The majority of the Cannes Film Festival lineup is set to be revealed on April 11th, however, before we delve into the films that might make it into the Main Competition and Un Certain Regard sections, let’s first speculate on what we might discover in the Out of Competition, Midnight Screenings, Cannes Premiere, and Special Screenings categories (even the Cinéma de la Plage section now hosts world premieres). Note: Next week, we’ll also closely examine the parallel sections of Directors’ Fortnight (Quinzaine des cinéastes) and Critics’ Week (Semaine de la critique). Alongside the recently announced Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, here are fifteen items that wouldn’t feel out of place on the Croisette.
2073
Asif Kapadia
Having sojourned on the Croisette with Amy (2015) and Diego Maradona (2019), Kapadia now proposes a gender-bending mix between the docu form he is comfy with and some fiction — in a film project that is heavily inspired by Chris Marker’s short La Jetée. Coined as a thriller set in a dystopian future which will tackle some of the biggest challenges about the future, the Neon-backed project was announced a couple of years back and Kapadia relates this to a film that plays with the notion of time. We haven’t had many updates since, but this is currently stamped as a project in post. [Neon]
Prediction: Special Screenings.
À Notre beau métier
Quentin Dupieux
Word of a new project from the Hong Sang-soo of French cinema is terms of quality output would have moved into production in December of last year which sounds a bit ambitious for a May preem drop date but if there is one filmmaker who can make any deadline it is Dupieux. Starring Léa Seydoux, and his current muse in Raphaël Quenard, we’ll also find Louis Garrel, Manuel Guillot and Vincent Lindon in an absurdist comedy about actors who are cast playing dual roles. Dupieux was last in the Croisette with Smoking Causes Coughing in 2022.
Prediction: Midnight Screenings.
Baby Invasion
Harmony Korine
With the Venice 2023 preemed Aggro Dr1ft still technically wet from its current strip joint tour, we now believe that Korine would have been working on more than one IP during the same creative time span. Completely off our radar, according to the insiders this adheres to first-person shooter video game aesthetics and was shot with GoPros and security-cam footage plus a bit of AI technology to make the cast of characters appear as babies.
Prediction: Midnight Screenings.
Le chemin du serpent
Kiyoshi Kurosawa
Recently set with a June domestic France release all signs point to a bonafide Cannes showcase for this Cannes habitual – but where will Kurosawa’s Serpent’s Path premiere is the big question? A remake of his own 1998 Japanese feature of the same name, Kurosawa has competed several times in the Un Certain Regard section and once in competition with 2003’s JellyFish. Starring Ko Shibasaki and Damien Bonnard, this is about a mysterious woman team up with a man whose daughter was killed and who is now seeking revenge. Together they kidnap members of an organization and torture them to find out what really happened. [Kadokawa]
Prediction: Cannes Premiere.
Close To The Sultan
Javier Rebollo
A project that has taken its time in post and was in in the filmmaker’s mind for several years now, Rebollo’s En la alcoba del sultán focuses on Gabriel Veyre, the most gifted of Auguste and Louis Lumière’s camera operators who traveled to Morocco for three months in 1900, hired by the Sultan Moulay Abd el-Aziz to initiate him into the mysteries of cinema. He remained for his lifetime. [Latido Films]
Prediction: Cannes Premiere.
En fanfare
Emmanuel Courcol
He broke into Cannes in the canceled 2020 edition with The Big Hit, and for his third feature film Emmanuel Courcol proposes another comedy this time with Benjamin Lavernhe toplining. The Marching Band revolves around renowned orchestra conductor Thibaut. When he’s diagnosed with Leukaemia, he sets out in search of a compatible donor for a bone marrow transplant. He subsequently discovers that he’s adopted and that he has an older brother. Production took place in April of last year. [Playtime]
Prediction: Cannes Premiere.
L’Amour Ouf
Gilles Lellouche
Dated for an October domestic France release, Beating Hearts might be a reason for actor and filmmaker Gilles Lellouche to have the same kind of Cannes showcase that his 2018 film Le Grand Bain received. This ensemble stars François Civil and Adèle Exarchopoulos and includes includes Mallory Wanecque, Malik Frikah, Alain Chabat, Benoît Poelvoorde, Vincent Lacoste, Jean-Pascal Zadi, Élodie Bouchez, Karim Leklou, Raphaël Quenard and Anthony Bajon. The story spans 20 years and begins in the North East of France with two teenagers who fall madly in love, a girl from an upper-middle-class family and a boy from a working-class family. Their love story is quickly doomed to failure when he ends up becoming a criminal and spends 12 years in prison. [StudioCanal]
Prediction: Out of Competition.
Ma vie Ma gueule
Sophie Fillières
Fillières passed away shortly after completing this seventh feature film and it’s been pushed along in the editing stages since late summer. Starring Agnès Jaoui, Philippe Katerine, Édouard Sulpice, Angelina Woreth, Valérie Donzelli and Emmanuel Salinger, This Life of Mine revolves around Barberie Bichette who’s known as Barbie, much to her dismay, and who might have been beautiful, loved, a good mother to her children, a trustworthy colleague and a great lover, but now her life can be sombre, brutal, and often absurd, and it feels very strange for her to be in her fifties. [The Party Film Sales]
Prediction: Cannes Premiere.
The Magnificent Life of Marcel Pagnol
Sylvain Chomet
While there is plenty of talk about Michel Hazanavicius’ The Most Precious Of Cargoes we believe that the major animated film that might break into this line-up is Chomet’s latest. A modern fable, this charts the epic life of Pagnol, a celebrated French novelist, playwright and filmmaker who grew up in a middle-class household in Marseille and became one of the world’s most inventive and prolific artists from the 1930’s to the 1950’s. Chomet showcased the much adored The Triplets of Belleville (also out of comp) back in 2003. [Sony Pictures Classics]
Prediction: Cannes Premiere.
MaXXXine
Ti West
Part one premiered at South by Southwest Film Festival and the second instalment was featured in Venice, the major film festival trifecta for the Maxine trilogy might be complete if Cannes heads opt for slasher over stoner (A24’s David Michôd project Wizards!). To be released July 5th, this follows Maxine, who was the only survivor of the bloody incidents of X, as she continues her journey towards fame to be an actress in 1980s Los Angeles. Mia Goth, Giancarlo Esposito, Michelle Monaghan, Elizabeth Debicki, Kevin Bacon, Lily Collins and Bobby Cannavale star. [A24]
Prediction: Midnight Screenings.
Monsieur Aznavour
Mehdi Idir
Dated with a domestic release date of October back in France, production on tandem Mehdi Idir and Grand Corps Malade would have taken place back in May of last year. Tahar Rahim plays Aznavour and the film will chart Aznavour’s sprawling life journey, from his poor childhood to his rise to fame, from his triumphs to his failures, from Paris to New York. It’s a perfect fit for the fest. [Playtime]
Prediction: Out of Competition.
O’Dessa
Geremy Jasper
In 2024 we’ll have Joshua Oppenheimer’s apocalyptic musical and doubling down on the pessimism we have a sophomore film by Geremy Jasper. Filmed in Croatia in May of last year, Kelly Macdonald, Sadie Sink, Regina Hall, Kelvin Harrison Jr. and Murray Bartlett – we find ourselves with a farm girl on her search to recover a cherished family heirloom. She travels to a strange and dangerous city where she meets her one true love. To save his soul, she must put the power of destiny to the ultimate test. Jasper premiered his debut film Patti Cake$ in the Directors’ Fortnight section. Searchlight have not dated the film so we believe chances are low, but we never know. [Searchlight]
Prediction: Out of Competition.
Spectateurs
Arnaud Desplechin
A film that could find itself in a better slot, Cannes regular Arnaud Desplechin’s Filmlovers! was shot late last summer and it promises to be a film for cine-geeks. Arnaud Desplechin returns to the childhood of his alter ego, Paul Dédalus, to tell the story of how a young cinephile became a director. A blend of fiction and nonfiction, we obviously got Mathieu Amalric here plus Françoise Lebrun, Micha Lescot, Salif Cissé, Olga Milshtein, and Milo Machado Graner. [Les Films du Losange]
Prediction: Cannes Premiere.
The Substance
Coralie Fargeat
Universal Pictures have yet to date the American body horror film by French filmmaker Coralie Fargeat but we can’t help but feel that they’d want to RSVP the likes of Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley. Also featuring Ray Liotta in one of his last roles (it’s unclear what would have come about with the final product), Fargeat broke out big onto the scene with Revenge back in 2017. Production on this project took place in Paris back in May of 2022. [Universal Pictures]
Prediction: Midnight Screenings.
Without Blood
Angelina Jolie
Jolie moved onto production for her fifth fiction feature in the summer of 2022, and so we’ve had plenty of time in post for this one. Featuring Salma Hayek and Demián Bichir, this is a drama dealing with themes of war, trauma, memory, and healing. [Fremantle]
Prediction: Out of Competition.
Next 2024 Cannes Film Festival predictions:
Critics’ Week – Tuesday
Directors’ Fortnight – Wednesday
Un Certain Regard – Thursday
Main Competition – Friday
