by Helen Barlow
When Thierry Fremaux announced the 2025 Cannes programme last month, he was aware that the festival had enjoyed huge successes in recent years, most notably in 2024 with Sean Baker’s Anora, which after being awarded the Palme d’Or went on to win five Oscars including for Best Picture. Jacques Audiard’s Emilia Perez not only won the festival’s Jury Prize, but the Best Actress prize (for its four leads) and the soundtrack award, before being nominated in the Oscars, with Zoe Saldana winning for Best Supporting Actress and the film winning for Best Song. It scooped the pool at the French Cesars, winning seven awards.
In 2023, Justine Triet’s Anatomy of a Fall had won the Cannes Palme d’Or before Triet went on to win the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, and the film bagged six Cesars.
In 2021, Julia Ducournau’s Palme d’Or winner, Titane, became the French international film Oscar nominee, though failed to make the final cut. Still, the raunchy violent film may have put France on the Oscar voters’ radar, given what has happened since.
Interestingly, genre specialist Ducournau, whose 2016 film Raw became a sensation after winning in the Cannes sidebar section, Critics’ Week, returns this year to the competition with Alpha [above], her most personal film yet. It follows a troubled 13-year-old girl whose world collapses when she returns from school with a tattoo on her arm. The film’s star-studded cast includes Emma Mackey, Golshifteh Farahani and Tahar Rahim (currently on screens in Monsieur Aznavour), who lost 20 kilos for the role.
The always reliable Dominik Moll (Harry, He’s here to Help; The Night of the 12th) competes with Case 137 [above], starring Lea Drucker as a police officer assigned to a case involving a young man from her hometown being severely wounded during a chaotic demonstration in Paris.
Incredibly, the festival opens with a French film, Leave One Day [above], by first-time director Amelie Bonnin and it marks the first time a debut film has opened the festival. Billed as a romantic musical dramedy, the out-of-competition film tells of a young chef intent on opening her own gourmet Parisian restaurant. The film stars French pop star Juliette Armanet (famous for singing John Lennon’s Imagine on the Seine during last year’s Olympics opening ceremony) and Bastien Bouillon (Monsieur Aznavour, The Count of Monte Cristo, The Night of the 12th). Even Richard Linklater [below with his leading man Guillaume Marbeck] is delivering a French story with Nouvelle Vague, a dramatised version of Jean-Luc Godard making Breathless.
The competition jury head Juliette Binoche is likewise French, whilst the jury includes Halle Berry, Jeremy Strong, Alba Rohrwacher and Indian filmmaker Payal Kapadia.
One film that is bound to create a stir in the competition is Iranian director Jafar Panahi’s It Was Just an Accident [below], which follows in the footsteps of his friend Mohammad Rasoulof’s 2024 entry The Seed of the Sacred Fig, which won the Cannes Jury Prize and went on to an Oscar nomination.
This year’s Competition includes Wes Anderson’s The Phoenician Scheme starring Benicio Del Toro and Mia Threapleton (Kate Winslet’s daughter); Oliver Hermanus’s World War One gay drama The History of Sound [below] starring Paul Mescal and Josh O’Connor; and Ari Aster’s star-studded Eddington with Joaquin Phoenix and Pedro Pascal.
Screening out of competition – in the Midnight section – is Ethan Coen’s dark comedy Honey Don’t, which follows Margaret Qualley’s smalltown investigator who delves into a series of strange deaths tied to a mysterious church, and Spike Lee’s reunion with Denzel Washington with Highest 2 Lowest, whilst Jodie Foster shows she can truly speak French in Rebecca Zlotowski’s Vie Privee [below], a gently funny murder mystery set in Paris.
Australians are making their presence felt in festival sidebars. Sean Byrne (The Loved Ones) will premiere Dangerous Animals [below] in the Director’s Fortnight. Shot on the Gold Coast, it tells of a rebellious surfer (Hassie Harrison), who is abducted by a shark-obsessed serial killer, played by Jai Courtney.
Joel Edgerton appears in the horror film The Plague [below], screening in Un Certain Regard. The first film directed by Charlie Polinger, it marks Edgerton’s first film with his production company Five Henrys. The film follows an anxious 12-year-old navigating the savage social order at an all-boys’ water polo summer camp.
After working with Nick Cave, Andrew Dominick will present his latest black-and-white musical documentary, Bono: Stories of Surrender [below], where the Irish megastar gets up close and personal. Bono should make it to the Croisette to present the film, possibly only to be outdone by Tom Cruise with Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning.
Three famed actors are presenting their directing debuts: Scarlett Johansson with Eleanor the Great [below] starring June Squibb as a 90 year-old woman from Florida who strikes up an unlikely friendship with a 19-year-old student; Harris Dickinson with Urchin starring Frank Dillane as a homeless London man trying to turn his life around; and Kristen Stewart with The Chronology of Water starring Imogen Poots as a woman from a violent upbringing who discovers an unexpected freedom in the form of literature.
High profile French directors are premiering their films away from the competition too. Cedric Klapisch premieres Colours of Time [below], the story of four cousins who inherit an old house in rural Normandy and retrace the steps of their ancestors in 19th century Paris.
Sylvain Chomet (The Triplets of Belleville) presents the new animated feature, The Magnificent Life of Marcel Pagnol [below], about the real life Pagnol who hailed from Marseilles and pioneered using voices from the provinces in his theatre and films between 1930 and 1950. Pagnol’s 1935 film Merlusse will screen in Cannes Classics where Quentin Tarantino will be the guest of honour and will share his passion for US filmmaker George Sherman by showing two of his westerns.
Robert De Niro will receive an Honorary Palme d’Or, 14 years after he presided over the jury in 2011.
Late on Thursday, Eugene Jarecki’s Julian Assange documentary The Six Billion Dollar Man was added to the programme. It was pulled from Sundance earlier this year because of “unexpected developments” in the story, Jarecki said. According to the synopsis for the film “Julian Assange faced a possible 175 years in prison for exposing U.S. war crimes until events took a turn in this landmark case.” We’ll be interested to hear what the changes were.
The Cannes Film Festival runs from 13 – 24 May 2025
