The 21 Movies We Can’t Wait to See at This Year’s Cannes Film Festival

“Alpha” (dir. Julia Ducournau, Competition)

Filmmaker Julia Ducournau’s singular work defies description at every turn, so a (traditional, expected) lack of information around her latest film, set to premiere in the festival’s competition section, doesn’t rankle us at all. How would one even describe her juicy “Raw”? “A coming-of-age tale about cannibalism”? Sure, that’s true, but that’s also just a fraction of the story she told in her feature debut. How about her Palme d’Or-winning “Titane”? “A coming-of-age tale about a woman fucking a car”? Same, same, yeah, sure, that’s sort of it, and not also not it at all.

Hello, “Alpha.” Here’s what we do know: it’s a coming-of-age tale (yes, yes, very good) about a girl (we see you, Julia) whose life collapses when she comes home with a tattoo on her arm (OK, that’s new). The Neon-backed film has been billed as Ducournau’s “most personal” yet, which is saying something. The film stars newbie Mélissa Boros as the eponymous Alpha, and she’s joined by Emma Mackey, Golshifteh Farahani, and Tahar Rahim, all intriguing names on their own, all the better together. When the film premieres at Cannes, brace for impact, that’s the Ducournau way. —KE

“The Chronology of Water” (dir. Kristen Stewart, Un Certain Regard)

Almost seven years to the day since Kristen Stewart first announced her feature directorial debut, a big screen adaptation of Lidia Yuknavitch 2011 memoir “The Chronology of Water,” the film is finally set to make its debut on the Croisette. Over the course of nearly a decade in development, our interest in and excitement for the film has not abated. How could it, after all, with Stewart touting from the start that she was going to “write the best fucking female role … a role that I want so badly but that I’m not going to play?” 

The source material is enthralling enough, as Yuknavitch’s memoir traces the effect of “extreme grief on a young woman’s developing sexuality that some define as untraditional because of her attraction to both men and women.” The book finds Yuknavitch reliving her of addiction, self-destruction, and “ultimately survival that finally comes in the shape of love and motherhood.” Stewart co-wrote the script with Andy Mingo, and after promising in 2024 that she wouldn’t make another film until this one was done, she completed it in fall 2024.

And Stewart has already made good on another one of her early promises: she cast Imogen Poots in the lead role, surrounding her with a thrilling supporting cast that includes Thora Birch, Earl Cave, Michael Epp, Susannah Flood, Kim Gordon, and Jim Belushi. —KE

“Die, My Love” (dir. Lynne Ramsay, Competition)

“A woman engulfed by love and madness.” The logline for Lynne Ramsay’s first film since 2017’s “You Were Never Really Here” sounds an awful lot like the last scene of “mother!,” another movie starring Jennifer Lawrence as a woman undone by desire. Throw Robert Pattinson, LaKeith Stanfield, Sissy Spacek, and Nick Nolte into the mix, and we’re ready for whatever Ramsay next has to throw at us. Lawrence plays a woman, according to the film’s source novel by Ariana Harwicz, whose postpartum depression throws her into the flames of passion and undoing. Ramsay shot the movie in the Academy ratio with cinematographer Seamus McGarvey. Like I said: Ramsay, Lawrence, and a woman engulfed by madness, what’s left to say? —RL

“Drunken Noodles” (dir. Lucio Castro, ACID)

Lucio Castro is back with another gay quasi-romance, this time in New York City, with “Drunken Noodles,” which feels like Apichatpong Weerasethakul directing an early ’80s New Queer Cinema indie. It has a lo-fi, shot-on-film aesthetic mixed with mystical elements, and it’s premiering in the Cannes Film Festival ACID parallel section later this month. (Standing for Association du Cinéma Indépendant pour sa Diffusion, ACID is dedicated to elevating indie filmmakers.) Here, the mind-bending elements of “End of the Century” take on fuller force (and in a film that is not to mention quite sexy).

“Drunken Noodles” takes place over two summers, in both the city streets and the forest paths of upstate New York, as art student Adnan (Laith Khalifeh) has a series of unexpected, intimate, and even otherworldly, time-and-space-warping encounters.

Per the official synopsis, “Adnan, a young art student, arrives in New York City to flat-sit for the summer. He begins interning at a gallery where an unconventional older artist he once encountered is being exhibited. As moments from his past and present begin to intertwine, a series of encounters – both artistic and erotic – open cracks in his everyday reality.” —RL

“Eddington (dir. Ari Aster, Competition)

Ari Aster has never been afraid of confronting life’s more difficult subjects (e.g. the inescapable pull of generational trauma, the deadly consequences of fumbling Florence Pugh, the epic anxiety of being saddled with mommy issues so bad your testicles swell to the size of grapefruits), but the danger inherent to his previous films pales in comparison to the mere premise of “Eddington,” a pandemic Western about the tension that forms between a small-town New Mexico sheriff (Joaquin Phoenix) and his mayor (Pedro Pascal) at the height of COVID-era lockdowns.

Few American directors at Aster’s level have dared to revisit that dark chapter in our collective history (or to explore how it deepened the tensions that continue to rip this country apart at the seams), but what’s most exciting — and queasily terrifying — about “Eddington” is the suspicion that Aster will be less interested in healing those wounds than he is in making them hurt like new. This is the director’s first time with a film at Cannes, and a Competition slot means that he’s going to be right smack in the middle of the spotlight. —DE

“Eleanor the Great” (dir. Scarlett Johansson, Un Certain Regard)

At age 40, two-time Oscar nominee Scarlett Johannson, who has directed two shorts, finally directed her first feature, which gives 95-year-old “Nebraska” star June Squibb a meaty role that advance wags are calling Oscar-worthy. When the script landed in Johansson’s lap, she knew how to direct it, she has said. Sony Pictures Classics stepped in right before the production was about to fall apart to back the movie. Johannson scrambled to get the film made inside a short window, knowing the age of her star. Now she will escort Squibb down the Cannes red carpet. —AT

“Enzo” (dir. Robin Campillo, Directors’ Fortnight)

“BPM” director Robin Campillo returns to Cannes with a summery, coming-of-age drama he took over as director from his friend Laurent Cantent, the French filmmaker who died of cancer in 2024. But “Call Me By Your Name” this isn’t exactly as “Enzo” is more a cinematic bildungsroman in miniature about the title character’s (young discovery Eloy Pohu) inner class-fueled torment than the affection he has for the a-few-years-older Ukrainian construction worker Vlad (Maksym Slivinskyi) he’s harboring a secret crush on.”Enzo” opens the Directors’ Fortnight his year as a moving tribute to Cantet, who won the Palme d’Or in 2008 for “The Class,” which Campillo co-wrote. The decades-long friends didn’t get the chance to share in any of the production together, though Cantet shares a screenwriting credit on “Enzo,” meaning his ghost haunts the frames of this sweet but at times hard-edged portrait of youth and idealism. —RL

“Highest 2 Lowest” (dir. Spike Lee, Out of Competition)

Spike Lee has been part of several memorable moments in Cannes History, from accidentally spoiling Julia Ducournau’s Palme d’Or win to threatening to beat Wim Wenders with a Louisville Slugger. And he’s the kind of auteur whose very presence on the Croisette raises interest in the festival. This year sees him debut “Highest 2 Lowest,” a reimagining of Akira Kurosawa’s “High and Low” starring Denzel Washington and A$AP Rocky. Like Kurosawa’s, the film follows a wealthy businessman whose family becomes the target of a kidnapping attempt that goes wrong. But Lee swaps the Japanese shoe industry for the world of New York hip-hop record labels, and his distinct style all but ensures it won’t be a literal adaptation. Here’s hoping we have the next classic Spike Lee joint on our hands. —CZ

“The History of Sound” (dir. Oliver Hermanus, Competition)

One major Cannes premiere this year likely to penetrate the consciousness beyond the Croisette ahead of its eventual journey to North America: Oliver Hermanus’ “The History of Sound.” The South African “Living” and “Moffie” filmmaker directs a quasi musical-romance starring internet boyfriends Paul Mescal and Josh O’Connor as traveling musicians in World War I-era America. Ben Shattuck writes the screenplay from his own short story, centered on David (O’Connor), a music composing student who gets drafted, and Lionel (Mescal), a singer from Kentucky raised on the music his father taught him to sing on their front porch. The movie takes us through the men’s twenties and thirties as they reflect on their relationship and their musical collaboration that has kept a hold on them.

We’re all eager to see just how much of a gay romance “The History of Sound” actually is and whether, like “Moffie,” we have another devastating stunner on our hands. MUBI has distribution rights, and we hope the movie comes out stateside in the fall. Certainly more festivals are first ahead. —RL

“Left-Handed Girl” (dir. Shih-Ching Tsou, Critics’ Week)

Greener Sean Baker fans might not recall that he was not the only director of his third movie, “Take Out,” but shared those duties with Taiwan native Tsou Shih-Ching. Tsou has since produced Baker films including “Red Rocket,” “The Florida Project,” and “Tangerine.” She directs again for the first time in more than two decades with the dazzlingly candy-colored Taipei story “Left-Handed Girl,” co-written by Baker as well as edited by the “Anora” Oscar winner. The sprawling generational melodrama, which careens through the city streets on a moped and immerses us in the night markets and bustles of Taipei, follows a single mother and her two daughters who return to Taipei to run a small business. Each has to adapt to the shifting weathers of city life in their own way, including the youngest daughter, whose only friend is an adorable pet meerkat and whose grandfather warns her about being left-handed, and to never use her “devil hand.” Baker’s recent near-sweep of the Academy Awards has already made this a sold-out screening, but it’s Tsou’s vision that will generate buzz for festival replay as “Left-Handed Girl” searches for a distributor. —RL

“The Mastermind” (dir. Kelly Reichardt, Competition)

Kelly Reichardt seldom ventures out of Oregon to make a movie — moving two states East to set “Certain Women” in Montana was a major geographic departure from her — but with “The Mastermind,” she’s giving America’s other coast a try. Josh O’Connor and Alana Haim lead her latest effort, which tells the story of an art heist set against the backdrop of the Vietnam War. The understated director virtually never misses, and pairing her with two current indie darlings has many a cinephile drooling over this one. It will mark Reichardt’s second consecutive film to premiere at Cannes, following 2022’s “Showing Up.” —CZ

“Miroirs No. 3” (Christian Petzold, Directors’ Fortnight)

German director Christian Petzold’s first feature to premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, “Miroirs No 3.” is his most slippery to date, very much placing the filmmaker in the mode of concussed and/or enigmatic heroine a la “Phoenix” (though then with Nina Hoss) and “Undine.” Petzold makes his fourth collaboration with actress Paula Beer as a woman who suffers a bad car wreck that kills her boyfriend. She ends up wandering into the protections and rehabilitations of a woman (Barbara Auer) who lives in a farmhouse, a woman who has suffered her own tragedies, and who might see some of them reflected into Beer’s character’s situation. The great composer Ravel, of course, is a main character throughout Petzold’s deceptively lightest, slimmest novella of the movie, but one that still leaves a haunting impression. Metrograph Pictures already has distribution rights to the movie. —RL

“Pillion” (dir. Harry Lighton, Un Certain Regard)

Writer/director Harry Lighton’s “Pillion” is a dive into gay S&M kink, but with a sweetness at its center: Alexander Skarsgard plays an aloof biker who calls upon Harry Melling, a barbershop quartet singer whose life is a sex-lacking dead-end, for a date on Christmas Eve. A real relationship forms amid the leather-clad domination and moments of wrestling in assless unitards, as Lighton’s unexpectedly tender A24 movie turns up graphic sex scenes but also an emotional core. Even “True Blood” fans have never seen Skarsgard quite like this, though it’s Melling’s performance you’ll likely stay for, as a man whose aptitude for devotion twists a classically cinematic sadomasochistic affair on its bondaged head upside down. —RL

“Sentimental Value” (dir. Joachim Trier, Competition)

After enjoying his biggest mainstream success to date with “The Worst Person in the World,” Joachim Trier returns with what promises to be another portrait of Scandinavian life. “Sentimental Value” stars Elle Fanning as an American actress who moves to Norway, but the film is believed to evolve into an exploration of how a single house in Oslo has shaped multiple generations of a family that inhabits it. Stellan Skarsgård, Renate Reinsve, and Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas also star. Early synopses have been light on plot details, but Trier’s reputation precedes him, leading many to wonder if he’ll once again be able to ride a Cannes premiere into the heart of the Oscar race. —CZ

“Sound of Falling” (dir. Mascha Schilinski, Competition)

Tipped as a major Cannes standout long before it was formally anointed into the Competition lineup, Mascha Schilinski’s mesmeric “Sound of Falling” (née “The Doctor Says I’ll Be Alright, but I’m Feeling Blue”) chronicles four generations of girls as they grow up on a farmstead in the Altmark region of Germany. Hardly a straightforward history, Schilinski’s sensory-driven style unfolds like a century of home video footage shot by ghosts, as her hyper-subjective camera and recursive plotting create a poetic meshwork of senses, memories, and impulses of self-negation. Sure to be among the more formally inventive movies at the festival this year, “Sound of Falling” should establish Schilinski as a major force on the world stage — in addition to a Cannes mainstay. —DE

“Nouvelle Vague” (dir. Richard Linklater, Competition)

Richard Linklater always surprises. For his second Cannes entry, he is recreating a seminal moment in film history: the 1960 filming of Jean-Luc Godard’s first feature film “Breathless,” starring Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg (“New York Herald Tribune!“). Shot by the brilliant Raoul Coutard in black and white in a run-and-gun style on the streets of Paris with natural light, “Breathless” changed cinema forever and sparked the Nouvelle Vague (French New Wave). Even the jump-cut editing style was disruptive. Linklater cast Zoey Deutch as Seberg and actor/director Guillaume Marbeck as Godard. The movie is for sale at Cannes. —AT

“The Phoenician Scheme” (dir. Wes Anderson, Competition)

Wes Anderson’s fourth film at Cannes, a marketing launch ahead of Focus’s May 30 release, promises another elegantly formal exercise in style and a sprawling ensemble led by Benicio del Toro with support from usual suspects Scarlett Johansson, Willem Dafoe, and Rupert Friend. Anderson’s latest recruit, Mia Threapleton, the daughter of Kate Winslet, plays the nun scion of a rogue billionaire (Del Toro) who keeps going missing. The question Cannes critics will answer is whether or not the whimsical adventure comedy offers arthouses filmgoers new twists on Anderson’s familiar tropes. —AT

“The Plague” (dir. Charlie Polinger, Un Certain Regard)

Cannes festival director Thierry Frémaux promised that this year’s Un Certain Regard sidebar lineup would be more driven by narrative and genre than years past. Looking at Charlie Polinger’s feature directing debut “The Plague,” he wasn’t kidding.

This harrowing, 35mm-shot story of pubescent boys tormenting each other at a water polo summer camp doubles as a coming-of-age drama and an adolescent, acne-scarred body-horror nightmare. The 12- and 13-year-olds populating its frames are all afraid of catching an imagined (or not?) contagion — let’s call it puberty — that turns their brains into “mush,” one says, and manifests with psoriasis-like lesions on their bodies. But the words and almost ritualistic humiliations they exchange (think the mocking of speech impediments and centipedes thrown into your bed at night) are even more wounding.

Polinger, an AFI Conservatory grad working with many of his fellow alumni including cinematographer Steven Breckon, based this disturbing and personal film on his own experiences as a kid at an all-boys summer sports camp, culling from his rediscovered journals to write the script. Millennials who came of age in the aughts (“The Plague” is set in summer 2003) will recognize the touchstones, from the period music references to the Capri-Suns everyone seems to be slurping. —RL

“Resurrection” (dir. Bi Gan, Competition)

There was much speculation as to whether or when Chinese filmmaker Bi Gan‘s (“Long Day’s Journey Into Night”) “Resurrection” would make the cut; it’s finally in the competition. It was long pegged as a shoo-in for Cannes (including on IndieWire’s own wish list), while reports said the sci-fi epic was racing to the finish. Bi’s film stars Taiwanese-Hong Kong film legend Shu Qi as a woman who, in a post-apocalyptic far future, undergoes a brain surgery that acquaints her with an android whom she begins to develop feelings for. Bi’s 2018 “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” incorporated 3D camerawork in its final stretch, and it world-premiered in Un Certain Regard. “Resurrection” looks to be another ambitious epic that spans genres and filmmaking modes.

The official synopsis tells you a bit more: “In a world where humanity has lost the ability to dream, one creature remains entranced by the fading illusions of the dreamworld. This monster, adrift in reverie, clings to visions no one else can see—until a woman appears. Gifted with the rare power to perceive these illusions for what they truly are, she chooses to enter the monster’s dreams, determined to uncover the truth that lies hidden within.” —RL

“Urchin” (dir. Harris Dickinson, Un Certain Regard)

That Harris Dickinson really is good at everything. While my feelings about the “Babygirl” and (let’s not forget) “Beach Rats” star’s directorial debut are technically embargoed, I’ll just say that they are the opposite of… very negative? His story of a homeless London drifter’s (Frank Dillane) searching path toward redemption amid a life of petty crime and drug addiction feels like Mike Leigh’s “Naked” but for the age of Neon or A24. And that’s a compliment, as writer/director Dickinson brings a contemporary edge to a familiar narrative: Mike (Dillane) has fallen down once again, having attacked and robbed a good Samaritan to score the next fix. Now, he’s entangled in a legal system that spews people up like a drainpipe, offering them no actual tools to be or do better. Not every actor is meant to be a director — as so many seem to be these days — but Dickinson signals real talent and a filmmaking voice that feels fully formed already. “Urchin” blends the mystical with the kitchen-sink real, and it’s a movie most Cannes attendees will flock to at this year’s festival, given the name attached, but they won’t be disappointed. —RL

“Yes!” (dir. Nadav Lapid, Directors’ Fortnight)

Fueled by combustible self-conflict, the work of Tel Aviv-born filmmaker Nadav Lapid has always been freighted with his ambivalence — and, increasingly, his anger — toward his nationality. “Synonyms” revisited the period in his 20s when a young Lapid fled to Paris and violently attempted to shake off the Hebrew language after convincing himself that he’d been born in the Middle East by mistake, while 2021 Palme d’Or contender “Ahed’s Knee” directly confronted the impotence Lapid felt as an artist railing against nationalist violence from inside the belly of the beast. 
In that light, one would imagine that anything Lapid made over the last two years would be incandescently furious, but to judge from what little we know about “Yes!,” it sounds like he’s returned with… an epic remake of “Yes Man”? In Set in the aftermath of the October 7 attacks, Lapid’s film tells the story of a struggling jazz musician named Y., who — along with his dancer wife — agrees to say “yes” to everything in order to make ends meet, a policy that soon forces them both to sacrifice their souls to the bidding of their countrymen. Eventually, Y. is tasked with writing Israel a new national anthem, and it’s a safe bet that the lyrics are probably a little more pointed than those of the “Hatikvah.”  We’ll find out when “Yes” premieres as part of the Directors’ Fortnight towards the end of Cannes. —DE