The 2023 Cannes Film Festival is officially underway, and there are a host of promising films set to premiere at the French-based soiree.
While most folks won’t get to see these films as they premiere at Cannes, it’s exciting enough to see the initial reactions to some of the year’s most anticipated titles.
From a new film by auteur Martin Scorsese to Pixar and the return of Indiana Jones, there are plenty of promising films upcoming for the festival.
The full list of films premiering at this year’s Cannes Film Festival features a wide array of world cinema’s best, and we’ve picked out five we can’t wait to see in theaters.
Killers of the Flower Moon
The pinnacle of film is being able to take in a new film from one of the all-time greats, Martin Scorsese.
It’s been four years since Scorsese’s last film The Irishman, and now he’s back with an adaptation of the David Grann non-fiction book on the 1920s investigation into the oil-related murders of Osage people in Oklahoma.
The film’s dynamic cast features Jesse Plemons, Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro, Lily Gladstone, Brendan Fraser, John Lithgow and Tantoo Cardinal.
Killers of the Flower Moon will release in the fall and have its world premiere at Cannes out of competition.
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
What else can you say?
James Mangold takes the reins from Steven Spielberg on what looks to be the last hurrah for Harrison Ford’s Indiana Jones.
The film looks to pit Jones against a gaggle of nefarious Nazis and teams him up with Phoebe Waller-Bridge.
After 2022’s smash-hit Top Gun: Maverick made its debut at Cannes, perhaps this 2023 summer blockbuster will follow in its footsteps at the box office and with the awards circuit?
Asteroid City
Wes Anderson movies and the Cannes Film Festival go hand-in-hand, and Anderson’s first film of 2023 will make its debut in France.
The film might best be known so far as Anderson’s first collaboration with Tom Hanks, but it looks to be a loving homage to Spielberg’s early filmography tinged with the Royal Tenenbaums filmmaker’s quaint, orate vibe.
Anderson has another film coming out later this year with Benedict Cumberbatch, but Asteroid City looks like a delightful notch in the director’s impressive filmography.
Elemental
Pixar returns to Cannes for the first time since 2020’s Soul with Elemental, which is the studio’s first film to premiere at the festival not directed by Pete Docter.
The film looks like an earthy riff on Zootopia, as a person made of water and a person made of fire begin to fall in love despite them being, quite literally, polar opposites.
It bodes well for the film that it’s closing Cannes this year and that Pixar has this much faith in it to put it out there so early.
Funny enough, it’s the first original film the studio has sent to theaters since 2020’s Onward.
May December
Filmmaker Todd Haynes (Far from Heaven, I’m Not There) returns with an original romantic drama featuring Oscar winners Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore.
The film intriguingly doesn’t have a distributor yet despite its Oscar-ready talent, so expect this one to be the big sale of the festival.
Although, just on paper, this one is exciting enough with Haynes directing Portman and Moore.
