2025 Cannes Film Festival Reviews: ‘The Secret Agent,’ ‘My Father’s Shadow,’ ‘The Plague,’ ‘Splitsville,’ ‘Arco’
The Cannes Film Festival can present a variety of options for cinephiles to consume over the course of the close to two-week event. Within an afternoon, you can see a film that is In Competition for the Palme d’Or or a special screening that is not up for any of the festival honors but one that the programmers are excited to include in their lineup.
In this review round-up from the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, we explore one of the biggest titles of the festival up for the festival’s highest award, a pair of films from the Un Certain Regard section (mostly highlighting the works of new, up-and-coming directors), a Cannes World Premiere of the latest comedy from Neon, and a Special Screening of a new animated French film produced by Natalie Portman about the two children and the power of making rainbows. This is but a taste of the collection of films you could see on a daily basis when you come to the Cannes Film Festival, though they all range from varying degrees of success.
The Secret Agent (Dir Kleber Mendonça Filho, In Competition)
From the moment The Secret Agent begins, writer-director Kleber Mendonça Filho places you right into the tone of the entire film; stressful, as if someone is watching you at all times, and that’s because they are. As Marcelo (the brilliant Wagner Moura) is trying to get gas for his car to complete his journey, he is stopped by the police who question and search him, as they were tipped of something suspicious is going on as this stranger comes to Recife, the state capital of Pernambuco, Brazil. Mendonça lets his camera linger around every section of Marcelo’s car, building up tension, till bang, he is let go and able to drive off with only having to pay off the cops with his leftover cigarettes. It’s around a ten-minute opener, and it is by far the best opening scene of the year, beautifully staging this patient yet urgent political thriller.
Once he arrives in Recife, the film’s plot unfolds, as we discover he is on the run, using Marcelo as an alias to cover-up his true identity, as he is under protection by those who are trying to help individuals targeted by the Brazilian dictatorship. Looking to get himself and his son out of the country, he must wait patiently for the time to come for the documents to be ready for his escape. As this is going on, a powerful bureaucrat who shares a past with Marcelo sends contract killers to “shoot a hole into his mouth” and put an end to people like him who think they can hide in the shadows. At the same time, Marcelo has to navigate a nasty local chief of police (Roberio Diogenes as Euclides), who is just as crooked and vile as the hit men sent out to kill him. All three stories collide but it is the long, steady set-up mixed with the world and character building that makes the third act pay out so well for Mendonça and company. Moura’s performance is his career best work, as a man trying to survive in the present from his mistakes in the past, all the while dancing a line between confident and nervous that he will never see his son again. But it is the direction of Mendonça that really shines in this film, blending the knowledge of culture within his last project, Pictures of Ghosts, and blending it with a story about people trying to live a normal life when faced against an uphill battle against those who abuse power. It’s a powerful film that ranks not just as one of the best films of the Cannes Film Festival, but one of the best films of the year.
Grade: A
My Father’s Shadow (Dir. Akinola Davies Jr, Un Certain Regard)
When you are making art, they say write what you know, and in the case of Akinola Davies Jr, for their feature length directorial debut, My Father’s Shadow, the director explores a region of the world that is close to his heart; Lagos, Nigeria, the place he grew up. In a remote village far from Lagos, two young boys (played by newcomers Godwin Chimerie Egbo and Chibuike Marvelous Egbo) are reunited with their father, Fola (Sope Dirisu), whom they have been estranged for some time now due to his work in the big city. Through the eyes of these two brothers, we see them take a journey with their father into Lagos, as their mother is gone for the day and he takes it upon himself to take them to the big city for the first time in their lives. What happens from here is a bonding experience that we see unfolding into a lasting memory for the boys, as their father takes the time that he hasn’t had for them over the last several months, even years, and tries his best to squeeze every last drop of time wasted into this one afternoon. Around them, he is in command, a person that respect and obey, but once you meet other people in Lagos who have formed connects with Fola over the years, the more the boys start to see the cracks of the god-like figure they’ve had in their head, and see their father for just the man that he is, a flawed person who has done their best given the world around them; which is set against the backdrop of the 1993 Nigerian presidential election, a divisive election that led to protests, political unrest, and a coup that we see the beginning of from the moment the boys and their father are trying to head home. Davies Jr is able to weave a lot of personal detail into the world that they grew up in, as well as the anger of a country wanting to change but can’t because of the terror of the military regime in charge. However great the themes of the film are, the film’s relaxed pace and family dynamic collides with the political messaging to form a film that feels like two wonderful ideas that never fully develop into something special, cohesive film. But there is a lot of promise in their visual voice in watching My Father’s Shadow; one that will continue to grow and be one to look out for in the coming years with follow-up projects.
Grade: C
The Plague (Dir. Charlie Polinger, Un Certain Regard)
Inside Charlie Polinger’s debut film The Plague lies one of the scariest things seen on screen of the festival; the immature, social cliques of a group of twelve, thirteen-year-old boys at a swim camp. Set in the summer of 2003 at Tom Lerner Water Polo Camp, Ben (Everett Blunck) comes in at a disadvantage, only being there for the second of two sessions, and having a speech impediment. Everyone has already been there for the first session, including the most popular kid in the class, Jake (Kayo Martin), whose able to draw all the other boys of the camp in like moths to a flame, as he leads everyone in telling obscene “would you rather” scenarios, and talking about tons of sex jokes; the stuff immature boys of their age have on the mind all the time. As my first job, once upon a time, I was a camp counselor assigned to boys of Ben and Jake’s age and Polinger is able to nail almost every aspect of how these kids interact to this day, noting that nothing really has changed because all boys are like this at one point, and it can even get out of hand if unchecked by an adult, as we see in the film with the lack of supervision at this camp. Sure they have a swimming coach (Joel Edgerton, also a producer on the film), but the kids are the ones that run the camp. It’s a flaw in the film that shines brightly in the believability of the story that unfolds after the reveal of what “the plague” is.
In speaking to Ben, Jake and the gang say that they have nicknamed Eli, a nerdy, outsider of the group, “the plague” because of the skin rash that is on his body, forcing him to wear a long sleeve shirt in the pool, and separating him from the rest of the group as he is a little different than anyone else. Ben plays along with them at first, but as The Plague continues to unravel, and the boys turn their sick, Lord of the Flies-esque bullying onto Ben, the film completely turns into a standard thriller (with a really obnoxious score) about whether to believe this made up plague is real, or just a commentary on peer pressure and the dangers one can find in trying to become someone that society thinks is “normal” instead of just being your nature self. What elevates the film is the performances from Blunck, but especially Martin, who is downright evil in his role as Jake, making for some of the best young actor performances in some time.
Grade: B-
Splitsville (Dir. Mike Corvino, Cannes Premiere)
When do you know that your relationship with someone is over? For Ashley (Adria Arjona), it is fully confirmed when she and her husband Carey (Kyle Marvin) get in a car accident and a woman dies on the side of the road, as they were trying to perform sex in the car while driving before the fatal event occurred. This shock to the system leads Carey to leave his wife by the side of the road, and walk depressed through the woods, getting to his friends Paul and Julie (Michael Angelo Covino, Dakota Johnson), who are taken care of him as he tells them the news of his separation, making sure he knows they are on his side. Over the course of an evening and a very long dinner, Carey is able to discover that his friends are in an open relationship, one that allows them to be with anyone they want, no questions asked, and no room for jealousy. When Carey throws out the idea of him having sex with Julie, Paul laughs at his face and the couple both agree it will never happen. But when it does happen literally the next day, and Carey tells Paul about it, the film’s version of what they think hilarity is ensues, with a massive set piece of the two men destroying the house and everything inside of it, as the ultimate, immature dick measuring contest begins for Julie’s love and affection (which we do literally see multiple times from Marvin). Carey leaves after causing a clear rift in Paul and Julie’s household, and returns home to make a deal with Ashley that she can date other guys as well, avoiding a divorce but staying friends in the process.
The rest of Splitsville plays like a bad sitcom from the 1990s that never evolved its humor from the immature dude sex jokes and self-deprecation. It’s as if both Covino and Marvin’s characters were less mature than the young performers in the previous film review, The Plague, as both men play the grown babies who write themselves as the victims of their own story, while undermining every female character they interact with. Johnson and Arjona are completely wasted and used as nothing more than objects of affection for each man to go after without any real human or emotional connection made. It’s as if two bros watch a Nancy Meyers movie on a Saturday afternoon, and say to themselves “we can do this, but make it raunchier and more about us.” Splitsville is a miserable, one-note, aimless, mind-numbing romantic comedy that beats you over the head with its “humor” till you just can’t take it anymore. When you watch a rom-com, you should be rooting for the character you see on screen to get together and fall in love. By the end of Splitsville, you want nothing to do with any of these horrible, vine, loveless people, marking a fatal flaw in Covino and Marvin’s second collaboration following the much successful film, The Climb.
Grade: F
Arco (Ugo Bienvenu, Special Screenings)
By the year 3000, our world has we’ve known it has evolved beyond what we know it to be now in Ugo Bienvenu’s Arco. Humans and all living civilizations have moved to the sky, inhabiting homes above an Earth that are no longer safe to be a part of on the surface. Our titular character lives with his family, as they are rainbow makers, wear cloaks with crystals on the top of their head, with the ability to travel as one through space and time to form the multicolored marvel in the sky for people throughout human existence. Arco (Oscar Tresanini), only twelve, wants to go on a mission with his family, but they tell he is not ready for such a monumental mission. This dismissal only makes him want to do it more, and the next morning, he steals his sister’s cloaks, and attempts to make his first rainbow, but in doing so, jumps forward in time to our near future, 2075, and crashes down, rendering him unconscious. On a walk in the woods, a young girl named Iris (Margot Ringard Oldra) finds Arco, and brings him back to her house to tend to his wounds, with the help of her robot Mikki and her infant brother. Rather short in the runtime (88 minutes to be precise), Bienvenu’s film wastes no time in trying to develop its main character dynamic, as well as trying to showcase a world that is unique given the hyper stylized 2D animation presented throughout the film; though it does look like a knock off version of Studio Ghibli. The problem that lies within Arco is that there are too many side characters added to the film, including three henchmen who are chasing around Arco and Iris so they can either steal or question Arco about his rainbow powers (a silly statement, I know), and it breaks the focus of the core story from having it’s emotional ending that it clearly wants to have, but just hasn’t earned. Arco is a weird mix of Ponyo, Interstellar, Wall-E, and various other animated films like it that have come before, and while it is earnest in the story it is trying to tell, it doesn’t allow itself the chance to separate from thinking of other films that are better than it in almost every way.
Grade: C
Interview: As the Effervescent Claude on ‘The Four Seasons,’ Marco Calvani is Back and He’s Still the One 
2026 Oscar Predictions: SUPPORTING ACTOR and SUPPORTING ACTRESS (June) 
Director Watch Podcast Ep. 104 – ‘The Hobbit Trilogy’ (Peter Jackson, 2012/2013/2014) 
Make it a Double Feature: ‘The Mitchells vs. The Machines’ and ‘Nimona’