by Adam Sywack
There’s always a bit of theatre before Cannes even starts. The lineup drops, people react immediately, and within a few hours, there’s already a loose consensus forming about what matters and what doesn’t. Half of it changes once the screenings begin anyway, but that early reaction is part of the ritual.
This year feels familiar in a way that’s hard to explain without sounding vague. Not predictable exactly, just recognisable. A lot of returning names, a certain kind of tone, films that don’t look like they’re in a hurry to impress anyone.
It’s the kind of selection where you get the sense that some screenings will be completely silent, and others will end in confused applause. Both are very Cannes outcomes.
A Competition Shaped by Auteur Voices
You don’t really need to dig deep to see the pattern here. This is a director-first lineup. Hamaguchi stands out straight away. His films tend to unfold at their own pace, which is a polite way of saying they can test your patience if you’re not in the mood for it. But when they land, they really land. That’s why he keeps coming back to festivals like this.
Farhadi is a different experience entirely. His stories usually look simple at first glance, then slowly tighten. By the time you realise what’s actually going on, you’re already stuck in it. And there’s no clean way out, morally speaking.
Kore-eda almost does the opposite. His films feel soft on the surface. Nothing dramatic is happening, no obvious push. Then later, you catch yourself thinking about a small moment you didn’t notice at the time.
Mungiu and Pawlikowski bring in a heavier tone. Their films often feel like they’re carrying something bigger in the background, history, politics, and memory. It’s there even when it’s not directly addressed.
When you step back and look at it, this isn’t a lineup trying to grab you straight away. It takes its time, and you kind of have to go along with it.
What Themes Are Emerging Across This Year’s Films
Even from the outside, before anyone’s seen anything, you start to notice overlaps. There’s a lot of pressure in these stories. Not always visible, not always explained, but definitely present. Characters reacting to things they don’t fully control, or maybe don’t fully understand.
Some films look like they’re dealing with the past in a very direct way. Others feel more abstract, like the past is just sitting there in the background, shaping things quietly.
Relationships come up a lot, too, though not in the obvious sense. Less about big conflicts, more about distance. The kind that builds slowly. The kind you don’t notice until it’s already there.
What’s interesting is how few of these films seem interested in neat endings. There’s no strong sense of closure from the descriptions alone. That’s usually a sign of where things are going.
Cannes and the Wider Attention Economy
Outside of Cannes, the way people watch things has shifted quite a bit. It’s not even a recent change anymore; it’s just normal.
Watching a film used to be a standalone thing. Now it sits inside everything else. Notifications, other tabs, something playing in the background. Attention doesn’t stay in one place for long.
Even during festivals, that doesn’t completely go away. People step out of screenings and immediately reconnect to everything else. It happens without thinking.
What’s slightly strange is how easy it is to move between completely different types of content. A slow, demanding film doesn’t stop anyone from switching to something lighter later. There’s no adjustment period.
That “something lighter” can be anything, really. A few minutes on social media, a random video, or even checking out new pokies to try just out of curiosity. Not as a plan, not as a replacement, just part of the same pattern of drifting between things. It sounds scattered, but it’s not experienced that way. It’s just how attention works now.
And maybe that’s what makes Cannes feel a bit separate from everything else. It still asks for focus in a way that most platforms don’t.
The Films Most Likely to Stand Out
Predictions don’t always age well here, but people still make them. Hamaguchi will get attention, that’s almost guaranteed. Whether people connect with it is another question, but it won’t go unnoticed.
Farhadi tends to sit somewhere in the middle of critical and audience appeal, which is a useful place to be. His films don’t divide people as sharply, but they still generate discussion.
Kore-eda films are harder to read. They don’t always dominate headlines straight away. They sort of build quietly, and then suddenly everyone has seen them.
And then there’s always the one film nobody expected. It happens every year. Something small, or something from a director people weren’t watching closely, and it just takes over the conversation. Trying to guess which one will be is usually pointless.
Why Cannes Still Sets the Tone
For all the changes around it, the Cannes movie festival hasn’t really shifted that much in what it offers. It still treats films as something that deserves full attention. That alone makes it feel different now.
Watching a film in that setting isn’t the same as watching it anywhere else. There’s less distraction, or at least the expectation of less distraction. People are there for the same reason, which changes how things feel in the room.
At the same time, the festival doesn’t pretend that the outside world doesn’t exist. It’s just not trying to compete with it directly. That might be why it still works. It doesn’t try to adapt to every new habit. It just stays consistent and lets everything else move around it.
Photo by Claudio Schwarz on Unsplash
