The Cannes film festival looks set to cement its reputation as the world’s ultimate springboard for serious films with an eye on box office success, with new works by auteur heavyweights Wes Anderson, Ari Aster, Kelly Reichardt and Richard Linklater all set to premiere on the Croisette this May.
Cannes delegate general Thierry Frémaux and president Iris Knobloch announced this year’s lineup at a press conference in Paris on Thursday morning.
In the main competition, Anderson’s star-studded The Phoenician Scheme – featuring Benicio del Toro, Michael Cera, Tom Hanks, Benedict Cumberbatch and Scarlett Johansson – will compete for the Palme d’Or against Midsommar director Ari Aster’s western black comedy Eddington, which stars Joaquin Phoenix, Emma Stone and Pedro Pascal.
Rising British actor Josh O’Connor plays the lead in two competition films, US film-maker Kelly Reichardt’s Vietnam war-set The Mastermind and South African director Oliver Hermanus’s gay romance The History of Sound.
Before Sunrise maker Linklater makes his second major festival appearance of the year with Nouvelle Vague, telling the story of the making of Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless. Linklater’s new film Blue Moon, a biopic of musical writer Lorenz Hart, premiered at the Berlin film festival in February.
Also in the running for the Palme d’Or are Sentimental Value by Norwegian director Joachim Trier, who was nominated for best film in 2021 (when lead Renate Reinsve won the best actress award) for The Worst Person in the World, Iranian dissident Jafar Panahi with A Simple Accident, and influential Belgian arthouse titans Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, with Jeunes Méres.
Last year’s Palme d’Or winner, Sean Baker’s Anora, walked away from the Oscars with five gongs 10 months later, and films that premiered on the French Riviera last May ended up racking up a total of 31 Oscar nominations and nine wins, underscoring its status as the world’s premier film festival.
This year’s Un Certain Regard category will see actor Scarlett Johansson’s directorial debut with Eleanor the Great, as well as British director Harry Lighton’s queer romance Pillion, starring Alexander Skarsgard and Harry Melling, best known as Dudley Dursley in the Harry Potter films. Urchin, another drama by an actor-turned-director – Babygirl’s Harris Dickinson – also premieres in the sidebar.
The 78th edition of the festival will have its first ever Nigerian film in the official selection: British-Nigerian director Akinola Davies Jr’s Lagos-set debut feature My Father’s Shadow tells the story of two young brothers on the day opf the tumultuous 1993 Nigerian presidential elections.
Tom Cruise will walk the red carpet in Cannes to promote Christopher McQuarrie’s latest in the Mission: Impossible franchise, The Final Reckoning, which is screening out of competition.
Russian stage and film director Kirill Serebrennikov will be in Cannes for the second year in a row with The Disappearance of Josef Mengele, about the notorious Auschwitz doctor, after his Ben Whishaw-starring Eduard Limonov biopic got mixed reviews last year. Turkish-German director Fatih Akin, whose Head On was a major hit 20 years ago, will premiere second world war coming-of-age tale Amrum, based on the childhood of screenwriter Hark Bohm.
Although it wasn’t announced in the press conference on Thursday, Fremaux later on Thursday confirmed that US director Spike Lee’s Highest 2 Lowest, a re-imaging of Akira Kurosawa’s 1963 crime thriller starring Denzel Washington, would also be screening out of competition at Cannes.
• The Cannes film festival runs from 13 to 24 May
Cannes 2025 official selection: the full list
Competition
The Phoenician Scheme, , dir: Wes Anderson
Eddington, dir: Ari Aster
Jeunes Méres, dir: Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne
Alpha, dir: Julia Ducournau
Renoir, dir: Hayakawa Chie
The History of Sound, dir: Oliver Hermanus
La Petite Derniére, dir: Hafsia Herzi
Sirat, dir: Oliver Laxe
New Wave, dir: Richard Linklater
Two Prosecutors, dir: Sergei Loznitsa
Fuori, dir: Mario Martone
O Secreto Agente (The Secret Agent), dir: Kleber Mendonça Filho
Dossier 137, dir: Dominik Moll
Un Simple Accident, dir: Jafar Panahi
Sound of Falling, dir: Mascha Schilinski
Romería, , dir: Carla Simón
Sentimental Value, dir: Joachim Trier
Un Certain Regard
La Misteriosa Mirada del Flamenco (The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo), dir: Diego Céspedes
Météors, dir: Hubert Charuel
My Father’s Shadow, dir: Akinola Davies Jr
L’Inconnu De La Grande Arche, dir: Stéphanie Demoustier
Urchin, dir: Harris Dickinson
Homebound, dir: Neeraj Ghaywan
Tôi Yamanamino Hikari (A Pale View of the Hills), dir: Ishikawa Kei
Eleanor The Great, dir: Scarlett Johansson
Karavan, dir: Zuzana Kirchnerová
Pillion, dir: Harry Lighton
Aisha Can’t Fly Away, dir: Morad Mostafa
Once Upon a Time in Gaza, dir: Arab and Tazan Nasser
The Plague, dir: Charlie Polinger
Promised Sky, dir: Erige Sehiri
Le Città Di Pianura (The Last One for the Road), dir: Francesco Sossai
Testa O Croce? (Heads or Tails), dir: Matteo Zoppis, Alessio Rigo de Righi
Out of competition
Colours of Time, dir: Cédric Klapisch
La Femme La Plus Riche Du Monde, dir: Thierry Klifa
Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, dir: Christopher McQuarrie
Vie Privée, dir: Rebecca Zlotowski
Midnight Screenings
Dalloway, dir: Yann Gozlan
Exit 8, dir: Kawamura Genki
Feng Lin Huo Shan (Sons of the Neon Light), dir: Mak Juno
Cannes Premiere
Amrum, dir: Fatih Akin
Splitsville, dir: Michael Angelo Covino
La Ola (The Wave), dir: Sebastián Lelio
Connemara, dir: Alex Lutz
Orwell: 2+2=5, dir: Raoul Peck
Das Verschwinden des Josef Mengele (The Disappearance of Josef Mengele), dir: Kirill Serebrennikov
Special Screenings
Stories of Surrender, dir: Bono
Tell Her That I Love Her, dir: Romane Bohringer
A Magnificent Life, dir: Sylvain Chomet
