2025 Cannes Film Festival: Lynne Ramsay & Saeed Roustayi Added to Palme d’Or Competition – Ethan Coen in Midnight

The competition section films vying for the Palme d’Or will finally have moved from the initial selection of nineteen to twenty-one with Thierry Frémaux inviting Lynne Ramsay (Die, My Love) for her third trip to competition and Iranian filmmaker Saeed Roustayi (The Woman And The Child) for a second helping. Of the pair, it is Roustayi’s The Woman And The Child that we know the least about with the simple logline of this being about a widowed nurse struggles with her rebellious son. The Iranian filmmaker was sentenced to six months in prison for screening his film Leila’s Brothers (read review) at the fest back in 2022 and we’re hopeful he is safe from this nonsense.

Ramsay’s last trip to Cannes was with the double-award winning You Were Never Really Here — and this could have been a case of a film that is also racing to make it’s picture lock in the final stages. Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattison star in the tale about a woman living in isolation in rural France who loses her mind amid marriage and motherhood.

Also among the sixteen total films added to the final line-up we find a film we originally had in our Directors’ Fortnight predictions but will have a late night showcase instead in the Midnight section. After showcasing his feature debut Magnetic Beats in the Directors’ Fortnight, Vincent Maël Cardona‘s Le Roi soleil (featuring Pio Marmaï, Lucie Zhang, Maria De Medeiros and Sofiane Zermani) brings us to a pub in the early hours of the morning where one of the regulars wins the lottery worth 244 million euros. Another customer holds up the shop after stealing a gun from a police officer. A shot is fired, leaving the winning ticket ownerless….Ethan Coen joins the French filmmaker with Honey Don’t. The project which filmed back in March of last year is a detective noir set in Bakersfield, California, the film focuses on a private investigator (Margaret Qualley), a cult leader (Chris Evans), and a “mystery woman” (Aubrey Plaza). Here are all the items save the Un Certain Regard section selections.

CANNES PREMIERE
RENAI SAIBAN – Kōji Fukada
ÁSTIN SEM EFTIR ER – Hlynur Pálmason
MAGALHÃES – Lav Diaz

MIDNIGHT SCREENINGS
LE ROI SOLEIL – Vincent Maël Cardona
HONEY DON’T – Ethan Coen

SPECIAL SCREENINGS
AMÉLIE ET LA MÉTAPHYSIQUE DES TUBES – Maïlys Vallade and Liane-Cho Han – 1st film
MAMA – Or Sinai – 1st film
ARCO – Ugo Bienvenu – 1st film
QUI BRILLE AU COMBAT – Joséphine Japy 1st film