Two months before 2025 Cannes Film Festival and the official selection is still very much a work in progress.
There are some rumors. It seems that only three films have so far been given a golden ticket to compete in Cannes. One of them is Jim Jarmusch’s anticipated Father Mother Sister Brother starring Cate Blanchett, Adam Driver and Tom Waits.
The last edition of the festival, which Fremaux had warned would be slightly weaker due to the impact of the double Hollywood strikes, proved to be anything but (Anora, Emilia Pérez, The Substance and Flow).
If 2024 was a quieter festival, 2025 Cannes Film Festival is set to be an absolute banger, like the first post-strike Cannes.
The first titles
Besides Jim Jarmusch’s Father Mother Sister Brother, American filmmakers are looking to be out in full force for this 78th edition. One of the buzziest submissions could be Richard Linklater’s French-language Nouvelle Vague, about the making of Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless and the birth of the French New Wave (produced by ARP Selection). Linklater was just at the Berlin Film Festival with Blue Moon.
Spike Lee, who was last in Cannes to preside over the jury in 2021, is expected to bring his A24 movie Highest 2 Lowest, a reimagining of Japanese director Akira Kurosawa’s 1963 crime thriller High and Low, starring Denzel Washington.
Wes Anderson is also one of the Croisette regulars expected with his Focus Features film The Phoenician Scheme, the story of a family business starring Benicio del Toro, Mia Threapleton, Michael Cera, Tom Hanks and Scarlett Johansson.
Other American helmers tipped for Cannes include Ari Aster with his A24 Western black comedy Eddington starring Emma Stone and Joaquin Phoenix; Gregg Araki’s erotic thriller I Want Your Sex starring Olivia Wilde, Cooper Hoffman and Charli XCX; Kelly Reichardt’s Mubi-produced The Mastermind, set against the backdrop of the Vietnam War and starring Josh O’Connor as an art thief; and Kristen Stewart‘s feature directorial debut The Chronology of Water, starring Imogen Poots.
Meanwhile, Tom Cruise’s Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning is still rumored to be a shoo-in to premiere out of competition.
Othe films could be Karim Aïnouz’s Rosebush Pruning, an adaption of Marco Bellocchio’s 1965 dark satire Fists in the Pocket starring Elle Fanning, Riley Keough, Callum Turner and Pamela Anderson (co-produced by Mubi, repped by The Match Factory).
Among the international auteurs are the two-time Palme d’Or-winning Dardenne brothers with their social drama The Young Mother’s Home (repped by Goodfellas); Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value, a Neon-acquired family drama with Renate Reinsve, alongside Stellan Skarsgård and Elle Fanning (repped by MK2 Films); Rebecca Zlotowski’s Vie Privée, a Paris-set thriller starring Jodie Foster and Daniel Auteuil (repped by Goodfellas); Fatih Akin’s 1945-set Amrum and German up-and-comer Mascha Schilinski’s The Doctor Says I’ll Be Alright, but I’m Feelin’ Blue.
Other possibilities at 2025 Cannes Film Festival
Other possibilities include Julia Ducournau’s Alpha, starring Golshifteh Farahani and Tahar Rahim (repped by FilmNation, Charades); László Nemes’s post-World War II Hungarian family drama Orphan (repped by Charades, New Europe); Chinese director Bi Gan’s sci-fi thriller Resurrection, starring Jackson Yee and Shu Qi (repped by Les Films du Losange); veteran Italian helmer Mario Martone’s Fuori, a biopic of feminist writer Goliarda Sapienza starring Valeria Golino (repped by True Colours); Brazilian critic-turned-helmer Kleber Mendonca Filho’s The Secret Agent, star Wagner Moura and set in the late 1970s during the final years of Brazil’s military dictatorship (repped by MK2 Films); and Pietro Marcello’s Duse, a film starring Valeria Bruni Tedeschi as the legendary Italian stage diva Eleonora Duse, alongside Noémie Merlant (repped by The Match Factory).
Russian director Kirill Serebrennikov is also expected to be back in competition with The Disappearance of Josef Mengele, an adaptation of Olivier Guez‘s gripping novel by the same name (repped by Kinology).
(Variety)
