A total of 24 films are competing at this year’s Cannes Film Festival for the prestigious prize, Palme d’Or, awarded by a jury headed by US director Spike Lee.
The festival will be held on 6-17 July, with films to be screened in the following sections: Competition; Un Certain Regard; Out of Competition; Midnight Screening; Cannes Premières; and Special Screenings.
Festival’s General Delegate Thierry Fremaux and Director Pierre Lescure presented, on 3 June, the Official Selection for the 74th Festival de Cannes at the UGC Normandie in Paris.
A total of 18,000 professionals and journalists have already applied for their accreditations, the festival said. In accordance with the French Governments provisions to safeguard the health and safety of all participants, admission to the festival will be subject to daily health pass checks.
Here is a glimpse of the festival’s line-up:
Annette by Leos Carax, France
Adam Driver and Marion Cotillard star as a glamorous celebrity couple whose lives are upended by the arrival of their first child.
The first film in a decade from auteur Carax is also the first in English from the eccentric French mind behind arthouse favourites Holy Motors and The Lovers on the Bridge.
The French Dispatch by Wes Anderson, US
Film fans can never get enough of Wes Anderson, and his latest quirky creation can be counted on for more obsessively curated sets and shots, 20th Century nostalgia, family disharmony, and Bill Murray.
Plus yet more megastars in Anderson’s menagerie in the form of Timothee Chalamet and Benicio Del Toro, and the set-up of foreign correspondents in France, is likely to play well with critics at Cannes.
Benedetta by Paul Verhoeven, Netherlands
From Robocop to Basic Instinct to Starship Troopers, Dutch director Paul Verhoeven has always walked a fine line between gaudy schlock and cinematic genius. His latest tale recounts a lesbian affair in a 17th-century convent, starring Virginie Efira and Charlotte Rampling.
A Hero by Asghar Farhadi, Iran
The new film shot in Iran and in the Farsi language by the Iranian director Asghar Farhadi, known for The Salesman, which won best Cannes screenplay in 2012, and A Separation, both of which also won Oscars.
Tout s’est Bien passé (Everything Went Well) by Francois Ozon, France
Featuring French stars Sophie Marceau and Charlotte Rampling, the film by Francois Ozon tells the story of a woman asked by her father to help him die.
Tre Piani (Three Floors) by Nanni Moretti, Italy
Exactly 20 years after winning the Palme d’Or with The Son’s Room, and nine years after heading the main jury at Cannes, Moretti is back with his first-ever adaptation of a novel, which looks at three families who live on three different floors, in three chapters.
Titane by Julia Ducournau, France
Starring French veteran actor Vincent Lindon, Titane is the second feature film after Grave by horror film specialist Ducournau, which she reportedly wrote in six weeks between two episodes of France’s novel coronavirus (COVID-19) lockdowns.
Red Rocket by Sean Baker, US
The comedy-drama by indie filmmaker Sean Baker features Simon Rex as an over-the-hill porn star who returns to his hometown in Texas, where he is not very welcome.
Petrovs Flu by Kirill Serebrennikov, Russia
An alcohol-fuelled stroll by a cartoonist and his friend in post-Soviet Russia brings back childhood memories that get mixed up with the present.
Par un Demi Clair Matin by Bruno Dumont, France
Adapted from a work by French writer Charles Peguy, who was killed in battle in the first months of World War I, the film charts the fall from grace of a star TV reporter, whose life crisis is shown against a backdrop of contemporary France.
Nitram by Justin Kurzel, Australia
After his 2015 smash hit adaptation of Macbeth starring Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard, and his take on the Assassin’s Creed video game in 2016, the Australian director looks at events leading up to the Port Arthur mass shooting in Tasmania. The event claimed the lives of 35, and led to reforms of Australian gun control laws.
Memoria by Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Thailand
Tilda Swinton stars as a Scottish horticulturist in the Thai director’s first film since Cemetery of Splendour, and 11 years after he won the Palme d’Or for the dreamlike Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives. Shot in Colombia, Memoria explores the relationship of Swinton’s character with a French archaeologist and a musician, as she tries to understand sudden strange sounds in the night.
Lingui by Mahamat-Saleh Haroun, Chad
Set in the outskirts of N’Djamena, Lingui tells the story of an adolescent whose unwanted pregnancy puts her in conflict with her country’s traditions and the law. Haroun lives in France, but most of his films have been produced in his birth country, which he left during unrest there in the 1980s.
Les Olympiades (Paris 13th District) by Jacques Audiard, France
A film by the veteran Palme d’Or winner, based on three graphic novels by US author Adrian Tomine and set in a mixed neighbourhood of the French capital, the film is about three young women and a young man who are sometimes friends, sometimes lovers, and sometimes both.
Les Intranquilles (The Restless) by Joachim Lafosse, Belgium
Starring Leila Bekhti and Damien Bonnard, the film tells the story of a couple under stress due to Bonnard’s character suffering from bipolar disorder, and who do their best to protect their child.
La Fracture by Catherine Corsini, France
Two decades after her film Replay entered the Cannes competition, Corsini returns with a drama about a couple stuck in a hospital that comes under siege during a violent Paris demonstration inspired by the Yellow Vests movement.
The Worst Person in the World by Joachim Trier, Norway
A film about love and its complications, Trier’s film is the third of his Oslo trilogy. It looks at Julie, who turns 30 and is looking for answers in a new relationship only to realise that the much-hoped-for new perspective on life is not really happening.
Compartment No 6 by Juho Kuosmanen, Finland
Two strangers, a Finnish woman and a gloomy Russian, share a compartment of a train winding its way up to the Arctic Circle in a road film set against the backdrop of the 1980s Soviet Union. The film is by the Finnish director Juho Kuosmanen, who claims that the only way to be free is to accept the absurdity of life.
Casablanca Beats by Nabil Ayouch, France-Morocco
Ayouch rocks the suburbs of Casablanca with a film about young people seeking an outlet through hip hop in a neighbourhood that, in 2003, became a target of Al Qaeda suicide attacks on hotels, restaurants, and community centres.
Ahed’s Knee by Nadav Lapid, Israel
After winning prizes at Locarno, Cannes, and Berlin for his first three films, Lapid explores two battles waged by an Israeli director, one against the death of freedom and one against the death of a mother, both of which are doomed to failure.
Drive My Car by Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Japan
An aging, widowed actor looking for a chauffeur ends up hiring a 20-year-old woman. Things go wrong between them at first, but then a special relationship emerges.
Bergman Island by Mia Hansen-Love, France
An American film-making couple spends a summer on Faro, the windswept Baltic island that inspired Ingmar Bergman. Reality and fiction start to blur as the weeks pass.
The Story of My Wife by Ildiko Enyedi, Hungary
Featuring Lea Seydoux, who starred in Blue is the Warmest Colour that won Cannes in 2013, Enyedi’s film kicks off with a bet by a sea captain that he will marry the first woman who walks in. The film is based on a novel by Milan Fust.
Flag Day by Sean Penn, US
Star actor Penn again steps behind the camera, as well as in front of it, for Flag Day, which also stars his daughter Dylan Penn as well as Josh Brolin. The film shows a father living a double life as a con man, a fact his daughter, an investigative journalist, tries to come to terms with.
