S Viswanath

A captivating contingent of score and one titles in the Cannes Main Competition by acclaimed art house auteurs are competing for Palme d’Or this year. The sumptuous smorgasbord of films tackling multifarious thematic concerns with individual idiomatic narrative styles and aesthetics, will have audiences, drawn from world over, as bees to the bonnet, eating out their fascinating ensemble of films in fray.

With majority of films picked from European and Asian hemispheres much to surprising absence of high profile Hollywoodian films, the Palme d’Or – the centrepiece of Cannes Film Festival’s Main Competition Section is bound to be full house at every scheduled screening.

From relationship dramas, to individuals at crossroads of their lives, historical & biopic fares, sci-fi and fantasy flicks, AI, tantalising thrillers, the itinerant cine goer has his/her Cannes cinema sojourn simply spoilt for choice as they navigate the very many promising ensemble work coveting their attention.

The iconic Spanish cinema auteur Pedro Almodovar is back again with another of his relationship chamber drama – Amarga Navidad aka Bitter Christmas. The director, who gave The Room Next Door in 2024 about two long lost friends Ingrid & Martha, has, once again, two women at the centrepiece of action his latest film.

Here Elsa, an advertising director, following her mother’s demise, immerses herself in work, before deciding to travel to Island of Lanzarote joined by her pal Patricia. Like in The Room Next Door, Almodovar showcases how life and fiction are inextricably linked as their lives run parallel between screenwriter and film director.

Iran’s Asghar Farhadi’s Parallel Tales (Histoires Paralleles) starring Isabelle Huppoert & Catherine Deneuve inspired by late Polish director Krzysztof Kieślowski’s “Dekalog VI” centres around a young man obsessively drawn to an older woman. Sylvie, seeking inspiration for her new novel, hires young Adam to help with her everyday tasks. However, her writing and life is turned upside down with Adam’s arrival, until her fiction and reality become increasingly blurred. Farhadi parallelly also touches upon November 2015 Paris attacks to the main obsession drama.

The sophomore fare A Woman’s Life by French woman filmmaker Charline Bourgeois-Tacquet Gabrielle which follows her 2021 debut Anais In Love, sees her track the life of Gabrielle, 55, who has given herself to her work, as dedicated surgeon and head of hospital department, with little time for her husband or mother depending on her care. However, her perspective on life and living see marked shift when a novelist arrives to observe her at work for his book.

The Spanish gay director duo – Javier Ambrossi & Javier Calvo’s queer drama La Bola Negra (The Black Ball) inspired by unfinished play by Federico García Lorca, focuses on three men in three different moments of Spanish history viz 1932, 1937, and 2017 exploring the gays universe focusing on “three existences” touching upon themes of sexuality, desire, pain, and inheritance.

Belgian director Lukas Dhont’s Coward is a war saga. Pierre, a young Belgian soldier seeking to prove himself on the battlefield during First World War, meets Francis, asked to boost the men’s morale. The period drama showcases how Pierre grapples with cowardice and heroism amidst heavy strife in the trenches emboldened by wartime rhetoric, with each of battle hardened combatants charting their own path.

Das geträumte Abenteuer (The Dreamed Adventure) is fourth feature film from German woman director Valeska Grisebach set along Bulgarian-Greek-Turkish border town of Southeastern Bulgaria. Here a woman takes to help an old pal embarking upon an adventure into dangerous territory following him and is confronted with her own desires and her past. Played by Bulgarian non-professional actress Jana Radewa as Archaeologist Veska, who runs into Saïd, helping her with excavations, who is engaged in smuggling gasoline between Turkey and Bulgaria. His disappearance under mysterious circumstances seesVeska and her friends take possession of the gasoline thwarting the rival mafia bosses’ designs in this adventurous saga.

From the maker of Drive My Car, Evil Doest Not Exist & Wheel Of Fortune & Fantasy, comes French language debut All Of A Sudden by Japanese filmmaker Ryusuke Hamaguchi. Loosely based on a collection letters written between philosopher Makiko Miyano and medical anthropologist Maho Isono – You and I – The Illness Suddenly Get Worse it revolves around the director of a nursing home in the Parisian suburbs attempting to introduce humane care technique known as Humanitude, despite resistance. Her chance encounter with a terminally ill Japanese playwright transforms her life as together, they turn the facility into symbol of resistance and humanity against the system’s limits.

The psychological fantasy fare The Unknown from France’s Arthur Harari is his third film loosely inspired by his own graphic novel Le cas David Zimmerman (The Case Of David Zimmerman) co-authored with his brother Lucas. Set in present day Paris you have a photographer, in his 30s, perpetually adrift in life, on New Year’s Eve, dragged into a huge party by his only friend. Soon he is drawn to an enigmatic young brunette, whom he follows, fixated on her. But, by dawn he awakens transformed in her body.

French woman filmmaker & actress’ Another Day (Garance) by Jeanne Herry has gifted young actress Garance, take refuge in alcohol while reflecting on eight years of changes, relationships, and excesses, until her survival is threatened. Living by pay check to pay check in her small constricted Paris apartment, she feels increasingly suffocated by ephemeral dalliances, leading to alcohol addiction quietly tightening the noose around her life.

Shoplifters, Monster & Like Father, Like Son fame Japanese filmmaker Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Sheep In The Box aka Hako no Naka no Hitsuji, is a sci-fi film. Set in near future, a grieving couple – an architect married to a construction company owner, have lost their son. They turn to a firm that resurrects the deceased through AI generated robotics providing them a humanoid robotic identical to their late child to overcome the loss.

Akin to his Japanese counterpart, Hope is South Korean science fiction thriller by Na Hong-jin set on the outskirts of remote harbour town near Korea’s Demilitarised Zone, resulting in residents finding themselves in a desperate fight for survival against something they have never encountered before.

The narrative begins with police chief receiving unsettling news from local youths a tiger has been spotted in the hills which erupts into village-wide panic and escalates into something far stranger. Incidentally, the South Korean auteur had wowed audiences earlier with his spooky, supernatural thriller The Wailing.

Koji Fukada, whose 2016 film Harmonium picked Prix du Jury in the Cannes Film Festival’s Un Certain Regard section returns with Nagi Notes for a shy at another Cannes honour. The film, set in the bucolic town of Nagi, sees a sculptor living in the shadow of a past love that continues to shape her art. When recently separated Tokyo architect Yuri and Nagi’s former sister-in-law arrives for a visit following her recent separation, she becomes a welcome distraction. What begins as brief escape from city gradually becomes a quiet confrontation for both. Providing for incisive portrait of contemporary society Fukada, in Nagi Notes, explores companionship between two women bound by art, memory and family in modern day Japan.

Austrian woman auteur Marie Kreutzer’s Gentle Monster charts the life of Lucy, a successful pianist, who moves with her family from Munich to the countryside to support her partner Philip after he suffers burnout, sacrificing her own career in the process. Meanwhile, Elsa, special investigator, struggles with responsibility of caring for her father suffering from dementia. Both face the dark, life shattering truths about men in their life forcing them to confront the complexities of love, trust, and deception.

Notre Salut or Our Salvation or A Man Of His Time by Emmanuel Marre is a historical period drama set in 1940 France. Henri Marre arrives in Vichy, as newly formed regime of Marshal Petain establishes its government. Hoping to secure a role in country’s shifting political landscape, and a place for himself in the new regime he has with him his self-taught political manuscript Notre Salut, hoping to publish it. His manuscript, Henri, who believes he can help guide France toward renewal after its collapse, tries to persuade officials and intermediaries to read and support his ideas. His personal ambitions collide with opportunism, uncertainty, and moral compromises surrounding the Vichy administration. The story follows one man’s attempt to find purpose and influence during a moment when France itself is searching for a path forward.

Romanian filmmaker Cristian Mungiu’s Fjord takes viewers to remote Norwegian village where the devout Gheorghiu family of Romanian father and Norwegian mother, have moved to the latter’s birthplace. There the Gheorghius befriend neighbouring Halberg family – Mats is school principal while wife Mia is retired lawyer. However, when adolescent Elia Gheorghiu shows up at school with bruises on her body, the community wonders if the strict, traditional parenting of the Gheorghius children has anything to do with it, throwing their lives thrown asunder as they becomes centre of intense scrutiny of local judicial system.

Based on Laurent Mauvignier’s eponymous novel, The Birthday Party by French female filmmaker Léa Mysius is an intense edgy thriller set in a hamlet in rural France. It follows a couple, their daughter and an artist neighbour. The man plans a surprise for his wife’s birthday. However, inexplicable happenings begin to disrupt the hamlet’s quiet existence before turning into a nightmarish chain of events as night falls.

Hungarian filmmaker Laszlo Nemes, renowned for his films which explored Jewish social and political resistance in 20th century Hungary, makes his French language debut with Moulin a historical biopic of Jean Moulin, a French civil servant and resistant who succeeded in unifying the main networks of French Resistance in World War II, serving as first President of National Council of Resistance during the German occupation of France. Captured and tortured by Gestapo, his unwavering silence aids France’s liberation.

Set at the height of Cold War, Polish filmmaker Pawel Pawlikowski’s Fatherland is a roadie movie surrounding Nobel Prize-winning writer Thomas Mann and his daughter Erika– actress, writer and rally driver. The duo embark on a gruelling and emotional road trip in a Black Buick taking them across a Germany in ruins – from US dominated Frankfurt to Soviet controlled Weimar.

The Man I Love by American filmmaker Ira Sachs is a musical fantasy and sole American feature set in the vibrant era of late ’80s New York. It follows Jimmy George, actor facing death, taking on one last role. With mixed medley of music, colour and passion, the film paints a picture of a group of artists and friends for whom creativity is a form of survival.

Spanish director Rodrigo Sorogoyen del Amo’s El ser querido (The Beloved/The Loved One) is a father-daughter relationship family drama. Here we have an acclaimed director reuniting with his estranged daughter, an unsuccessful actress, to shoot a film together. In the process, both confronting their strained relationship and unresolved past neither seeks to address directly.

Leviathan, Loveless, The Return, The Banishment famed master Russian filmmaker Andrey Petrovich Zvyagintsev, whose Leviathan & Loveless fetched him the Best Screenplay and the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, respectively, takes shy at Palme d’Or with his latest oeuvre Minatour.

The political thriller drama spotlights on Russian business executive on the verge of laying off his employees when he discovers his wife’s illicit affair. The influential executive’s meticulously controlled life unravels when professional crises, global chaos, and marital betrayal propels him towards a perilious breaking point.