Who will win the Palme at Cannes? [2025 edition]

lol I pulled that from the Cannes site and didn't realize that they inexplicably translated part of Nouvelle Vague into English

Is that the Paul Eddington biopic we’ve all been waiting for?

"New Vague" vmic for Linklater

I'm far from a cinephile but my heart says it's Reichardt's year.

"Reichardt heist movie" makes me curious.

Is Chie Hayakawa taking the slot usually reserved for Naomi Kawase?

I was hoping that Bi Gan's "Resurrection" would be included. Maybe it's not ready. His first two films, "Kaili Blues" and "Long Day's Journey Into Night" were both really good I thought

I'm curious about Mascha Schilinski's "Sound of Falling", which has received a lot of advance praise

If we haven't seen them (like THE MASTERMIND by Kelly REICHARDT), I have no idea

nobody has seen them! I am merely keeping up an annual thread started in the last few years by Eric H.

thank you jaymc!

Yes, since they are premiering at Cannes, none of us has seen them. It's just speculation based on knowledge of and love for the directors, general film gossip, plot points put forward ahead of time, and hype by companies hoping to acquire the films

I think 3 or 4 more films may be added to the lineup. The 2025 Cannes Film Festival runs from May 13th - May 24th, so we'll at least get to see what people attending the screenings think by the middle of the festival before this poll closes May 21st

Neil Young (UK film critic based in Austria) already has his yearly odds on his website, which will keep changing until the end of the festival, and right now his top 5 is

4/1 Chie Hayakawa RENOIR
5/1 Mascha Schilinski SOUND OF FALLING
6/1 Jafar Panahi A SIMPLE ACCIDENT
8/1 Carla Simón ROMERÍA
8/1 Julia Ducournau ALPHA

https://www.jigsawlounge.co.uk/film/reviews/cannes2025/

I mean - he could only have marginally more insight at this point than we do

Lynne Ramsay and Saeed Roustayi added to the competition. Perhaps we need a new poll?

And when at least a few of us have watched'em.

isn't this how the poll has always been done?

Definitely more interesting excercise when none of us have watched these. Reading the Cannes lineup based on history, names, rumours.

isn't this how the poll has always been done?

― jaymc, Friday, April 25, 2025

I know and I don't like it! It's like when people discussing Oscar win possibilities without watching the nominated movies. Pedantic complaint, I know, carry on.

It should end earlier, before anyone has seen them. I agree it's not interesting if people vote based on the hype at the festival.

But I think it's fun to vote on something as absurd as what a random jury will call the best. We should def do a poll on who will win the conclave in Rome as well.

my vote for the conclave is Matteo Zuppi

Anyway, I think voting based on the hype of the festival is what animates these threads.

I wish they had added the Bi Gan film, but he apparently ran into problems with censors

"Back in February, Juliette Binoche was named president of the jury for the 78th Cannes Film Festival, but the jury itself had yet to be unveiled, that is, until today."

"Joining Binoche is a diverse group of international artists: American actress Halle Berry, Indian filmmaker Payal Kapadia, Italian actress Alba Rohrwacher, Franco-Moroccan author Leïla Slimani, Congolese filmmaker and producer Dieudo Hamadi, South Korean filmmaker Hong Sangsoo, Mexican filmmaker Carlos Reygadas, and American actor Jeremy Strong."

Well, that changes everything. It must be Carla Simón's to lose, right?

On a more serious note, I could easily see her take it. 'Alcarràs' was really good. The one I'm most excited about is Oliver Laxe. 'Mimosas' was crazy and the trailer to the new one makes it seem like he's the token 'experimental' choice this year like Gomes or Serra earlier.

I've never watched Mimosas but it sounds interesting. I loved Alcarràs

According to World of Reel, a tentative schedule has leaked for the competition entries

May 14: Schilinski, Loznitsa, McQuarrie
May 15: Moll, Laxe
May 16: Aster, Herzi
May 17: Ramsay, Linklater, Hayakawa
May 18: Mendonça, W. Anderson
May 19: Ducournau, Saleh, S. Lee
May 20: Martone, Panahi, Zlotowski
May 21: Hermanus, Trier, Simón
May 22: Roustaee
May 23: Reichardt, Dardenne

I have read that the films thought to be the strongest are usually shown in the middle/latter part of the festival. That doesn’t mean much, but the thought is that the earliest films shown are forgotten by the end, and the last films are shown after everyone has made up their minds.

Reichardt’s film for the second time gets scheduled on the last day, but I don’t think she cares about any awards. (Dardennes’ film “Rosetta”, their first film at Cannes, which won the Palme D’Or, was also screened on the last day in 1999 apparently.) There are a lot of unknowns about the scheduling, probably involving post-production and what the directors have to say about their own preferences for when they want to show up based on their schedules

Also according to them: “As for Bi Gan’s “Resurrection,” it’s apparently booked to screen on May 22, but has still not been announced by Cannes. Hopefully, it passed through Chinese censors and will indeed be playing at the festival. The runtime for that film is said to be 2.5 hours.“

There was an announcement today that Bi Gan's film "Resurrection" will be in the official competition, which is very last minute, since the festival starts next week

Wow! So cool :) Hope there's an even longer longtake this time.

Haven't seen any of these but rooting for Reichardt, haha.

So the festival started off with Robert De Niro accepting an honorary Palme d'Or

new odds according to Neil Young:

3/1 Chie Hayakawa RENOIR [116min] Jap/Fra/Phi/Sin/Indo
7/2 Bi Gan RESURRECTION [160] Chi/Fra
5/1 Mascha Schilinski SOUND OF FALLING [149] Germany
5/1 Carla Simón ROMERÍA [115] Spa/Ger
7/1 Jafar Panahi IT WAS JUST AN ACCIDENT [105] (previous times in competition: 1) Iran/Fra/Lux
8/1 Joachim Trier SENTIMENTAL VALUE [135] (2) Nor/Fra/Den/Ger

https://www.jigsawlounge.co.uk/film/reviews/cannes2025/

I don't know much about Chie Hayakawa, but I don't think she is like Naomi Kawase. Hayakawa's first film was Plan 75, which won a special recognition in the Camera d'Or competition. It was unsettling.

The description of this new film is:

"Suburban Tokyo, 1987. 11-year-old Fuki's father, Keiji, is battling cancer, and in and out of hospital. Her mother, Utako, is constantly stressed out from caring for Keiji while holding down a full-time job. Left alone with her rich imagination, Fuki becomes fascinated by telepathy and falls ever deeper into her own fantasy world."

it sounds interesting to me

Early Kawase is really good, btw. Shara especially.

I liked her film Sweet Bean from 2015. That's the only one I've seen.

Mascha Schilinski's The Sound of Falling has gotten great reviews from Indiewire and Variety. It seems like it doesn’t have a coherent narrative as much as a sense of resonance of ghosts and trauma across generations.

Sergei Losnitza is the Ukrainian director of Two Prosecutors, also presented today in competition.

“Set in a provincial Soviet town in 1937, at the height of Josef Stalin’s reign of terror, Loznitsa’s latest is a harrowing portrait of one man’s powerlessness when confronting the ruthless machinery of a brutal, capricious state.”

Losnitza made Donbass 7 years ago which won the 2018 Un Certain Regard’s directing prize and My Joy 10 years ago. Both of them are beautiful but insanely chaotic films

I see now his name is spelled Loznitsa

tomorrow we get Dominik Moll with Dossier 137. He is a director who has been in competition twice before, with With A Friend Like Harry... (2000) and Lemming (2005). I have not seen his films and know nothing about him

also Oliver Laxe, for a film about a father's search for his missing daughter in the deserts of southern Morocco. He won the Directors' Fortnight Prize in 2010 for You Are All Captains, the Critics' Week Grand Prize in 2016 for Mimosas, and the Un Certain Regard Jury Prize in 2019 for Fire Will Come. I have not seen any of his films either

Mascha Schilinski's The Sound of Falling has gotten great reviews

yeah, I really want to check this out

Loznitsa has become a major documentarian lately, with major works about Ukrainian history like 'Maidan' about the revolution and 'The Invasion' about the war. Plus he has made a series of documentaries based on archival footage, of which 'State Funeral', featuring insane never seen before footage made for a propaganda documentary about the funeral of Stalin which was never finished. The new film looks like the most austere he has ever been, but it gets really great reviews. Perhaps it might be his popular breakthrough?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmJE6KWkVXM

I saw 'With a Friend Like Harry' in highschool more than twenty years ago. Never felt the need for more Moll...

But as stated above, the Laxe might be the one I'm looking forward to the most. 'Mimosas' is a classic, and the trailer for 'Sirât' looks great!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r854X85Q49s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HvwhOY63Ig

I usually like to follow Cannes through a mix of podcasts and tweets. The former seem quite slow compared with previous years (at least anglophone ones): my favourite one, Nick Rapold's Last Movie I Saw has had one episode with guest Alison Willmore (they both adored The Sound of Water). Nothing from Film Comment podcast so far this year. The Izzy and Murtado Picture Show is a new one on me though.

As for tweets, it's all a bit fractured now, with some people on Bluesky. Refuse to check Threads as well.

The Sound of Falling, rather!

The Shape of Water
The Sound of Music
The Chronology of Water

Bleurgh

I see that THE MYSTERIOUS GAZE OF THE FLAMINGO has made an early bid for Cannes-iest title of the year.

I don't know what to believe about any of these reports, but it's fun to read them.

As for Loznitsa's Two Prosecutors, David Jenkins had this to say about it:

"Loznitsa’s lackadaisical film comprises three intimate set pieces based around extended and poetically-literate dialogue scenes. In between these moments, we see shots of Kornyev waiting and often dozing off. He fights with patience against this unseen foe, yet his naivety is all too conspicuous when it comes to believing for even a second that he might succeed in his well-meaning odyssey against the all-encompassing power structure.

Two Prosecutors offers a fairly standard critique of the bureaucratic superstate in which there is always someone a few steps ahead ready to stomp you under its boot heel. Shot in the oppressively boxy 1.37:1 aspect ratio, the film is beautifully framed, blocked and edited, with editor Danielius Kokanauskis in particular locating a series of hypnotic, pendulum-like rhythms in the extended conversation sequences.

Yet as serious and prescient as the film may be politically, it feels too much like a quaint variation on a story that’s been told many times before (not least by Loznitsa himself!), all likely herded under the clichéd thematic banner of “Kafkaesque”. It’s a supremely well-made piece of work whose function and message never quite manage to transcend the prosaic. Still, in the strange times we’re currently living through, maybe it’s worth sounding that necessary siren one more time for luck."

from little white lies

https://lwlies.com/festivals/two-prosecutors-first-look-review/

so mostly positive

as far as Dossier 137 goes, Indiewire also gave it a mostly positive review:

xhttps://www.indiewire.com/criticism/movies/dossier-137-review-1235123685/

reading the description, it reminds me of Jacques Audiard's Paris, 13th District

tomorrow we get Ari Aster's Eddington, which I'm looking forward to. The poster image is kind of shocking. It is a close-up of art by David Wojnarowicz depicting bison being forced off a cliff in New Mexico, as a metaphor for how our government treated people with AIDS in the late 80s. (He died of AIDS in 1992.) It is supposedly a pandemic film. I don't know what the connection is

I loved and hated Beau Is Afraid

Also tomorrow there is a film by Hafsia Herzi, in competition for the first time. She is a French/Tunisian/Algerian woman, and her film is called La petite dernière.

It is about a woman leaving her close-knit suburban family to study philosophy in Paris, and she finds herself caught between her religious upbringing and the freedom of student life in the city.

The poster image you mention is pretty familiar to a lot of folks, though, as it was the single cover for U2’s “One.”

I didn't know that!

Just reading about Kristen Stewart's directorial debut, The Chronology of Water, which includes among its supporting cast both Jim Belushi and Kim Gordon.

NY Times:

Aster is keen to zero in on the moment when our fraying social fabric was torn apart, and the movie has already inspired battle lines as strongly drawn as the political sides “Eddington” means to satirize. Early reviews have been wildly mixed, and at a cocktail party that followed the Cannes press screening, I watched several critics square off: Though fans of the film found it bold and daring, detractors called it unfunny, too on the nose, and more eager to lampoon annoying liberals than the conservative main characters.

The Guardian hated it

Interesting

The reviews of Oliver Laxe’s Sirât suggest that everyone has been wowed by this film. Most reviews have loved it, but I read one that said its abrupt shift in tone 2/3 of the way in was too extreme, and was to its detriment.

Nicholas Rapold's podcast btw, mentioned by Alba above, has a new episode discussing Two Prosecutors and Dossier 137

Here are the early results of the International Cinephile Society's jury grid for the festival.

https://icsfilm.org/festivals/cannes/2025-cannes/cannes-2025-ics-press-industry-panel/

I don't have access to Screen Daily's grid because it is behind a paywall for me

David Katz's description of Sirât in Indiewire makes it sound like the kind of film that Cannes juries go for:

"sui generis and evading any classification, emanating from a wholly personal vision of cinema while not resisting galvanizing, and sometimes crowd-pleasing, pleasures"

Tomorrow's films are Lynne Ramsay's Die, My Love, Richard Linklater's Nouvelle Vague, and Chie Hayakawa's Renoir

just watched the Sirât trailer on youtube, I'm gonna try to check that out... I always thought there was a film somewhere in the rave/festival culture, this might be it

Nothing quite as divisive as Eddington, but reviews of The Chronology of Water also very mixed from what I've seen.

I'm mostly interested in two films from the sidebars today. One is Pedro Pinho finally getting around to following up on his eight year old debut The Nothing Factory. That was a very Portuguese film, a docu-fiction hybrid that was a bit like Miguel Gomes/Pedro Costa but a lot more lighthearted. He might be great, he might be an also-ran, I Only Rest in the Storm might tell us more.

Also, there's a new Christian Petzold premiering today, Mirrors No. 3, in Quinzaine. I have no idea why that isn't in competition, but when Petzold makes a new film, it is always major news.

don't have access to Screen Daily's grid because it is behind a paywall for me

And here's the Chinese Critics Grid for good measure

https://i.imgur.com/ZozleVc.jpeg

That was a very Portuguese film, a docu-fiction hybrid that was a bit like Miguel Gomes/Pedro Costa but a lot more lighthearted.

Miguel Gomes is plenty lighthearted I think! Costa, sure, he's a humorless scold.

The Chinese Critics grid and Screen Daily grid disagree in a lot of interesting ways but they all agree that Ari Aster's new movie sucks

Also, there's a new Christian Petzold premiering today, Mirrors No. 3, in Quinzaine. I have no idea why that isn't in competition, but when Petzold makes a new film, it is always major news.

Interesting that Die, My Love has both Nick Nolte and Sissy Spacek. Wasn't sure either could/would act these days; looking forward to that.

Linklater's Nouvelle Vague getting love and hate in roughly 3:1 measure

Nothing like Cannes for the madness of having to pile out quick reviews of a film like Lynne Ramsay's Die My Love. Mostly "wow" but the Variety reviewer isn't having it.

From the reviews I'm reading, Lynne Ramsay's To Die, My Love sounds wild, maybe even too much so. Richard Lawson describes the role Jennifer Lawrence plays as a 'comedic' performance "that manages convincing notes of devastation", which all sounds very actor-y.

French critics seem notably less impressed.

Tomorrow features Kleber Mendonça Filho’s Secret Agent and Wes Anderson’s The Phoenician Scheme.

I loved Mendonça Filho’s previous films, Aquarius (2016), Bacurau (2019) (which won the Cannes Jury Prize) and especially Neighboring Sounds (2012), which was a surprisingly great debut feature film (we should definitely do a poll of best first feature films)

I’m not sure I need another Wes Anderson film right now, though, I couldn’t even bring myself to watch the last Cannes entry from him, Asteroid City. I like him but think I need a long break from his films

I liked Aquarius and Bacarau, haven't seen Neighboring Sounds. Guess I should!

Today is a big day! It's not just Mendonça Filho (Neighboring Sounds is indeed great!) and Anderson (loved his last two, but the trailer looks kinda bad?).

Out Of Competition we find Hlynur Pálmason, who I thought was a shoo-in as first Icelandic director in competition ever after Godland and his short Nest. But no. The Love That Remains does look less ambitious than either of those, but still, this clip is gorgeous!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDAEYzYajKY

I had also hoped that Lav Diaz might get into Competition, since Magellan is in color, only 2,5 hours long (there's a second 9 hour part coming, don't worry) and stars Gael García Bernal, but no. The three clips are beautiful, but it's also very slow clips where nothing really happens, so it looks like business as usual. I miss the time where I easily got to see a new Lav Diaz every year :(
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdH3o6LADNs

The Secret Agent has gotten pretty good reviews. It is a 1970s period film that takes place in Mendonça Filho’s hometown of Recife. The reviews of The Phoenician Scheme have been mixed

Tomorrow they are showing the premieres of Julia Ducournau’s Alpha (Neon has already bought the North American distribution rights), and Tarik Saleh’s Eagles of the Republic

Eagles of the Republic has been described as the third film in Saleh’s Cairo Trilogy. I haven’t yet seen the first film The Nile Hilton Incident (2017), but I watched the second one, Cairo Conspiracy, which was originally called The Boy From Heaven (2022). It is a really good film about a naive acolyte drawn into a deadly power struggle between the Egyptian state and the Imams of Al-Azhar, both corrupted. It won the screenplay prize. All three films star Fares Fares, a Lebanese actor who now lives in Sweden

Hlynur Pálmason’s The Love That Remains looks interesting to me.

Hey Dan S. just want to let you know I enjoy your daily previews/recaps. You're all the Cannes coverage I'm reading!

I thought The Boy From Heaven was okay, but there's so few Middle Eastern/North African films in competition, I'd rather see something really local instead of a Swedish/French/Danish/Finnish co-production about Egypt. And the film about Morocco is by a Spanish guy, so yeah. The trailer looks quite conventional too:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oABRv5J9Eyc

More excited by Alpha, though that trailer looks surprisingly subdued for a new film from the director of Raw/Titane:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrBEZNAiJIA

Also, a bonus clip from Nest by Pálmason, where he just filmed his kids building a tree house for a year, from the same camera angle. It's amazing. So I do want to see them in yet another film, even if it's more conventionally fictional.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2kKC_cWb1k

xp thanks tipsy!

I haven’t read reviews yet of Eagles of the Republic, but Julia Ducournau’s Alpha, a sort of body-horror AIDS allegory, has gotten very disparate reactions (but mostly bad). David Ehrlich gave it a D+, calling it dour and dismal. Variety described it as muddled. The Hollywood Reporter review made it sound interesting to me though, I will definitely watch it.

Tomorrow we get the premiere of Mario Martone’s Fuori. He’s a Neapolitan filmmaker who has been in competition twice before. I’ve never much wanted to watch his films, but this one sounds mildly interesting. IMDB’s description is “A writer ends up in prison for a crazy and unexpected act, where she meets with some young inmates. Once out the writer and the other women maintain their friendship, an authentic bond that no one else will be able to understand.”

The film tomorrow that I’m anticipating more is Iranian director Jafar Panahi’s It Was Just an Accident. I have not read anything that tells us much about this. I’ve seen three of his many previous films - This Is Not a Film (2011), Taxi (2015), and No Bears (2022) - all of which were excellent. He’s won the Golden Camera, UCR Jury Prize, and Screenplay for three other films I have never seen, and has competed for the Palme d’Or once before. He also won the Berlin Film Festival top prize in 2015 for Taxi

No Bears is about a filmmaker (a version of Panahi, played by himself) who is trying to remotely film a docudrama about a couple wanting to escape Iran to Turkey and then to Europe (through an assistant director over zoom or facetime), and he is also dealing with an increasingly irate group of villagers in the border town where he is staying, because they suspect he has photographed a young woman (who was promised to a villager at birth) with another man.

The weird thing is the way the film gradually seems to blur fiction and reality

Yeah, I'm possibly most keen to see new Panahi from this lot. I still get plenty of mileage out of his stuff.

His breaking of the fourth wall in one of his early films blew my mind slightly as a youngster, so adjacent blurring-fact-and-fiction hijinks becoming more central to his seriously constrained later work is quite the silver lining.

Yeah, the 'taking off the cast' moment, as he later called it in 'This Is Not A Film', is one of the major moments in modern cinema. The clip from the new one is quite low key, but look at the incredibly precise blocking and camera movement. It's part of why he makes it seem like he controls the whole world with his directing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jILemYMAgts

Mario Martone makes films from a Southern Italian viewpoint, and was perfect as a constant presence in Venice. Some of his films are better than others, with 'We Believed' as probably the most important. A counter-history of the unification of Italy as seen from the south, where the victory by the Northern Piedmonters is seen as more of the same, rather than a victory. But I don't get what he is doing in Cannes, 'Nostalgia' was boring as fuck, and tons of interesting young Italian directors are being kept out of the limelight so he can show his really quite conventional films on the biggest stage there is. But that is Cannes under Thierry Frémaux in a nutshell.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bGzBHzjglE

At least Kirill Serebrennikov has been demoted to Cannes Premieres with his latest, 'The Disappearance of Joseph Mengele'.

Panahi’s film has gotten predictably great reviews. He seems destined to win some prize.

Tomorrow there are three premieres

First, Carla Simón’s Romería. “With her mother's diary in hand, Marina's search for official documents for university leads her to her biological family on the Atlantic coast. What starts as an administrative quest reveals long-buried family secrets.

Her film Alcarràs was a beautiful pastoral film about a family about to lose their peach farm in Catalonia. It was only her second film. It won the Golden Bear at the Berlin film festival.

Also a new film by Joachim Trier, who directed the amazing Oslo Trilogy - Reprise (2006), Oslo, August 31st (2011) and The Worst Person in the World (2021). My favorite is Oslo, August 31st. I love Anders Danielson Lie as an actor. The new film is title Sentimental Value, which is a kind of generic title that I’m not crazy about. It apparently centers on two sisters (one played by Renate Reinsve) whose mother died, bringing their estranged father back into their orbit.

Trier said about it: “Things are very polarized and very aggressive right now, and I completely respect people who want to use art now as a way of yelling out their anger and their opinions. I get it,” Trier says. “But at the same time, you could also look inward at what we are trying to protect in a world that’s getting quite brutal. There’s something about tenderness that’s just very humane, that we need to express.”

My film critic friend loved the Panahi.

not sure who that is, but it seems everyone liked it

Oliver Hermanus is a South African director also in competition for the first time. I kind liked Moffie (2019), a coming-of-age story set in a brutal basic training camp for South African boys conscripted into the military during apartheid and SA’s war against Angola. I think ‘Moffie’ is Afrikaner for ‘faggot’, which tells you something about the plot.

His new film is The History of Sound, based on a story by Ben Shattuck, about the relationship between two men who meet in 1916 and then travel together in the summer of 1919 to record the folk songs of their countrymen in rural New England, starring Paul Mescal and Josh O’Connor.

My friend jokes that these are the two straight actors who always star as gay characters in films

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

don't think I've ever seen Josh O'Connor playing a straight guy

I remember he portrayed Prince Charles for a bit in The Crown, which I thought was a pretty great performance

Excited about the Carla Simón. Her debut 'Summer 1993' was about a young girl who had to live with relatives after her parents died, and it was supposedly autobiographical. She made a docu-hybrid short 'Letter To My Mother For My Son' on the same subject, which was on MUBI for while. The new one seems to sorta be about the same story. The trailer looks quite stylized, though, where I thought her biggest asset was the wonderful naturalism in her films.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUch0tgMW_Y

The one from Joachim Trier looks like more of the same, but that is not a bad thing. Agree that 'Oslo, August 31st' is his best.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJWgkJ7C6nw

I've seen people say Trier's Sentimental Value is the obvious favourite for the Palme. Not sure if this is based on pre-festival word or just that they think he's on that trajectory. Nothing of his has hit me remotely as hard since Oslo, August 31st, though I still haven't seen his earlier Reprise.

cannes seems to love him though

I'd have said he was one of the favorites, and a few of the others has gotten a pretty muted response, so I could easily see him take it. I think Panahi must be the overwhelming favorite right now, though? I hadn't realized he had actually been allowed to travel to France this time, first time in twenty years he is there. Would be such a big moment if he won. It would also mean he has won the Golden Leopard, Golden Lion, Golden Bear and Golden Palm, and I'm not sure anyone has done that before...

the EGOT of film festivals!

The reviews of todays entries are slow to come out, but The History of Sound got a pretty good review in Indiewire

Tomorrow is Bi Gan’s Resurrection, the film I’ve been most looking forward to reading about in this festival. It was added at the very last minute. It may end up being too esoteric to win any awards.

His two previous films - Kaili Blues (2015) and Long Day’s Journey Into Night (2018) - were quite opaque but were kind of mesmerizing.

Kaili Blues features a single-take 41 minute-long hand-held tracking shot in a small town in the Guizhou province in China, where the main character, a small-town doctor, hitches a ride on the back of a motorbike, rides in a flatbed truck, gets his shirt mended, gets his hair washed, etc. It is a film about “grappling with ancient traditions in a modern China, as well as an outline of one man’s regrets”, and has surreal scenes where he meets people from his past and future.

Long Day’s Journey Into Night also features an hour-long single shot at the end, but in 3D.

The director is still young (in his 30s) and I think he has a lot of potential

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

I'm excited for the Reichardt, but it probably won't win bc it's been programmed for the last day.

I voted for Agente Secreto, but this does seem like Jafar Panahi's moment

I like the Reichardt films I've seen, but a 'heist film'? Huh

I mean, First Cow was kind of a heist film

Teaser to 'Resurection' looks incredible, and yeah, first two Bi Gan films were something else.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTh8gePW6FM

Today there's also Saeed Roustayis 'Woman and Child'. His last Cannes film was quite good, but my favourite of his i 'Just 6.5', which is kinda a crime film about the hunt for a drug kingpin, but really is so much more than that, and a lot about the Iranian regime.

Also, today there's a new film from Israeli director Nadav Lapid in Director's Forthnight. Again, don't get why he isn't in main competition, 'Ahed's Knee' was one of the best films in competition in 2021. His reason for making the film: “When you see your country is in the worst point of its history and is committing the worst crimes, what else can you do than try to find an audiovisual way to express that?” Perhaps that was too provocative for Cannes?

But all in all, it looks like the competition has been pretty underwhelming so far.

Pretty amazing interview with Nadav Lapid about the film: https://www.screendaily.com/features/israeli-filmmaker-nadav-lapid-on-his-post-october-7-film-yes-i-can-never-run-away-from-the-war-it-will-follow-me/5205293.article

Nanako Tsukudate liked Sirât and NOTHING ELSE

https://icsfilm.org/festivals/cannes/2025-cannes/cannes-2025-ics-press-industry-panel/

xps I agree, Frederick, that Ahed’s Knee was one of the best films in competition at the 2021 festival.

It reminds me somewhat of Synonyms (2019) in that it focuses on the world of a supremely self-absorbed but fascinating central character. This film really seems to be even more confident in its visual approach though, with constant switching of points of view and with very inventive camera techniques and interpolation of unlikely musical interludes. It’s the kind of film that’s hard to look away from. I'm looking forward to seeing Yes!, which strangely also features a main character named 'Y'.

I see that Bi Gan’s Resurrection didn’t premiere until 10:16 pm tonight in Cannes, which means the jury will have to watch 3 films tomorrow, the last day - Resurrection, the Dardennes film, and last of all Kelly Reichardt’s The Mastermind. I thought I read that the reason Reichardt's film is being shown last is so that Josh O’Connor, who is working on another project, can show up (haha) for the premiere

Bi’s Resurrection has gotten the expected befuddled responses. Reichardt’s The Mastermind has had generally positive reviews.

I think the Palme d’Or comes down to Trier’s Sentimental Value or Panahi’s It Was Just An Accident, with Mendonça Filho’s Secret Agent getting a major award

No surprises really

Palme d’Or: “It Was Just an Accident” by Jafar Panahi
Grand Prix: “Sentimental Value” by Joachim Trier
Jury Prize: “Sirât” by Oliver Laxe & “Sound of Falling” by Mascha Schilinski (TIE)
Best Director: Kleber Mendonça Filho for “The Secret Agent”
Best Actress: Nadia Melliti for “The Little Sister”
Best Actor: Wagner Moura for “The Secret Agent”
Best Screenplay: “The Young Mother’s Home” by Luc Dardenne & Jean-Pierre Dardenne
Prix Spécial: “Resurrection” by Bi Gan

Yeah, that's a fairly good guess, Dan S :)

Except for Secret Agent getting two awards, not one...

kind of a surprise that Jennifer Lawrence didn't win best actress?

so Neon has won its 6th consecutive Palme

Well they did buy most of the contenders

My film critic friend loved the Panahi.

― jaymc, Tuesday, 20 May 2025 23:34 (four days ago)

not sure who that is, but it seems everyone liked it

https://www.rogerebert.com/festivals/cannes-2025-it-was-just-an-accident-alpha

Seems like this is the first year in a while that no American film won any award?

Americans have got a pope. That's enough for now.

It's honestly fairly normal that no US films win. The Zone of Interest only sorta US film winning in 2023. War Pony won Camera d'Or in 2022 if that counts. And even if those count, no US film won anything in 2021.

There's a lot of US films in competition these years, but they honestly don't win that much, usually.

Seems like this is the first year in a while that no American film won any award?

before Anora, the last American film in competition to win an award was BlacKkKlansman in 2018

Oh wow, I’m totally off. I was confusing the awards with the hyped American performances/directors that didn’t win.

This thread has been interesting to follow

Is there any chance that someone here has a gift link to Justin Chang’s article “All the Films in Competition at Cannes 2025, Ranked from Best to Worst” from the New Yorker? Or an archive link? I would love to read it, he posted a link to it this morning, but it’s behind a paywall for me

He seems enthusiastic about this edition of Cannes

this stays between us:

https://archive.fo/DZJea

thank you so much, symsymsym!

np :) he's a very good writer imo, I appreciate being guided towards the piece

Dan, are you on faculty anywhere these days? I pay a $70/year “educator rate”, easily one of my best value subscriptions

I'm not. That is a good rate. I'm thinking I will trade out my subscription to The Atlantic for The New Yorker.

I cancelled my subscription to the LA Times. What a worthless, uninteresting website! and with a heinous owner, Patrick Soon-Shiong. It's shocking that for such a big city there is no good paper. When they let Justin Chang go and then refused to endorse anyone in the last election I knew it was time to cancel.

SF is a fraction of the size of LA, but has two interesting papers, SFChronicle and SFStandard, and also has a free website SFGate.

LA times is pretty bad if you’re used to real national papers. I forget how much I pay for that one but it’s probably too much

The show goes on, unfortunately

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v47/n12/daniella-shreir/diary

In lieu of a Lav Diaz thread - anyone caught Magellan yet? Single screening here in a month's time.

No but want to

I'm watching the Panahi tonight. I should create a thread for him.