Categories: Cannes Film Festival

57th Director’s Fortnight Selection of the 2025 Cannes Film Festival Includes New Christian Petzold, Eva Victor’s Sundance-Winning ‘Sorry, Baby’

Published by
Share

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

Erik Anderson

Erik Anderson is the founder/owner and Editor-in-Chief of AwardsWatch and has always loved all things Oscar, having watched the Academy Awards since he was in single digits; making lists, rankings and predictions throughout the show. This led him down the path to obsessing about awards. Much later, he found himself in film school and the film forums of GoldDerby, and then migrated over to the former Oscarwatch (now AwardsDaily), before breaking off to create AwardsWatch in 2013. 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.

Recent Posts

AwardsWatch Podcast Ep. 285 – 2025 Summer Movie Preview

On episode 285 of The AwardsWatch Podcast, Executive Editor Ryan McQuade is joined by Editor-In-Chief… Read More

April 28, 2025

Nicole Kidman to Receive Kering 2025 Women In Motion Award at Cannes Film Festival

Kering and the Festival de Cannes will present the 2025 Women In Motion Award to… Read More

April 28, 2025

2026 Critics Choice Awards Land Early January 2026 Date

The Critics Choice Association (CCA) announced today that the 31st annual Critics Choice Awards will take place on Sunday, January 4,… Read More

April 25, 2025

Adam Sandler in ‘Happy Gilmore 2,’ ‘KPop Demon Hunters,’ Double Tyler Perry Headed to Netflix This Summer

This summer, Netflix is bringing summer to your living room with the long-awaited return of… Read More

April 25, 2025

2025 Outer Critics Circle Award Nominations: ‘Death Becomes Her’ Leads with 12

The Outer Critics Circle (OCC), the official organization of writers on New York theatre for… Read More

April 25, 2025

Cannes 2025: Short Films and La Cinef Lineup, Maren Ade to Head Jury

Selected from 4,781 films, 11 shorts will be presented this year in Competition. The selection… Read More

April 25, 2025