New movies from Wes Anderson, Ari Aster, and Richard Linklater will compete for the Palme d’Or on the 78th Cannes Film Festival, organizers introduced Thursday.
Coming off a 2024 version that produced the Academy Award best-picture winner “Anora,” in addition to numerous Oscar contenders in “Emilia Pérez,” “The Substance” and “The Apprentice,” the French movie pageant responded with a 2025 lineup stuffed with big-name auteurs.
Thierry Frémaux, Cannes’ inventive director, introduced the picks in a news convention in Paris with pageant president Iris Knobloch.
Asked if he was underneath strain after producing so many Oscars contenders final 12 months, Frémaux stated the pageant organizers really feel like an athlete placing his title again on the road.
“What happened last year was great,” he said. “And what happened the year before was great. The last seven, eight years, Cannes and the films of Cannes were great.”
Entries embrace Aster’s “Eddington,” a pandemic-set western starring Joaquin Phoenix, Pedro Pascal and Emma Stone; Anderson’s “The Phoenician Scheme,” starring Benicio Del Toro as a European profiteer and Linklater’s appropriately French-language “Nouvelle Vague,” about Jean-Luc Godard and the French New Wave.
Julia Ducournau, whose “Titane” received the Palme d’Or in 2021, making Ducournau solely the second feminine filmmaker to ever obtain Cannes’ high honor, will return to the pageant with the Eighties New York-set “Alpha,” about an 11-year-old with a mother or father who has AIDS.
Two movies starring Josh O’Connor made it into the competitors lineup: Oliver Hermanus’ “The History of Sound,” co-starring Paul Mescal, and Kelly Reichardt’s “The Mastermind,” an artwork heist movie set in the course of the Vietnam War.
Fremaux altogether introduced 19 movies vying for the Palme d’Or, six of that are directed by ladies.
Other beforehand Cannes regulars coming again embrace two-time Palme winners Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne. The Belgian filmmaking brothers’ newest is titled “Young Mothers.” Joachim Trier, whose “The Worst Person in the World” was a spotlight of the 2021 Cannes, is again in competitors with “Sentimental Value,” which likewise stars Renate Reinsve.
Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi, who was imprisoned in the course of the launch of his final, secretly made movie, 2022’s “No Bears,” and not released until he went on a hunger strike, will unveil his latest film, “Un Simple Accident.”
Among the movies some had hoped would possibly present up in Cannes however that weren’t introduced have been Terrence Malick’s long-awaited Jesus drama “The Way of the Wind,” Spike Lee’s Akira Kurosawa remake “Highest 2 Lowest,” and Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another.” New movies by Jim Jarmusch and Kristen Stewart had additionally been anticipated within the Cannes lineup.
Asked about their absence, Fremaux declined to remark, saying he wished to as a substitute concentrate on the images which made the lower. He, nevertheless, stated extra movies may very well be later added to the choice.
An hour after the press convention in Paris, nevertheless, Lee stated on Instagram that “Highest 2 Lowest” is, certainly, going to Cannes.
“Bon Jour. Good Morning. Whaddup. Da New SPIKE LEE JOINT-HIGHEST 2 LOWEST Starring My Brother DENZEL WASHINGTON Has Been Invited To Da 2025 CANNES INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL (In The Out Of Competition Category),” Lee wrote.
Representatives for the pageant did not instantly reply to messages.
Playing within the pageant’s Un Certain Regard sidebar is Scarlett Johansson’s directorial debut, “Eleanor the Great,” starring June Squibb. Harris Dickinson, the “Babygirl” star, can even premiere his directorial debut, “Urchin,” in the identical part.
Bono can even be coming to the Croisette for the premiere of “Bono: Stories of Surrender,” Andrew Dominik’s movie of the singer’s one-man stage present. That will play in Cannes’ particular screening part.
Cannes earlier introduced that “Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning” will launch on the pageant, which three years in the past bestowed an honorary Palme d’Or on Tom Cruise. This 12 months, Robert De Niro is ready to obtain one in the course of the pageant’s opening ceremony.
Following within the footsteps of Greta Gerwig, Juliette Binoche will head the jury that resolve this 12 months’s Palme d’Or. Knobloch stated it is the primary time in 60 years that two ladies succeed one another on this position.
The pageant runs May 13-24. The opening night time movie, taking part in out of competitors, will likely be “Leave One Day,” the primary film by French director Amélie Bonnin.
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