The Cannes Film Festival has unveiled the line-up for its 78th edition (May 13-24). Scroll down for full line-up Festival director Thierry Frémau
The Cannes Film Festival has unveiled the line-up for its 78th edition (May 13-24).
Scroll down for full line-up
Festival director Thierry Frémaux revealed the Official Selection at a press conference at the UGC Montparnasse cinema in Paris alongside festival president Iris Knobloch.
A diverse range of features make up the 2025 Competition, mixing veteran auteurs with up-and-coming directors.
Acclaimed directors the Dardenne Brothers, Wes Anderson, Richard Linklater and Joachim Trier are among those selected for Cannes Competition 2025.
Newcomers to the Competition include genre specialist Ari Aster, Berlin Golden Bear winner Carla Simon as well as Germany’s Mascha Schilinski.
Six female filmmakers have made the Competition this year, out of the total of 19 announced today: Julia Ducournau, Kelly Reichardt, Hafsia Herzi, Carla Simon, Chie Hayakawa and Mascha Schilinski.
Cannes artistic director Thierry Fremaux said the festival had received a record 2,909 feature submissions this year.
Two-time Palme d’Or winners the Dardenne Brothers return with a Competition slot for The Young Mother’s Home, set within a shelter for adolescent mothers. It will be their tenth time competing for the Palme d’Or, which they’ve won twice before with Rosetta in 1999 and The Child in 2005.
Another Cannes regular is Ukrainian director Sergei Loznitsa whose film Two Prosecutors is set during Stalin’s Great Terror in 1937. Coproduction Office handles sales.
Two years after The French Dispatch played in Competition, Wes Anderson returns with The Phoenician Scheme, a spy comedy thriller featuring an ensemble led by Benicio del Toro, Mia Threapleton and Michael Cera. Focus Features holds worldwide rights.
Tarik Saleh’s political thriller Eagles Of The Republic is the third and final film in his Cairo trilogy after The Nile Hilton Incident and Cairo Conspiracy aka Boy From Heaven, with the latter playing in Cannes Competition in 2022. Playtime handles international sales.
The Brazilian veteran Kleber Mendonça Filho, behind Cannes selections Bacurau (2019) and Aquarius (2016), returns with political thriller The Secret Agent set during his country’s military dictatorship in the 1970s. Wagner Moura stars as a man on the run who flees to the coastal city of Recife. Mk2 Films handles sales.
Norway’s Joachim Trier reunites with The Worst Person In The World co-writer Eskil Vogt and that film’s Cannes best actress winner Renate Reinsve for Sentimental Value. The cast for Trier’s sixth feature also includes Stellan Skarsgaard, Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas and Elle Fanning. The film is a portrait of a family in Oslo in a house they’ve lived in for generations – when the filmmaker father wants his daughter to star in his comeback film. Mk2 is selling.
Julia Ducournau’s Alpha, the filmmaker’s follow-up to 2021 Palme d’Or-winner Titane, stars Tahar Rahim and Golshifteh Farahani. Neon has already snagged North American rights.
Veteran Iranian director Jafar Panahi, who was last in Cannes Competition with 3 Faces in 2018, returns with the under-the-radar A Simple Accident.
Kelly Reichardt’s The Mastermind stars Josh O’Connor and centres on an audacious art heist against the backdrop of the Vietnam War. She was previously in Competition in 2022 with Showing Up.
Italian director Mario Martone’s Fuori is an adaptation of Goliarda Sapienza’s Sicilian epic The Art Of Joy. Valeria Golino stars alongside Matilda De Angelis and pop star Elodie. Golino notably directed a series version of the same book which premiered in Cannes’ Special Screenings last year. Martone was last in Competition with 2022’s Nostalagia.
Richard Linklater’s French-language Nouvelle Vague, about the making of Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless, stars Zooey Deutch. The US filmmaker was last on the Croisette as a filmmaker in 2006 with Fast Food Nation and A Scanner Darkly.
From Spain, Golden Bear winner Carla Simon has made the jump to Cannes with Romería, about a adolescent teen who sets out on a journey to meet her biological father’s family. Also from Spain, Oliver Laxe’s Sirat stars Sergi López and Bruno Núñez as a father and son searching for their missing daughter and sister at a Morocco rave.
Paul Mescal and Josh O’Connor star in South African director Oliver Hermanus’ gay romance The History Of Sound. Hermanus’s credits include Bill Nighy-starring Living and he was last at Cannes in Un Certain Regard in 2011 with Beauty. Mubi picked up rights for North America earlier this year, while Focus Features and Universal Pictures International have international rights.
US director Ari Aster’s gloomy comedy Western Eddington, starring Joaquin Phoenix, Pedro Pascal and Emma Stone, has been selected. It’s about an ambitious small-town New Mexico sheriff who goes up against his mayor, played by Pascal, in a pandemic-era power struggle. It is genre specialist Aster’s first time in Competition, after credits including Midsommar and Hereditary.
Renoir marks the second feature from Chie Hayakawa, whose Plan 75 debuted at Cannes in Un Certain Regard in 2022 and was selected as Japan’s Oscar submission. Her latest revolves around a adolescent girl whose father is battling cancer. The feature is produced by Loaded Films.
Dominik Moll is competing with police thriller Dossier 137 starring Léa Drucker as an investigator with the IGPN, the inspection service of the French national police, tasked with a case that turns personal. The German-born French director’s The Night Of The 12th went on to win six César awards including best film and director after first playing in the Cannes Premiere section. Haut et Court produces.
German director Mascha Schilinski catapults into Competition with Sound Of Falling, about four girls in four different decades who are growing up on a rural farm and seem to be connected with one another.
French director Hafsia Herzi’s La Petite Derniere is an adaptation of Fatima Daas’ novel and is a coming-of-age story set in a Paris suburb about a lesbian Muslim woman dealing with pushback from both her family and the outside world. June Films produces. It is Herzi’s third feature as a director following 2021 Cannes’ Un Certain Regard prize-winner Good Mother and 2019 Critics’ Week debut You Deserve A Lover.
The festival opens with Amélie Bonnin’s feature debut Partir Un Jour, playing out of competition. The bittersweet comedy stars popular French singer and actress Juliette Armanet, and is about a woman on the cusp of fulfilling her dream of opening a gourmet restaurant when a family emergency brings her back to her hometown. Pathe handles sales. It is the first time the festival has opened with a debut feature.
Meanwhile, Un Certain Regard sees actors Scarlett Johansson and Harris Dickinson make their directorial debuts. Johansson will premiere Eleanor The Great starring June Squibb as a 90-year-old woman who is trying to rebuild her life after the death of her best friend.
Babygirl and Triangle Of Sadness star Dickinson will premiere Urchin, about a abrasive sleeper in London trapped in a cycle of self-destruction as he attempts to turn his life around.
Juliette Binoche will preside over the Competition jury. Robert De Niro will receive the honorary Palme d’Or.
Official selection
Competition
- Alpha, Julia Ducournau
- Dossier 137, Dominik Moll
- Eddington, Ari Aster
- Eagles Of The Republic, Tarik Saleh
- Fuori, Mario Martone
- The History Of Sound, Oliver Hermanus
- The Mastermind, Kelly Reichardt
- Nouvelle Vague, Richard Linklater
- La Petite Derniere, Hafsia Herzi
- The Phoenician Scheme, Wes Anderson
- Renoir, Chie Hayakawa
- Romeria, Carla Simon
- The Secret Agent, Kleber Mendonca Filho
- Sentimental Value, Joachim Trier
- A Simple Accident, Jafar Panahi
- Sirat, Oliver Laxe
- Sound Of Falling, Mascha Schilinski
- Two Prosecutors, Sergei Loznitsa
- The Young Mother’s Home, Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne
Out of competition
- Colours Of Time, Cedric Klapisch
- Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, Christopher McQuarrie
- Partir Un Jour, Amélie Bonnin – opening film
- The Richest Woman In The World, Thierry Klifa
- Vie Privée, Rebecca Zlotowski
Midnight Screenings
- Dalloway, Yann Gozlan
- Exit 8, Genki Kawamura
- Sons Of The Neon Night, Juno Mak
Cannes Premiere
- Amrum, Fatih Akin
- Connemara, Alex Lutz
- The Disappearance Of Josef Mengele, Kirill Serebrennikov
- Orwell: 2+2=5, Raoul Peck
- Splitsville, Mike Corvino
- The Wave, Sebestian Lelio
Special Screenings
- Bono: Stories Of Surrender, Andrew Dominik
- A Magnificent Life, Sylvain Chomet
- Tell Her That I Love Her, Romane Bohringer
Un Certain Regard
- Aisha Can’t Fly Away, Morad Mostafa
- Caravan, Zuzana Kirchnerová
- Eleanor The Great, Scarlett Johansson
- Heads Or Tails?, Alessio Rigo de Righi, Matteo Zoppis
- Homebound, Neeraj Ghaywan
- The Last One For The Road, Francesco Sossai
- L’inconnu de la Grande Arche, Stéphane Demoustier
- Meteors, Hubert Charuel
- The Mysterious Gaze Of The Flamingo, Diego Céspedes
- My Father’s Shadow, Akinola Davies Jr.
- Once Upon A Time In Gaza, Tarzan Nasser and Arab Nasser
- A Pale View Of The Hills, Kei Ishikawa
- Pillion, Harry Lighton
- Promised Sky – Erige Sehiri
- The Plague, Charlie Polinger
- Urchin, Harris Dickinson
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