76th Cannes Film Festival Lineup: New films from Todd Haynes, Kore-eda Hirokazu; women directors hit record numbers in competition
New films from Todd Haynes, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Nanni Moretti, Ken Loach and Kore-eda Hirokazu highlight the competition lineup for the 76th Cannes Film Festival announced today by Thierry Frémaux, the festival’s director, at the press conference in Paris alongside new Cannes president Iris Knobloch, a former WarnerMedia executive.
If those names seem familiar to Cannes it’s because they are; the Competition lineup is once again filled with previous Palme d’Or winners and contenders that also includes new films from Wes Anderson and Wim Wenders and more who have been here before.
“We saw more than 2,000 films. These numbers are extravagant and, at the same time, reflect the health of world cinema and the aspiration to make films everywhere,” said Fremaux at the early morning announcement, highlighting a competition lineup with fewer French movies than normal. Among the French competition entries include The Passion of Dodin Bouffant, a period romance directed by Tran Anh Hung, and starring Juliette Binoche and Benoit Magimel. The festival’s opening night film, Jeanne du Barry from Maïwenn and starring Johnny Depp, will play out of competition. As is usual, the competition lineup isn’t locked (some films were only officially added late last night) and we can expect more films to be added in the coming days. Rumors swirled before the announcement that Poor Things from Yorgos Lanthimos would show up here (if not a Venice bow) as well as new films from Ladj Ly, Richard Linklater and Jeff Nichols.
No Spanish or Latin American films are represented this year, while Italy has three in the new Moretti, Il Sol Dell’Avvenire (The Sun of the Future), Alice Rohrwacher’s La Chimera and Marco Bellocchio’s Rapito. Two documentaries have also made the comp cut with Kaouther Ben Hania’s Les Filles D’Olfa (Four Daughters) and Jeunesse from Wang Bing. Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 911 went on to win the Palme d’Or from Quentin Tarantino’s jury in 2004 and then the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature.
A new short film from Pedro Almodóvar, Strange Way of Life, will be a hot commodity on the Riviera this May with Ethan Hawke, Pedro Pascal, and Manu Ríos starring in the gay western, Almodóvar’s second English-language short film after 2020’s The Human Voice with Tilda Swinton.
After years of scrutiny for failing to feature more women in its lineup of Competition films, this year’s festival will break its own record with six films from female directors of the 19 selections. They include Rohrwacher, Hania, Jessica Hausner’s Club Zero, Catherine Breillat’s Last Summer, Justine Triet’s Anatomie d’une chute, and Ramata-Toulaye Sy’s Banel et Adama. Most are not new names to the competition lineup, with only Sy and Ben Hania as newcomers. Only two female directors have ever won the Palme in the festival’s 76 years: Jane Campion in 1993 for The Piano and Julia Ducournau in 2021 for Titane. Blue is the Warmest Color stars Léa Seydoux and Adèle Exarchopoulos were co-awarded the Palme with their director Abdellatif Kechiche in 2013 from jury president Steven Spielberg.
American and Hollywood directors will have their usual spotlight at Cannes with the very long anticipated Martin Scorsese film Killers of the Flower Moon making its world debut, but out of competition. It’s the director’s first film to play at the festival since his 1985 film After Hours, where he won Best Director. Wes Anderson makes his third competition appearance after 2012’s Moonrise Kingdom and 2021’s The French Dispatch with his newest star-studded film, Asteroid City. Todd Haynes also returns to competition with May December starring Natalie Portman and Cannes Best Actress winner Julianne Moore; and HBO’s controversial new upcoming series The Idol, from the Weeknd-led and Euphoria creator Sam Levinson, will hit the Croisette. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny will have a splashy, out of competition premiere that will see star Harrison Ford receive a special Cannes honor, not unlike Tom Cruise last year when Top Gun: Maverick made its world premiere at Cannes.
The 76th edition of the Cannes Film Festival will run May 16-27 with the Competition jury (still tba) under the guidance of this year’s president, Ruben Östlund, a two-time Palme d’Or winner for The Square and last year’s Triangle of Sadness, which went on to earn him Oscar nominations for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay.
Here are the lineups for Competition, Out of Competition, Un Certain Regard and more. Directors Fortnight and Critic’s Week lineups will be announced in the coming weeks.
COMPETITION
Club Zero, Jessica Hausner
Asteroid City, Wes Anderson
The Zone of Interest, Jonathan Glazer
Fallen Leaves, Aki Kaurismaki
Les Filles D’Olfa (Four Daughters), Kaouther Ben Hania
Anatomie D’une Chute, Justine Triet
Monster, Kore-eda Hirokazu
Il Sol Dell’Avvenire (The Sun of the Future), Nanni Moretti
La Chimera, Alice Rohrwacher
About Dry Grasses, Nuri Bilge Ceylan
L’Ete Dernier, Catherine Breillat
The Passion of Dodin Bouffant, Tran Anh Hung
Rapito, Marco Bellocchio
May December, Todd Haynes
Firebrand, Karim Ainouz
The Old Oak, Ken Loach
Perfect Days, Wim Wenders
Banel Et Adama, Ramata-Toulaye Sy
Jeunesse, Wang Bing
UN CERTAIN REGARD
Los Delincuentes (The Delinquents), Rodrigo Moreno
How to Have Sex, Molly Manning Walker
Goodbye Julia, Mohamed Kordofani
Crowra (The Burti Flower), João Salaviza & Renée Nader Messora
Simple Comme Sylvain, Monia Chokri
Kadib Abyad (The Mother of All Lies), Asmae EL Moudir
Los Colonos (The Settlers), Felipe Galvez
Augure (Omen), Baloji Tshiani
The Breaking Ice, Anthony Chen
Rosalie, Stéphanie Di Giusto
The New Boy, Warwick Thornton
If Only I Could Hibernate, Zoljargal Purevdash
Hopeless, Kim Chang-hoon
Terrestrial Verses, Ali Asfari & Alireza Khatami
Rien a Perdre, Delphine Deloget
Les Meutes, Kamal Lazraq
Le Regne Animal, Thomas Cailley
OUT OF COMPETITION
Killers of the Flower Moon, Martin Scorsese
The Idol, Sam Levinson
Cobweb, Kim Jee-woon
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, James Mangold
Jeanne du Barry, Maïwenn – OPENING NIGHT FILM
MIDNIGHT SCREENINGS
Omar la Fraise, Elias Belkeddar
Kennedy, Anurag Kashyap
Acide, Just Philippot
SPECIAL SCREENINGS
Retratos Fantasmas, (Pictures of Ghosts), Kleber Mendonca Filho
Anselm, Wim Wenders
Occupied City, Steve McQueen
Man in Black, Wang Bing
CANNES PREMIERE
Le Temps D’Aimer, Katell Quillevere
Cerrar Los Ojos, Victor Erice
Bonnard, Pierre et Marthe, Martin Provost
Kubi, Takeshi Kitano
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), Hollywood Critics Association (HCA) 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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