New films from Wes Anderson, Richard Linklater and the Dardenne brothers will premiere at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, Cannes organizers announced at a press conference in Paris on Thursday.
Anderson will be back in Cannes with “The Phoenician Scheme,” which premiered a baffling trailer at CinemaCon last week. Linklater is heading to France with a bold movie, “Nouvelle Vague,” which tackles the sacred ground of Jean-Luc Godard and the filming of “Breathless” in the 1960s. The Dardenne brothers have “Young Mothers,” which gives them a chance to become the first filmmakers to win the Palme d’Or three times.
Spike Lee’s “Highest 2 Lowest,” with Denzel Washington, was not announced at the Cannes press conference, but it was confirmed by the festival to be premiering out of competition a few hours later.
Actors in the festival making their directorial debuts include Scarlett Johansson, who is in Un Certain Regard with “Eleanor the Great,” starring Joan Squibb; and Harris Dickinson, the star of the Palme d’Or winner “The Triangle of Sadness,” with “Urchin.”
The main competition will include a number of directors who are familiar to Cannes patrons, including Joachim Trier (“Sentimental Value”), Julia Ducournau (“Alpha”), Kleber Mendonca Filho (“The Secret Agent”), Sergei Loznitsa (“Two Prosecutors”) and the Iranian director Jafar Panahi (“A Simple Accident”), who is not permitted to leave his country. It will also include American directors Linklater, Anderson, Kelly Reichardt (“The Mastermind”) and Ari Aster (“Eddington”).
Six of the 19 directors in the competition are women: Reichardt, Ducournau, Chie Hayakawa, Carla Simon, Mascha Schilinski and Hafsia Herzi. That is one of Cannes’ largest groups of female directors in competition.
The opening night film will also come from a female director, Amelie Bonnin with “Partir un Jour.”
The selection also includes “Stories of Surrender,” a film directed by Andrew Dominik and featuring performance footage of U2 singer Bono. The Cannes announcement originally credited Bono as being the director of the film, which would have been his debut as a filmmaker.
Among the actors in Cannes-bound films are Paul Mescal in “The History of Sound,” Joaquin Phoenix and Emma Stone in “Eddington,” Jodie Foster in “Vie Privee,” Zooey Deutch in “Nouvelle Vague” and Diane Kruger in “Amrum.”
Missing from the list are a few films expected to be at the festival, including Jim Jarmusch’s “Father Mother Sister Brother,” Lynne Ramsay’s “Die, My Love” and the perpetually painstaking Terrence Malick’s “The Way of the Wind.”
Previously, the festival announced that Christopher McQuarrie’s “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning” would screen out of competition, giving Tom Cruise his second big Cannes premiere in the last three years after 2022’s “Top Gun: Maverick” saw fighter jets buzzing the Croisette.
Thursday’s announcement was made a year after Cannes revealed a 2024 lineup that included “Emilia Pérez,” “The Substance,” “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga,” “The Apprentice” and “Anora,” which became only the third film in the last 70 years to win the Palme d’Or in Cannes and then go on to take the Oscar for Best Picture. Two of those double wins, “Anora” and 2019’s “Parasite,” took place in the last five years, with the tastes of an increasingly international Academy more closely aligning with typical Cannes fare.
According to Knobloch, 25 million viewers around the world saw last year’s Cannes films in theaters.
This year’s films were chosen after programmers considered 2,909 submissions, according to Fremaux. That figure is a record for Cannes.
The 2025 Cannes Film Festival will take place from May 13 through May 24 in the South of France. Robert De Niro will receive the Honorary Palme d’Or at the festival’s opening ceremony, while French actress Juliette Binoche will serve as president of the jury.
Here is a list of announced titles. The festival has promised additions to the list next week.
OPENING FILM
“Partir un Jour,” Amelie Bonnin
MAIN COMPETITION
“The Phoenician Scheme,” Wes Anderson
“Eddington,” Ari Aster
“Young Mothers,” Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne
“Alpha,” Julia Ducournau
“Renoir,” Chie Hayakawa
“The History of Sound,” Oliver Hermanus
“La Petite Derniers,” Hafsia Herzi
“Sirat,” Oliver Laxe
“Nouvelle Vague,” Richard Linklater
“Two Prosecutors,” Sergei Loznitsa
“Fuori,” Mario Martone
“The Secret Agent,” Kleber Mendonca Filho
“Dossier 137,” Dominik Moll
“A Simple Accident,” Jafar Panahi
“The Mastermind,” Kelly Reichardt
“The Eagles of the Republic,” Tarik Saleh
“The Sound of Failing,” Mascha Schilinski
“Romeria,” Carla Simon
“Sentimental Value,” Joachim Trier
UN CERTAIN REGARD
“The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo,” Diego Céspedes
“Meteors,” Hubert Charuel
“My Father’s Shadow,” Akinola Davies Jr.
“L’inconnu de la Grande Arche,” Stephane Demoustier
“Urchin,” Harris Dickinson
“Homebound,” Neeraj Ghaywan
“A Pale View of Hills,” Kei Ishikawa
“Eleanor the Great,” Scarlett Johansson
“Karavan,” Zuzana Kircherova
“Pillion,” Harry Lighton
“Aisha Can’t Fly Away,” Morad Mostafa
“Once Upon a Time in Gaza” Arab Nasser, Tarzan Nasser
“The Plague,” Charlie Polinger
“Promised Sky,” Erige Sehiri
“The Last One for the Road,” Francesco Sossai
“Heads or Tails?” Alessio Rigo de Righi, Matteo Zoppis
OUT OF COMPETITION
“Colours of Time,” Cedric Klapisch
“The Richest Woman in the World,” Thierry Klifa
“Highest 2 Lowest,” Spike Lee
“Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning,” Christopher McQuarrie
“Vie Privee,” Rebecca Zlotowski
MIDNIGHT SCREENINGS
“Dalloway,” Yann Gozlan
“Exit 8,” Kawamura Genki
“Sons of the Neon Night,” Juno Mak
CANNES PREMIERE
“Amrum,” Fatih Akin
“Splitsville,” Michael Angelo Covino
“The Wave,” Sebastian Lelio
“Connemara,” Alex Lutz
“Orwell: 2+2=5,” Raoul Peck
“The Disappearance of Joseph Mengele,” Kirill Serebrennikov
SPECIAL SCREENINGS
“Bono: Stories of Surrender,” Andrew Dominik
“Tell Her That I Love Her,” Claude Miller
“A Magnificent Life,” Sylvain Chomet
