‘More stars than there are in heaven’: Everything you wish to have to understand in regards to the Cannes Film Festival

For a fortnight each and every May, Cannes hosts extra stars than there are in heaven (or the previous MGM backlot). This yr the French movie pageant might be even glitzier than same old as a who’s-who of Hollywood ability descends at the Côte d’Azur to rub shoulders with the good and just right of the world movie group.

All indicators level to a stellar yr for Cannes, driving top off a powerful appearing on the Academy Awards, with filmmakers queuing as much as hit the crimson carpet and chance the barbs of sleep-deprived critics.

The US contingent on the pageant, which starts Tuesday, is big. Tom Cruise returns to Cannes 3 years after Top Gun: Maverick with Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, hoping to copy the profitable components that propelled Maverick to one billion greenbacks on the field workplace.

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No honorary Palme d’Or for Cruise this time although; as an alternative, that might be passed to Cannes habitué Robert De Niro, a yr shy of the 50th anniversary of Taxi Driver profitable the Palme d’Or. Spike Lee, who served as jury president in 2021 (no longer with out incident) may also go back with Highest 2 Lowest, his riff on Akira Kurosawa’s High To Low (1963), starring Denzel Washington as a track rich person focused with a ransom plot.

Highest 2 Lowest will play out of festival along Ethan Coen comedy Honey Don’t!, his practice as much as closing yr’s Drive Away Dolls, the second one identify in his so-called “lesbian B-movie trilogy.”

Whether it is merely a case of a stacked lineup, or quibbles over theatrical home windows and French legislation (Lee’s movie will hit Apple TV+ in September, possibly nixing any likelihood of a cinema unencumber in France), it is a signal of the pageant’s impolite well being that those Cannes heavyweights don’t seem to be duking it out for a Palme d’Or.

So, who’s? Competition for the highest prize indicators a converting of the guard. Some Cannes stalwarts stay: two-time Palme winners the Dardennes brothers of Belgium with Young Mothers, Ukrainian Sergei Loznitsa with Two Prosecutors, and Scotland’s Lynne Ramsay (We Need To Talk About Kevin, You Were Never Really Here), whose adaptation of Ariana Harwicz’s novel Die, My Love stars Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson.

Wes Anderson can also be in festival for the fourth time with The Phoenician Scheme, that includes a few of his same old gamers (Bill Murray, Jeffrey Wright) and a few pleasant new additions (Riz Ahmed, Mia Threapleton, daughter of Kate Winslet). Add castmates Tom Hanks, Scarlett Johansson, Benicio Del Toro, Willem Dafoe and extra and you have the starriest crimson carpet of the pageant.

Joachim Trier, who rose during the ranks at Cannes earlier than bursting into the mainstream with multi-Oscar nominee The Worst Person within the World (2021) reunites with lead Renate Reinsve for the highly-anticipated Sentimental Value, which additionally stars Stellan Skarsgård. Iranian auteur Jafar Panahi, whose 2011 movie This Is Not A Film was once smuggled to the pageant on a USB stick hidden inside of a cake, might be again in festival with A Simple Accident, his practice as much as 2022’s No Bears, which gained most sensible prize on the Venice Film Festival.

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So too American indie queen Kelly Reichardt, closing at Cannes with Showing Up and now debuting The Mastermind, a length heist drama led through Josh O’Connor, who stars in two festival movies – the opposite being The History of Sound, directed through South African Oliver Hermanus and co-led through Paul Mescal.

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Hermanus is one in every of a slew of festival learners, together with Spaniard Carla Simón, a Berlinale winner in 2022, debuting Romería, and German director Mascha Schilinski with Sound of Falling. The latter, up to now titled The Doctor Says I’m Alright, But I’m Feeling Blue, follows 4 generations of ladies united through trauma, and has trailed vital buzz for months resulting in the pageant – much more notable given Schilinski’s low profile.

Reichardt, Ramsay, Simón and Schilinski are 4 of 7 ladies administrators nominated for the Palme this yr – a 3rd of the contest overall and a favorable step within the pageant’s quest for higher gender illustration. None are following up a Palme d’Or win like Julia Ducournau, although.

Ducournau’s Titane triumphed in 2021 and he or she returns with Alpha, reportedly a frame horror set towards an AIDS epidemic. Already purchased through NEON, audiences will have to be expecting some other provocative movie.

Speaking of, Ari Aster (Hereditary, Midsommar) is making his Cannes bow with Eddington. Bearing a poster alluding to the AIDS disaster of the 1980s and rumored to be set throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, the film reunites Aster together with his Beau Is Afraid celebrity Joaquin Phoenix as a New Mexico sheriff in a standoff with Pedro Pascal’s mayor.

The Palme d’Or jury, led through French actress Juliette Binoche and that includes Halle Berry and Succession actor Jeremy Strong, might be gazing the sector of 22 movies and can announce a winner on May 24.

Talk of the city

Elsewhere on the pageant, actors are stepping at the back of the digicam. In the Un Certain Regard class for emerging filmmakers, Kristen Stewart directs Imogen Poots in The Chronology of Water, an adaptation of Lidia Yuknavitch’s memoir. Scarlett Johansson’s Eleanor The Great stars June Squibb, and Harris Dickinson – closing noticed seducing Nicole Kidman in Babygirl – writes and directs Urchin, set at the streets of London. Also notable in Un Certain Regard is sizzling identify My Father’s Shadow, considered the first-ever Nigerian movie in Cannes’ respectable variety.

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The pageant hasn’t ever hesitated to program movies overlaying ongoing international occasions, and the Israel-Hamas battle might be referenced on display. Israeli director Nadav Lapid will deliver his emblem of social satire to the Directors’ Fortnight with Yes!, a movie set within the aftermath of the October 7 assaults.

Meanwhile, Put Your Soul On Your Hand And Walk, through Iranian filmmaker Sepideh Farsi, monitors within the ACID phase and profiles battle documentarian Fatima Hassouna. The movie is already being considered in a brand new mild after Hassouna, who had lined the war at the floor in Gaza, was once killed in an Israeli strike the day after the pageant introduced its lineup.

There’s a heavy dose of fact at the back of the scenes too. Taking a step again from the premieres, Cannes’ busy movie marketplace will be discussing whether or not President Donald Trump’s announcement that he intends to introduce price lists on movies “produced in Foreign Lands” will come to go – and if this is the case, the way it might be carried out.

The award season kingmaker

Late-breaking US coverage bulletins apart, Cannes is swaggering into its newest version. The pageant screened with reference to 3,000 movies to curate its respectable variety, and programmers shoehorned massive title after massive title into its lineup proper as much as the 11th hour. So much must cross mistaken for 2025 no longer to be a antique yr.

Whisper it quietly, however it is been rather the turnaround. For a lot of the aughts, Cannes was once locked in a not-so Cold War with the Venice Film Festival over who may just bag essentially the most thrilling titles.

Cannes was once combating with one hand tied at the back of its again; Venice had – has – an open-door coverage to the big-spending streamers, whilst Cannes mentioned “non” to together with them in its festival lineup. Quickly, Venice turned into noticed because the beginning gun for awards season.

But then Cannes had a notable win with Bong Joon Ho’s Parasite, the 2019 Palme d’Or winner and winner of best possible image on the Academy Awards in 2020 – the 1st non-English language best possible image winner, and the 1st movie to reach the Cannes-Oscar double since Marty in 1955.

The pageant, a champion of global cinema, which typically positions itself above the insular tastes of the Academy, knew the importance of the instant. It was once a win-win, repositioning Cannes within the Oscars dialog with no need to compromise the pageant’s challenge.

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Since then, Cannes has been on an Oscars roll (definitely aided through the internationalisation of the Academy). Including Parasite, 4 of the closing 5 Palme d’Or winners were best possible image nominees. Oscar-winners Anatomy of a Fall and The Zone of Interest premiered at Cannes in 2023, whilst closing yr’s version featured The Substance, Emilia Perez, Flow and Anora, which swept the Academy Awards and completed the most productive image and Palme d’Or double. Cannes won’t ever want the Oscars, however the validation does not harm.

For all of the glamor and its A-list visitors, the pageant’s biggest asset is its talent to pluck successful from nowhere and set a director and their film on a dizzying trajectory. What will escape in 2025? We have no idea but – and that’s the reason why it is all so thrilling.

The Cannes Film Festival runs from May 13-24.

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