An assorted array of 20 fascinating films bringing as diverse athematic deliberation, delectable cinematic narratives and individualistic idiomatic styles make for cineastes eclectic engagement and enchanting explorations at the 78^thEdition of Festival International du Film de Cannes. 

S Viswanath

The film festival measured a mile in length, from the Martinez to the Vieux Port. For a fortnight the Croisette and its grand hotels willingly became a facade, the largest stage set in the world. The crowds recruited to play their traditional roles cheered and hooted, far more confident than the film actors on display, who seemed ill at ease when they stepped from their limos, like celebrity criminals ferried to a mass trial by jury at the Palais.”

― JG Ballard, Super-Cannes

This is what we have all come to Cannes for: for something different, experimental, a tilting at windmills, a great big pole-vault over the barrier of normality by someone who feels that the possibilities of cinema have not been exhausted by conventional realist drama. – Peter Nicholas Bradshaw – Film Critic @ The Guardian& Contributing Editor @ Esquire.

 The Cannes film festival is about big-budget films but also remarkable films made in different political regimes by film-makers with little resources. Kristin Scott Thomas– Actress

I love the Cannes Film Festival. From the lavish parties and events to the red carpet attire, this star-studded week-long event….Tabatha Coffey–Oz hairstylist & salon owner

Yes, for the avowed cine aficionado the time has arrived. With May round the corner and the season of film festivals in full play,it’s time to embark upon the annual trek to attend the mother of all cinema carnivals –Festival International du Film de Cannesplayed at Palais des Festivals et des Congrè&Allée des Étoiles –situated at Boulevard de la Croisette.along the coastal resort town of the French Riveria.

In the run up to the 12-day Cannes Film Festival, on from May 13 to 24, 2025, the festival has announced its impressive line-up of crème la crème cinemas that await to covet and charm the cineastes as they congregate and confabulate at the Mecca of film festivals.

And in keeping with the Cannes tradition, as Managing Director Thierry Fremaux observes, the festival “raise(s) a glass to household names and usher emerging directors into the international film scene’s spotlight. That’s what makes Cannes, Cannes. We always painstakingly curate our offering to ensure we showcase hidden gems alongside more mainstream films.” So much for making it mandatory to mark one’s attendance at the 12-day gala cultural extravaganza.

With the Cannes promising a sumptuous smorgasbord of succulent cinematic oeuvres and a la carte auteur creative works it is time dip into what’s in store for the cine buff in one at Cannes Film Festival.

Bastien Bouillon & Juliette Armanet in PARTIR UN JOUR

In Competition, which features as many 20 films vying for the Cannes Film Festival’s prestigious Palm d’Or and flagging of the 12 day festivities will be Amelie Bonin’s Partir un jour aka Leave One Day, a comedy drama, based on Bonnin’s own adaptation of her Cesar 2023 award-winning short about a young woman leaving her hometown to rebuild a life of her own, but, who perforce, returns following a family exigency.

The film, described as one which explores the power of memories and life choices, personal dilemmas and emotional roots, with mixed mélange of nostalgia, love and self-discovery, spotlights on Cécile, who aspires to set up her own bistro but midstride sees a family event pushing her back into her past.

Comedy being the preferred preoccupation for film makers, you have the festival favourite and most influential of them Wes Anderson with his The Phoenician Scheme, a comedy drama also in competition.

Benicio Del Toro & Mia Threapleton in THEPHOENICIAN SCHEME

Appreciated and admired for his highly stylized, evocative visual, non-linearmosaic narratives structure and panoply of eccentric players, the American filmmaker’s film boasting of a marquee castis also described having thriller overtones, exploring the dynamics of a powerful family at the heart of a mysterious plot. It centres round a tycoon, with a nun daughter, to whom he seeks to bequeath his wealth as the complex family dynamics plays out against the backdrop of power, religion and manipulation.

Eddington by Ari Aster will see for the first time the American filmmaker, at the Croisette. The film, shot over a year, speaks about what US has become following small-town mayoral campaign in May 2020 in Eddington, small town in New Mexico, which results in a confrontation between the sheriff and the mayor leading to residents turning against each other.

The Belgian brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, winners of two Palmes d’Or,are back where they belong, at Cannes, and in competition with their Jeunes Meres (Young Mothers).

 The film is said to be about  quintet of young mothers Jessica, Perla, Julie, Ariane and Naïma housed in a maternity home to help them with their lives as young mothers, hoping for a better life for themselves and their child.

Joaquin Phoenix and Pedro Pascal in EDDINGTON& below a scene from JEUNES MERES (YOUNG MOTHERS)

A scene from ALPHA& below from RENOIR

Body horrorfame Titane’s 2021 Palme d’Or winner Julia Ducournau revisits Cannes with her Alpha, with Golshifteh Farahani and Tahar Rahim, which is about Alpha, 13, a restless teenager residing alone with her mother and how their world collapses when she comes home from school with a tattoo on her arm.

Another Cannes returnee is the Japanese director Chie Hayakawa with his sophomore feature Renoir.His debut film Plan 75, screened in Un Certain Regard section, had won the Caméra d’Or in 2022.

How an eccentric and sensitive 11-year-old lass copes with her dad’s terminal cancer and her overworked mom’s stressed, set in summer 1987 in Tokyo, when Japan is at the peak of its economic growth, forms the fulcrum of this filial drama where each is desperate for human interaction.

Winner of 2011 Queer Palm for Beauty in the Un Certain Regard, South African filmmaker Oliver Hermanus tests his métier with The History of Soundin the official competition his sixth feature,a gay drama, set during WW-I, based on a short story collection of the same name by Ben Shattuck about two young men, who set out to record the lives, voices and music of their fellow Americans.

Hafsia Herzi, French actress of Algerian-Tunisian descent, plans to wow her fans with her new film, La Petite Dernière(The Youngest Daughter)her third feature about a 17-year-old teen living with her sisters and being a bright student joins a philosophy varsity in Paris to be pitchforked into a whole new world. Caught betwixt her suburban upbringing and the new modern milieu how the teen, a Muslim, tries to reconcile her faith, traditions, dreams, desires, and new found freedom forms the focus.

A scene from THE YOUNGEST DAUGHTER

A scene from THE HISTORY OF SOUND

The famed American filmmaker Richard Linklater has thrown his hat in the competition contest with his ambitious Nouvelle Vague about the making of Jean-Luc Godard’s A Bout de Souffle,  mimicking the style and spirit of Godard shooting “Breathless”.

A scene from TWO PROSECUTORS

Ukrainian filmmaker Sergei Loznitsa’s Two Prosecutorswhose Donbass in 2018, picked the Prix de la mise eon scène in the Un Certain Regard section, is set in the 1930s Russia, at the time of Stalinist purge and spotlights on a young prosecutor trying to find out the truth and unravel all this.

The film’s synopsis reads thus: Soviet Union, 1937. Thousands of letters from prisoners wrongly accused by the regime are burned in a prison cell. Against all odds, one of them arrives at its destination, on the desk of the newly appointed local prosecutor, Alexander Kornev. Kornev struggles to meet the prisoner, victim of corrupt agents of the secret police, the NKVD. A seasoned Bolshevik with integrity, the young prosecutor believes that something is amiss. His quest for justice leads him to Prosecutor-General’s office in Moscow. At the time of the great Stalinist purges, this is one man’s plunge into a totalitarian regime that does not speak its name.

A scene from FUORI (OUTSIDE)

Italian director Mario Martone is vying with his FuoriOutside)a biographical account about Italian actress and writer Goliarda Sapienza, based on her book L’università di Rebibbia, which recounts her time in prison. Set in Rome of 80s, the film speaks of how following rejection of her manuscript by the publishers, Sapienza,in despair, commits a theft leading to her incarceration in Italy’s largest women’s prison, where she meets thieves, junkies, prostitutes and politicians. After her release, she continues to meet these women and develops a relationship with one of them that restores her desire to live and write.

Kleber Mendonça Filho, Brazilian filmmaker, who won the 2019 Cannes Jury Prize for his BacuraupresentsL’Agent Secret(O Agente Secreto), an atmospheric, noir detective film, set in 1977 Brazil which tells the story of Brazil and Marcelo, a man in his 40s fleeing a troubled past, arriving Recife city, where Carnival is in full swing, on a mission to find his young son hoping to build a new life.

German born French filmmaker Will DominikMoll’s Dossier 137 with Léa Drucker plays a policewoman in charge of inspecting the work of her fellow officers. Case 137 appears to be just another case for the investigator with the IGPN, the police force. A tense demonstration, a young man wounded by LBD fire, circumstances to be clarified to establish responsibility… But an unexpected element troubles Stéphanie, for whom dossier 137 becomes more than just a number.

A scene from DOSSIER 137& below from A SIMPLE ACCIDENT

Iran’s celebrated auteur Jafar Panahi joins the fray with A Simple Accident about a minor accident which triggers a series of increasingly serious consequences in the typical and familiar Iranian movie template.

Kelly Reichardt, described as American Independent Cinema master, hots up the competition with The Mastermind where in the woman director revisits the small crime film genre of the 70s.

Swedish-Egyptian descent Tarik Saleh hopes to catch the competition jurors’ eye with his Les Aigles de la République, the final of his Cairo trilogy – Cairo Confidential and The Cairo Conspiracy, about Egypt’s most adored actor, who falls out of favour with the authorities overnight and on verge of losing everything, is forced to accept the role of the President in a biopic celebrating him. Thrown into the inner circle of power he soon realises that he is not only in danger of losing his soul, but that he has literally thrown himself into a dangerous dance of death.

A scene from MASTERMIND& below EAGLES OF THE REPUBLIC

Germany’s Mascha Schilinski with her second filmSound of Falling follows the development of four women over four decades in Germany. The four from different decades grow up together on a farm seemingly bound to each other.

Likewise, Spaniard Carla Simón’s third feature Romería, speaks of how in an effort to obtain a civil status document for her university studies, Marina, adopted child, must reconnect with her real family. With her mother’s diary, she travels to Atlantic coast meeting her paternal family she never knew and whose sudden arrival brings back the past and tumbles out several family’s secrets.

A scene from SOUND OF FALLING& below from ROMERIA 

A scene from SENTIMENTAL VALUE& below from SIRAT 

Sentimental Value by Netherlands-born Norwegian filmmaker Joachim Trier, centres around two sisters, who, following the death of their mother, see their film director father reappear in their lives. He hopes his daughter Nora, an actress, would play the lead role, but she refuses. The role is taken up by a young Hollywood star who sees an opportunity to relaunch her career. Shooting in Norway also becomes an opportunity for film director father to confront his demons, and one last chance to reconnect with his daughters.

Spanish filmmaker Oliver Laxe’s Sirat a roadie set in sandy, scorching deserts of Morocco, in Saghro’s mountainous region, sees a father-son duogoing in search for his missing eldest daughterate a rave and hitch on to a group of ravers on the edge of the North African continent to find her.

Incidentally, the Competition sees six women directors along with 14 men directors all staking a claim for the festival’s most prized and prestigious honour and award. Come May 24, one will know who destiny has showered her blessings on the score of successful and much feted filmmakers in their own rights makes the cut to carry the 2025 Palm d’Or.

En effet, Pourquoi pasvoyager à traversthe course of the 12-day scroll of some of choicest curated cinemas and savour the delectable tales and themes they lay before you. Prosit! &Bon visionnage!

S VISWANATH is a veteran film critic who officiates as JURY at several National & International Film Festivals. He deputises as CHIEF CINEMA CURATOR/PROGRAMMER & CREATIVE ADVISOR for Bengaluru International Film Festival (BIFFes). He also curates & advises on the selection of shorts & documentaries for Bengaluru International Short Film Festival (BISFF). Mr Viswanath is the author of “RANDOM REFLECTIONS: A Kaleidoscopic Musings on Kannada Cinema”.