee is the new feature from the Dardenne brothers. The two-time Palme d’Or winners (for 1999’s Rosetta and 2005’s L’Enfant) are set to return to the Croisette with their latest Belgian social drama, this time set among five women living in a shelter for young mothers. It may have been 20 years since they last took the top film honor, but the Dardennes remain Cannes stalwarts, and it would be a shock if they are not in competition again this year.