For 12 consecutive days starting this Tuesday, the global film industry will turn its full attention to the sun-drenched shores of the French Riviera, where the annual Cannes Film Festival – one of the most prestigious and influential cinematic showcases on the planet – opens its doors to premieres, red-carpet galas, and the unveiling of what could be the next crop of award-winning hit films.
Now in its 78-plus year of operation, the festival has long held a unique reputation as both a world-class platform for groundbreaking cinema and a glamorous cultural spectacle that draws A-list talent, top directors, and film lovers from every corner of the globe. History shows that a premiere launch at Cannes often paves the road to Oscar success: recent Palme d’Or contenders and winners including *Parasite* and *Anora* have gone on to take home the Academy Award for Best Picture, and last year’s Cannes lineup featured multiple eventual Oscar nominees such as *Sentimental Value*, *The Secret Agent*, and *It Was Just an Accident*. This year’s 12-day event is expected to produce similarly future award contenders, though major Hollywood studios will largely stay on the sidelines for 2025.
Leading this year’s jury, tasked with awarding the festival’s top honor the Palme d’Or, is celebrated South Korean filmmaker Park Chan-wook. The opening ceremony will also kick off a series of honorary Palme d’Or recognitions, with legendary New Zealand director Peter Jackson receiving the first honor this year, followed by iconic entertainer Barbra Streisand at a later date. Beyond the official festival screenings, pop culture fans have an extra point of interest: HBO’s hit series *The White Lotus* is currently filming its fourth season on the Croisette, Cannes’ iconic waterfront promenade, bringing a dose of small-screen star power to the city.
This year’s official lineup leans heavily into work from world-renowned auteur directors, with highly anticipated features spanning genres, languages, and storytelling styles. One of the buzziest entries is Na Hong-jin’s long-in-development sci-fi thriller *Hope*, a genre-bending project that festival artistic director Thierry Fremaux says constantly shifts creative directions. The film features a cross-cultural cast mixing top Korean talent Hwang Jung-min, Zo In-sung, and Jung Ho-yeon with Hollywood stars Michael Fassbender, Alicia Vikander, and Taylor Russell, and many industry observers predict it could mark Na’s global breakthrough.
Another high-profile American addition is James Gray’s *Paper Tiger*, a Queens-set crime drama that was a late addition to the competition slate. Starring A-list leads Adam Driver, Miles Teller, and Scarlett Johansson, the film centers on two brothers who get tangled up with the Russian mafia, and it has quickly become one of the most anticipated American films of this year’s festival. Romanian master Cristian Mungiu, a former Palme d’Or winner for *4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days*, returns to competition with *Fjord*, starring Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve as a Romanian-Norwegian couple who relocate to the wife’s isolated rural hometown in Norway.
In the Un Certain Regard sidebar, Jane Schoenbrun – one of the most talked-about new voices in contemporary American independent cinema – presents *Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma*, a slasher-movie-set story starring Hannah Einbinder and Gillian Anderson. Polish auteur Pawel Pawlikowski, famous for his stripped-back, black-and-white period dramas *Ida* and *Cold War*, debuts his third feature in this creative vein: *Fatherland*, which follows German author Thomas Mann on a post-World War II road trip, starring Hanns Zischler in the lead role alongside Sandra Hüller as his daughter.
Japanese master Ryusuke Hamaguchi, who made history with the Oscar-nominated *Drive My Car*, makes his French-language debut with *All of a Sudden*, a thoughtful drama starring Virginie Efira and Tao Okamoto centered on a nursing home director and a terminally ill Japanese playwright. Fellow beloved Japanese filmmaker Hirokazu Kore-eda – a former Palme d’Or winner for *Shoplifters*, celebrated for his gentle, empathetic storytelling – ventures into sci-fi territory with *Sheep in the Box*, which follows a grieving couple who adopt an infant humanoid robot after losing their own son.
Ira Sachs’ *The Man I Love* was the only American film selected for competition before James Gray’s late addition, and it sees Rami Malek take on the lead role as an actor with a life-threatening illness in 1980s New York, preparing for what may be his final performance. French filmmaker Arthur Harari, who co-wrote 2023 Palme d’Or winner *Anatomy of a Fall*, steps into the director’s chair for competition with *The Unknown*, a body-swap drama starring Léa Seydoux about a photographer who wakes up in the body of a woman he followed after photographing her at a party. Acclaimed Russian director Andrey Zvyagintsev, whose previous works *Leviathan* and *Loveless* earned Oscar nominations, returns to Cannes after a near-fatal illness during the COVID-19 pandemic with *Minotaur*, a drama about a business executive facing a personal crisis in rural Russia.
Among special screenings, Steven Soderbergh’s documentary *John Lennon: The Last Interview* has already drawn major headlines for its creative use of artificial intelligence to visualize John Lennon’s philosophical reflections, drawn from the final interview the Beatles icon gave at his New York home the Dakota shortly before his 1980 assassination. The film promises audiences an unprecedented intimate look at one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. Finally, Spanish auteur Pedro Almodovar, a longtime Cannes favorite, debuts his deeply personal new melodrama *Bitter Christmas*, a multi-layered story exploring filmmaking, grief, and aging that marks a return to Almodovar’s native Spanish language and Spanish setting after his recent English-language feature *The Room Next Door*.