CANNES, France — The 78th Cannes Film Festival opens Tuesday in an exuberant mood, even as the movie industry faces serious challenges with declining theatrical attendance, the continued rise of streaming services and the threat of punitive new U.S. tariffs.
“During times that seem to want to separate, compartmentalize or subjugate, the Festival de Cannes wants to (re)unite,” an official statement read. “To bring bodies, hearts and souls closer together; to encourage freedom and portray movement in order to perpetuate it; to embody the whirlwind of life to celebrate it, again and again.”
As a symbol of its embracing joie de vivre, the sun-blessed, star-studded and cinema-adoring festival on the shores of the French Riviera will open with a debut feature for the first time: Amélie Bonnin’s comedy “Partir un jour.”
Preparations get underway in Cannes the morning before the 78th Edition of the Cannes Film Festival opens. (May 12, 2025 / AP Video)
In another first, Cannes this year has doubled down on its iconography, offering not one but two official posters. Each shows a different angle of a passionate hug between actors Anouk Aimée and Jean-Louis Trintignant in Claude Lelouch’s 1966 romantic drama “A Man and a Woman,” which won that year’s Palme d’Or and later Oscars for foreign language film and original screenplay.
For the 78th edition of the Cannes Film Festival, running May 13-24, there are two official posters, showing both sides of a love embrace between Anouk Aimée and Jean-Louis Trintignant in Claude Lelouch’s “A Man and a Woman.”
Peter Howell/pc28StarCannes programmers selected dozens of films from a record 2,909 feature submissions, revelling in the fest’s recent distinction as an Oscars bellwether.
Last year’s Palme d’Or winner, Sean Baker’s sex comedy “Anora,” went on to take five Oscars, including best picture, at the 2025 Academy Awards. Three other Cannes ’24 premieres — “Emilia Pérez,” “The Substance” and “Flow” — collectively took four Oscars for a record nine wins (out of 31 nominations) in a single year for Cannes films.
The fest hopes to again make an impact on awards season and movie-going in general, despite worrisome industry signs that include a seven per cent drop in North American box office revenues for the first quarter of 2025, a much-discussed claim by Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos that movie theatres are “outdated” and “outmoded” because people prefer to watch films at home, and a recent threat by U.S. President Donald Trump to impose a devastating tariff on films not made in America.
Cannes chief Thierry Frémaux expressed reluctance to speculate on what Trump is planning. Like most people, he’s unsure what Trump wants to achieve and whether or not he’ll act on his threat.
“The American president has, over the last three months, accustomed us to saying one thing and then adding to it, elaborating on it, contradicting it, etc. So ... I don’t know what to say,” he told a press conference Monday.
Frémaux declared himself an unabashed fan of American movies — there are lots of them at this year’s fest — and no matter what happens with tariffs, he’s confident films will still be made and seen worldwide because “cinema always finds a way.”
Canadian filmmakers have a strong presence at Cannes this year, with six films and an interactive work on the roster, offering everything from animated bread to existential crises.
Competing for the festival’s short film Palme d’Or is Montreal filmmaker Martine Frossard’s “Hypersensitive,” a National Film Board animation, based on her childhood memories and imagination, that’s described as “a powerful reminder that to be sensitive is to be alive.”
It’s one of only 11 competitors for the short film Palme, selected from 4,781 submissions worldwide. Canada has won the prize twice before — for “Blinkity Blank” by Norman McLaren in 1955 and “When the Day Breaks” by Wendy Tilby and Amanda Forbis in 1999 — although it has yet to win the feature film Palme.
“Hypersensitive,” an animated short by Montreal’s Martine Frossard, is competing for the short film Palme d’Or at Cannes.
National Film BoardThe Directors’ Fortnight, the fest’s independent parallel section known as the Quinzaine, has long been a haven for Canuck filmmakers, from Denys Arcand to Denis Villeneuve, and this year boasts a bumper crop. The section’s new audience award, introduced last year, was won by Winnipegger Matthew Rankin’s satirical “Universal Language.”
New features by three Canadian directors will compete for the Quinzaine audience prize this year: Anne Émond’s romance-during-crisis comedy “Amour Apocalypse (Peak Everything),” Félix Dufour-Laperrière’s ghostly terrorism animation “La Mort n’existe pas (Death Does Not Exist),” and Korean Canadian Lloyd Lee Choi’s social drama “Lucky Lu,” a U.S./Canada co-production set in New York’s Chinatown.
The NFB animated short “Bread Will Walk” by Alex Boya, a nightmarish comedy about a young man transformed into a breadlike mutant during a zombie apocalypse, is also screening in the Quinzaine. The film’s multiple characters are voiced by comic actor Jay Baruchel.
Alex Boya’s animated short “Bread Will Walk,” voiced by Jay Baruchel, screens in the Director’s Fortnight section of the 2025 Cannes Film Festival.
National Film BoardA restored Canadian film classic, the 1999 Robert Lantos-produced wartime drama “Sunshine,” written and directed by István Szabó and starring Ralph Fiennes and Rachel Weisz, will screen in the Cannes Classics section.
Canada is also part of the interactive zone at Cannes, with the Canada/Luxembourg co-production “The Dollhouse” by Dominic Desjardins and Charlotte Bruneau. The intriguing synopsis: “In an unfolding world of paper, a little girl uses play to unravel her haunting memories.”
In this year’s Palme d’Or competition are 22 films, seven directed by women — a number that ties a record set in 2023 and underscores Cannes’ ongoing commitment to improve gender representation.
Among the women directors are 2021 Palme winner Julia Ducournau (“Alpha”), Kelly Reichardt (“The Mastermind”), Hafsia Herzi (“The Little Sister”), Carla Simón (“Romería”), Chie Hayakawa (“Renoir”) and Mascha Schilinski (“Sound of Falling”). Lynne Ramsay is a late addition to the Palme contest with her highly anticipated “Die, My Love.” Ramsay’s film, starring Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson, adapts Ariana Harwicz’s novel about a woman battling personal demons in the French countryside.
Genre cinema is making a strong return, with thrillers and action films in the spotlight. Tom Cruise’s espionage series swan song “Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning” screens out of competition with much attendant hoopla; will it match the military jet flyover for his “Top Gun: Maverick” in 2022?
Wes Anderson’s latest bit of whimsy, “The Phoenician Scheme” — featuring Benicio del Toro, Tom Hanks, Scarlett Johansson and Canada’s Michael Cera — will compete for the Palme.
Other anticipated thrillers include Kleber Mendonça Filho’s “The Secret Agent” and Dominik Moll’s “Case 137,” a crime drama starring Léa Drucker.
Ari Aster, director of “Midsommar” and “Hereditary,” makes his Cannes competition debut with “Eddington,” a COVID-era drama set in small-town New Mexico, starring Joaquin Phoenix and Pedro Pascal.
Auteurs returning to the main competition include the two-time Palme winners Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne with “The Young Mother’s Home,” Joachim Trier with “Sentimental Value” and Richard Linklater with “Nouvelle Vague,” a French-language homage to Jean-Luc Godard’s French New Wave classic “Breathless.”
Actor Juliette Binoche leads a female-dominated Palme d’Or jury, which also includes actors Halle Berry, Alba Rohrwacher and Jeremy Strong; writer-directors Payal Kapadia, Hong Sangsoo and Carlos Reygadas; documentarian Dieudo Hamadi; and writer Leïla Slimani.
Three A-list actors are making their directorial debuts at Cannes 2025 in the Un Certain Regard sidebar program.
Scarlett Johansson’s “Eleanor the Great” stars June Squibb as a 94-year-old woman starting over in New York City.
Kristen Stewart, left, directs Imogen Poots on the set of “The Chronology of Water,” the story of a young woman growing up amid violence and addiction who finds refuge in literature. It is premiering at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival.
Cannes Film FestivalKristen Stewart’s “The Chronology of Water” stars Imogen Poots and Sonic Youth rocker Kim Gordon in the story of a young woman growing up amid violence and addiction who finds refuge in literature.
Harris Dickinson, known for the recent erotic thriller “Babygirl” and his upcoming role as John Lennon in a four-film Beatles biopic series, debuts as a director with “Urchin,” a drama about a London street drifter.
The festival’s opening night will include a tribute to Robert De Niro. He’ll receive an honorary Palme d’Or for his career, 14 years after serving as president of the jury in 2011.
The 2025 Cannes Film Festival runs through May 24.
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