Everyone is watching the Croisette as the Cannes Film Festival begins. The 76th edition of France’s major film festival, which runs from May 16 to 27, has auteur filmmakers Wes Anderson, Hirokazu Kore-eda, and Steve McQueen’s latest projects and a record seven female-directed films in competition.
Not to be matched by last year’s star-studded lineup—which included eventual Best Picture winners Elvis, Top Gun: Maverick, and Triangle of Sadness—this year’s festival includes several buzzworthy films: Elemental and Harrison Ford’s final Indiana Jones film, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Fate, will premiere at Cannes out-of-competition. Martin Scorsese returns in Killers of the Flower Moon, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro.
The festival’s highlight is Pedro Almodóvar’s 30-minute queer Western Extraa Forma de Vida, starring Pedro Pascal and Ethan Hawke.
A.frame has chosen ten Cannes films to see. See all the films in and out of competition, Un Certain Regard, and more.
Asteroid Town
Like The French Dispatch, Wes Anderson premiered his new film at Cannes. Asteroid City follows 1955 Junior Stargazer/Space Cadet convention goers in a fictional desert town. The cast includes Anderson regulars like Jason Schwartzman, Tilda Swinton, and Scarlett Johansson, and newcomers like Tom Hanks.
A Chimera
The third film in Alice Rohrwacher’s Italian trilogy, which began with The Wonders in 2014 and continued with Happy as Lazzaro in 2018, returns to Cannes. La Chimera, set in the 1980s, starring Josh O’Connor as a tomb thief seeking a legendary afterlife entrance to reconcile him with his lost love.
Rest your eyes.
Victor Erice’s final film, Dream of Light, was released in 1992. Eventually, he returns with Cerrar los ojos (Shut Your Eyes), a Cannes-premiering criminal thriller about an actor who disappears while filming. Years later, a TV crew investigates.
0 Club
With 2001’s Beautiful Rita, Austrian writer-director Jessica Hausner has competed at Un Certain Regard, winning the festival’s best actress award for Emily Beecham in 2019’s Little Joe. An international boarding school hires Mia Wasikowska to teach a sneaky-conscious eating course, and the other teachers and parents may realise it too late.
Get Sex
British cinematographer and filmmaker Molly Manning Walker’s Un Certain Regard debut may have the festival’s most intriguing title. How to Have Sex follows three teenage girls on a “rites-of-passage holiday—drinking, clubbing, and hooking up— in what should be the happiest summer of their lives.” Rather than raucous.
December May
Todd Haynes’ latest scripted film, starring Julianne Moore of Safe, Far From Heaven, and Wonderstruck, returns to Cannes after his 2021 documentary The Velvet Underground. Moore plays Gracie Atherton-Yu, a teacher whose tabloid affair with Charles Melton made headlines. Twenty years later, an actress (Natalie Portman) visits their home to investigate Gracie for a screenplay.
Kaibutsu (Monster) (Monster)
In 2018, Hirokazu Kore-Shoplifters media’s received the Palme d’Or. He returned to Japan for Kaibutsu (Monster), about a mom (Sakuura Ando of Shoplifters) who suspects her son has a mental condition. Monster has Ryuichi Sakamoto’s Oscar-winning score.
occupied city
Cannes will screen Steve McQueen’s first feature documentary. The four-hour documentary, co-created with his wife, Dutch journalist and director Bianca Stigter, contrasts present-day Amsterdam with its past, particularly Nazi crimes. McQueen says living in Amsterdam is like living with ghosts. “There are always two or three parallel narratives.” “The past never leaves.”
Best Days
German filmmaker Wim Wenders has debuted 12 films in Cannes, including the Palme d’Or-winning Paris, Texas, and returns this year with two more: Perfect Days stars Kji Yakusho as a Tokyo toilet cleaner. Anselm – Das Rauschen der Zeit, Wim Wenders’ 3D documentary about painter and sculptor Anselm Kiefer, will also screen.
Interest Zone
Jonathan Glazer published Under the Skin, a sci-fi masterpiece, ten years ago. The Zone of Interest adapts Martin Amis’ novel about a Nazi officer who falls for his commander’s wife. The official synopsis reads, “The commandant of Auschwitz, Rudolf Höss, and his wife Hedwig, seek to establish an ideal life for their family in a house and garden next to the camp.”
