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Every May, the Cannes Film Festival takes the cinema world by storm as it showcases the upcoming year’s slate of new films to industry professionals and journalists. Last year’s festival previewed some of 2024’s most awarded releases, including Coralie Fargeat’s “The Substance” and the Academy Awards Best Picture winner, Sean Baker’s “Anora.” It also featured some of the year’s most polarizing and underwhelming movies, such as Jacques Audiard’s “Emilia Pérez” and Francis Ford Coppola’s massively disappointing “Megalopolis.”
The official selection for the upcoming 78th edition of the festival was announced April 10, with movies directed by Wes Anderson and Richard Linklater competing for the highest award of the Palme d’Or, among many other films both in and out of competition.
Films showcased in the primary competition are contenders for the best overall award, the Palme d’Or, as well as a number of other awards that highlight different components of the film, like the prizes for Best Director and Best Actor/Actress. There is also a smaller category of competition, Un Certain Regard, which is a subdued version of the larger contest that often features new directors or non-traditional stories and styles of film. Alongside the films in competition, the festival showcases a number of premieres and special screenings of films that do not compete.
Among the competing films in the main category is Wes Anderson’s upcoming “The Phoenician Scheme,” starring Benicio del Toro and premiering to the public May 30. The recently released trailer promises an action-packed and comedic film, which should hopefully easily outdo Anderson’s most recent and rather disappointing “Asteroid City.”
Richard Linklater’s “Nouvelle Vague,” an homage to the legendary French New Wave film director Jean-Luc Godard, will be an interesting shift from Linklater’s previous nostalgic and personal filmography, especially with it being his first film in French.
“Midsommar” director Ari Aster joins the Cannes lineup with his upcoming movie “Eddington,” a black comedy western set during the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in a small New Mexico town. This timely tackling of tense American politics boasts an impressive cast, including Joaquin Phoenix, Emma Stone, Pedro Pascal and Austin Butler.
The festival will also feature a number of films from returning Cannes directors, including “Alpha” directed by Julia Ducournau, whose 2021 Palme d’Or win marked only the second time in the festival’s 74-year history the award was received by a female director. Chie Hayakawa, the Japanese film writer-director whose debut feature “Plan 75” showed in the festival’s 2022 sidebar competition, Un Certain Regard, is now set to enter the main competition with “Renoir.”
I’m particularly excited about Joachim Trier’s return to the festival with the film, “Sentimental Value,” starring Renate Reinsve, as his “The Worst Person in the World” was one of my personal favorites from the 2021 Cannes lineup.
What I look forward to most with Cannes, however, isn’t the returning of well-known directors, but the opportunities offered to new and lesser known directors, providing the perfect platform for them to make a name for themselves.
A competition film to keep an eye out for is Kelly Reichardt’s “The Mastermind,” an art heist movie starring Josh O’Connor. O’Connor, who proved his immense talent by transforming into the insufferably cocky and overconfident Patrick Zweig in “Challengers,” will also be starring alongside Paul Mescal in Oliver Hermanus’ historical drama “The History of Sound” at the festival. Talk about being a booked and busy actor!
The Un Certain Regard category will feature a number of first-time directors, some of whom are seasoned actors venturing into the directorial sphere. Harris Dickinson, who viewers might remember as the sexy but boring intern from “Babygirl,” will make his directorial debut with “Urchin.” Scarlett Johansson, best known for her portrayal of Marvel’s Black Widow, also joins the competition with drama “Eleanor the Great,” starring June Squibb. Squibb recently charmed audiences with her eponymous role in “Thelma.” Six more directors competing in this sidebar category join Dickinson and Johansson in their feature directorial debuts.
In addition to films in competition, the results of which will be available May 24, the festival showcases a number of out of competition premieres. The eighth (and hopefully last) installment of the “Mission: Impossible” series, titled “The Final Reckoning,” will premiere at Cannes, although with the number of trailers I’ve seen for it, it feels like it’s been out for months.
Another non-competition feature, “Highest 2 Lowest,” Spike Lee’s English re-interpretation of Japanese director Akira Kurosawa’s “High to Low,” should be an interesting standout at the festival, although A$AP Rocky and Ice Spice’s involvement somewhat perplexes me.
While many of the films won’t be made available to the public until much later this year, the Cannes Film Festival promises a barrage of publicity and Letterboxd reviews, which I will be gleefully devouring in anticipation of another year of (hopefully) wonderful new movies.