57th Director’s Fortnight Selection of the 2025 Cannes Film Festival Includes New Christian Petzold, Eva Victor’s Sundance-Winning ‘Sorry, Baby’
The Société des réalisatrices have revealed the lineup of the 57th edition of the Director’s Fortnight section of the Cannes Film Festival, running May 14 to May 24th.
Making his Cannes debut is German filmmaker Christian Petzold with his latest collaboration with Paula Beer, Miroirs No. 3. Petzold (Love in Times of Oppressive Systems trilogy, Ghosts trilogy and Undine) marks his first appearance at Cannes after being a staple at Berlin, where he won the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize for 2023’s Afire. His new film is a story of a pianist whose life is ruined when a car accident kills her boyfriend. Fortnight artistic director Julien Rejl praised the film, saying, “It’s a kind of melodrama, very mysterious, but with the same great direction, precision and elegance that makes the charm of Christian Petzold’s cinema.” The film has North American distribution through Metrograph Pictures.
For the second year in a row, the section will open with a posthumous film: Enzo by the late Laurent Cantet and French BPM filmmaker Robin Campillo. Sophie Fillières’ final film This Life of Mine opened the section last year. The DF will close with Eva Victor’s Sundance winner Sorry, Baby, which A24 acquired for release later this summer. It’s produced by Pastel’s Adele Romanski and Barry Jenkins.
The sidebar is “pluralist, mixed, rich in discoveries. It celebrates a cinematic liveliness that is invaluable and more essential than ever, even as directors and producers are finding it increasingly difficult to finance their project. It stands with directors the world over in the fight against the homogenisation, the commodification and thus the neutralisation of cinema,” he continued.
The SRF will honor award-winning American filmmaker Todd Haynes with the Carrosse d’Or on May 14, 2025 in Cannes, during the Directors’ Fortnight’s opening ceremony. “A filmmaker born in the heart of the American counterculture, he carries his legacy of challenging norms, whether social, sexual or artistic, with pride.” Previous recipients include Andrea Arnold, Souleymane Cissé, Kelly Reichardt, Jia Zhangke and Jafar Panahi.
French director and screenwriter Thomas Cailley is the first Prix Alpine winner, which he will receive on May 22, 2025 during the closing ceremony of the Directors’ Fortnight.
Here is the complete lineup of the 57th Director’s Fortnight.
FEATURE FILMS
ENZO by Laurent Cantet and Robin Campillo – Opening Film
AMOUR APOCALYPSE (Peak Everything) by Anne Émond
BRAND NEW LANDSCAPE (見はらし世代) by Yuiga Danzuka – 1st film
CLASSE MOYENNE (The Party’s Over!) de Antony Cordier
DANGEROUS ANIMALS by Sean Byrne
LA DANSE DES RENARDS (Wild Foxes) by Valéry Carnoy – 1st film
L’ENGLOUTIE (The Girl in the Snow) by Louise Hémon – 1st film
LES FILLES DÉSIR (The Girls We Want) by Prïncia Car – 1st film
GIRL ON EDGE (Hua yang shao nv sha ren shi jian) by Jinghao Zhou – 1st film
INDOMPTABLES by Thomas Ngijol
KOKUHO by Lee Sang-il
LUCKY LU by Lloyd Lee Choi – 1st film
MILITANTROPOS by Yelizaveta Smith, Alina Gorlova & Simon Mozgovyi
MIROIRS No. 3 (Mirrors No. 3 ) by Christian Petzold
LA MORT N’EXISTE PAS (Death Does Not Exist) by Félix Dufour-Laperrière
THE PRESIDENT’S CAKE (Mamlaket al-Qasab) by Hasan Hadi – 1st film
QUE MA VOLONTÉ SOIT FAITE (Her Will Be Done) by Julia Kowalski
SORRY, BABY by Eva Victor – 1st film – Closing Film
SHORT & MEDIUM LENGTH FILMS
+10K by Gala Hernández López
BEFORE THE SEA FORGETS by Ngọc Duy Lê
THE BODY by Louris van de Geer
BREAD WILL WALK (Le pain se lève) by Alex Boya
CŒUR BLEU (Blue Heart) by Samuel Suffren
KARMASH (کرمش) by Aleem Bukhari
LOYNES by Dorian Jespers
LA MORT DU POISSON (Death of the Fish) by Eva Lusbaronian
NERVOUS ENERGY by Eve Liu
WHEN THE GEESE FLEW by Arthur Gay
He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Critics Choice Association (CCA), San Francisco Bay Area Film Critics Circle (SFBAFCC) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.
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