The 79th annual Cannes Film Festival, one of the most prestigious and influential film gatherings on the global cultural calendar, is set to kick off next month from May 12 to 23 on the French Riviera. Organizers officially announced the highly anticipated 2025 lineup at a Paris press conference Thursday, assembling a slate packed with award-winning international auteurs that reaffirms the festival’s reputation as a launching pad for the year’s most acclaimed cinematic works. This year’s edition, however, marks a stark shift: major Hollywood studios are largely absent, a trend festival leadership has acknowledged as reflective of larger shifts in global film production and distribution.
The festival’s most prestigious category, the main competition for the coveted Palme d’Or, features 21 competing films from established and beloved filmmakers across the globe. Multiple previous Palme d’Or winners are returning to contest the top prize this year, adding extra prestige to the 2025 lineup. Polish filmmaker Paweł Pawlikowski, who earned international acclaim for *Ida* and *Cold War*, will premiere *Fatherland*, a Cold War-era drama starring Oscar-nominated performer Sandra Hüller. Japanese director Ryusuke Hamaguchi, whose *Drive My Car* won the Oscar for Best International Feature Film after its Cannes debut, will present *All of a Sudden* — his first French-language feature. Spanish cinematic icon Pedro Almodóvar’s *Bitter Christmas*, which has already launched in Spanish cinemas, will also make its world premiere in competition.
Past Palme recipients returning to the lineup include Romanian director Cristian Mungiu, whose 2007 winner *4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days* remains a landmark of global art house cinema. His 2025 entry *Fjord*, set in Norway, stars recently Oscar-nominated Renate Reinsve and Sebastian Stan. Japanese filmmaker Hirokazu Kore-eda, who took home the Palme in 2018 for *Shoplifters*, will debut a new sci-fi work, *Sheep in the Box*, which follows a grieving couple in the near future who welcome a humanoid android into their home as their late son. Other notable returning competitors include Russian auteur Andrey Zvyagintsev, whose previous works *Loveless* and *Leviathan* both earned Oscar nominations after Cannes premieres, with his new drama *Minotaur*. Additional competition entries come from two-time Oscar winner Asghar Farhadi with *Parallel Stories*, Lukas Dhont with *Cowboy*, and László Nemes with *Moulin*.
American filmmakers are underrepresented in competition this year, with only a small handful of U.S. projects selected. The lone American competitive entry is Ira Sachs’ *The Man I Love*, a 1980s New York-based drama centered on the AIDS crisis, starring Rami Malek. In the festival’s Un Certain Regard sidebar, Jane Schoenbrun will premiere *Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma* — their follow-up to 2024’s cult hit *I Saw the TV Glow* — a story about the production of a 1980s slasher film starring Hannah Einbinder and Gillian Anderson. Two prominent American directors will screen documentaries in special out-of-competition screenings: Steven Soderbergh’s *John Lennon: The Last Interview* and Ron Howard’s *Avedon*, a portrait of iconic fashion and fine art photographer Richard Avedon. John Travolta’s directorial debut *Propeller One-Way Night Coach* will also screen in the Cannes Premiere section.
Independent U.S. distribution company Neon has already secured distribution rights to three of the most anticipated competition titles: *Fjord*, *Sheep in the Box*, and *All of a Sudden*. The acquisition puts Neon in a position to extend an unprecedented historic streak: the distributor has won the Palme d’Or six consecutive years, most recently with Jafar Panahi’s *It Was Just an Accident* in 2024. Neon is also backing Nicolas Winding Refn’s out-of-competition thriller *Her Private Hell*, starring Sophie Thatcher and Charles Melton, which marks Refn’s first feature film since 2016’s *The Neon Demon*.
Festival leadership used the press conference to reaffirm the core mission of Cannes in a turbulent global era. “In this moment, bringing together films and artists from around the world is not a luxury, it’s a necessity,” festival president Iris Knobloch said. “Because when the world darkens, we lose our bearings. Showcasing films from all horizons is not a trivial act. It is defending what is most precious to humanity, its ability to dream and think freely.” Artistic director Thierry Frémaux added that 2,541 feature films were submitted for consideration this year, and that Thursday’s announcement covered roughly 95% of the official selection, with a small number of additional entries to be revealed in the coming weeks. He addressed the absence of major Hollywood studios, noting that while American filmmakers are still present, reduced studio participation reflects a broader retreat from the type of prestige theatrical cinema that once defined major studio output. Large studio blockbusters that made splashy Cannes debuts in recent years, such as *Top Gun: Maverick* and *Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning*, will not be on the 2025 lineup.
True to longstanding festival rules, all competition entries require a theatrical release in French cinemas, a stipulation that has excluded streaming platforms such as Netflix from the competitive lineup since 2017, aligned with France’s strict theatrical window protection laws. The festival will open with the 1920s French drama *The Electric Kiss*, screening out of competition, which will meet the requirement of opening day-and-date in French theaters this May.
This year’s Palme d’Or will be decided by a nine-member jury led by iconic Korean filmmaker Park Chan-wook. The festival will also bestow honorary Palme d’Or awards to two entertainment legends: singer, actor and filmmaker Barbra Streisand, and New Zealand director Peter Jackson, the visionary behind *The Lord of the Rings* trilogy. Coming off a 2024 edition that launched multiple Oscar contenders, including two Best Picture nominees Joachim Trier’s *Sentimental Value* and Kleber Mendonça Filho’s *The Secret Agent*, the 2025 Cannes Film Festival is positioned to uphold its status as the global premier stage for ambitious cinematic storytelling.