Welcome back to the second portion of our Cannes Film Festival Competition predictions. Earlier we had ten titles jostling among our prognostications; today we add sixteen more. Enjoy the list below, share it among peers, and make sure to join us on April 9th as we comment on all the Cannes Film Festival selections.
Everything
Sandra Wollner
Producers: Panama Film’s Lixi Frank, David Bohun, Viktoria Stolpe, Sandra Wollner.
World Sales: TBD.
If the past few editions have proved us anything, it’s that fresh voices with no Cannes history can pierce the line-up — Thierry Frémaux has been surreptitiously ading new female auteur voices in his previous line-ups with the likes of Ramata-Toulaye Sy, Agathe Riedinger, and now we’re betting on a Mascha Schilinski Sound of Falling surprise inclusion for this prediction. Joining another countrywoman filmmaker mentioned below, and German language cinema counterpart Valeska Grisebach, Everything could make the grade. Starring Everyone Else‘s Birgit Minichmayr, Tristán López, Lotte Shirin Keiling and Carla Hüttermann, Austrian filmmaker Sandra Wollner‘s third feature moved into production last year. Her student feature film debut The Impossible Picture (2016) was followed by The Trouble with Being Born — a film that ruffled some feathers at the 2020 Berlinale where it landed a Special Jury Award in the Encounters section. Aftersun cinematographer Gregory Oke was added here.
One year after Jessie’s death, her mother and little sister take in her ex-boyfriend – the boy the whole world secretly blames for her death. When the unlikely trio leave for a trip to Tenerife, for a family holiday that never happened, past and present quietly start to overlap.
Cristian Mungiu
Producers: Mobra Films’ Cristian Mungiu and Tudor Reu
NEON
Production on Romanian master filmmaker Cristian Mungiu‘s latest took place in March of 2025 and its among the titles that are guarantee for another Cannes competition slot which would make this his fifth since winning the 2007 Palme d’Or with 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days. His first English-language feature, Mungiu re-teams with cinematographer Tudor Vladimir Panduru (R.M.N.) for Fjord which sees Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve topline.
This revolves around two families living in a small, remote Norwegian village. One family is Romanian and has moved to the village where the mother was born, while the other is Swedish-Norwegian. Their children, of similar age, attend the same school, and the families initially bond over their shared experiences as parents. However, their seemingly harmonious relationship begins to unravel as differing cultural perspectives on family life, education, and societal values emerge, especially when suspicions arise that the newly arrived couple is harming their own children.
Four Seasons in Java
Kamila Andini
Producers: Indie Producer Forka Films’ Ifa Isfansyah
World Sales: TBD.
Perhaps following a Payal Kapadia All We Imagine as Light competition berth narrative, we think the maritime neighboring nation of Indonesia – which would make it a first from this nation to do so. Her string of four features films plunge viewers in women’s experiences, cultural identity, memory, and emotional interiority, Kamila Andini has had some major showcases with TIFF premiering 2021’s Yuni (where it won the Platform Prize), and then a Berlinale comp showcasing Before, Now & Then (Nana). Her only connection to Cannes so far has been via the Cinefondation residency program that helped her develop her 2017 sophomore feature The Seen and Unseen. A Venice Gap-Financing Market project, Four Seasons in Java moved into production early last year with players Putri Marino, Arya Saloka and Christine Hakim.
This follows Pertiwi, a woman who returns to her village after more than a decade in prison for killing a young man while defending herself from attempted rape. Her homecoming coincides with the arrival of electricity to the remote community.
Full Phil
Quentin Dupieux
Producers: Hugo Sélignac
World Sales: Studiocanal
Fans of Quentin Dupieux might have reason to rejoice. After delivering fourteen feature films in less than two decades — including Wrong Cops (2013) and Le Daim (2019), both selected for Directors’ Fortnight, and more recently Fumer fait tousser (2022) and Le Deuxième Acte (2024), which screened Out of Competition — the filmmaker also known as Mr. Oizo could be headed for a different kind of tête-à-tête with the Croisette this time around. Kristen Stewart, Woody Harrelson, Emma Mackey, Charlotte Le Bon, Nassim Lyes, Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim joined the surreal absurdist dramedy project last September and while it might have officially added the last parts this past February, knowing how quickly Dupieux puts the puzzle pieces in place means he has probably already started working on his next oeuvre.
A rich American industrialist’s Paris trip with his estranged daughter Madeleine goes awry when French food, a vintage horror movie, and a meddling hotel worker interfere with their plans.
Gentle Monster
Marie Kreutzer
Producers: Alexander Glehr, Johanna Scherz
World Sales: mk2 Films
It’s not necessarily a mad dash to the finish line to complete Gentle Monster, but Marie Kreutzer‘s latest went into principal photography in October (in Austria and Germany) of last year. Léa Seydoux, Catherine Deneuve, Jella Haase, and Laurence Rupp topline the project that was part of the Marché du Film Investors Circle in Cannes and won the ArteKino International Prize. Kreutzer’s broke big with Corsage which had a splash in the Un Certain Regard section in 2022. This sixth feature explores themes of female subjectivity and the hidden structures of power inside intimate relationships.
Lucy, a celebrated pianist, relocates to the countryside with her husband after his burnout, sacrificing parts of her career. Elsa, a driven police investigator, balances her demanding job with caring for her father who has dementia. Their lives gradually intertwine around trust, deception, love, and violence, forcing them to confront truths they would rather ignore.
Her Private Hell
Nicolas Winding Refn
Producers: Nicolas Winding Refn
NEON
Nicolas Winding Refn has been in competition on three occasions with Drive (2011), Only God Forgives (2013) and The Neon Demon (2016) and we believe a fourth is on the way. A May production start date with a cast that includes Sophie Thatcher, Charles Melton, Havana Rose Liu, Kristine Froseth, Dougray Scott, Diego Calva, Shioli Kutsuna, Aoi Yamada and Hidetoshi Nishijima, filming on Her Private Hell was set in the backdrop of Tokyo. It’s a welcome return after back to back television gigs in the Cannes preeemd ‘Too Old to Die Young’ and ‘Copenhagen Cowboy.’ Written by Refn and Esti Giordani, beyond this being described as an hypnotic, unhinged thriller about glamour, sex, and violence, we haven’t the faintest clue what this English and Japanese project is all about. Leather perhaps? Refn re-teams with cinematographer Magnus Joenck.
Hot Spot
Agnieszka Smoczyńska
Producers: Klaudia Śmieja-Rostworowska, Bogna Szewczyk-Skupień, Amanda Livanou, Kristina Börjeson, Lizette Jonjic, Beata Ryczkowska, Filip Bałdyga
Focus Features
Having previously showcased her last two features in the Critics’ Week section with Fugue (2018) and in the Un Certain Regard section with Silent Twins (2022), Agnieszka Smoczyńska might be best known for her breakout 2015 debut The Lure but she might supersede the buzz of that debut with a fourth feature that has been slowly simmering in post production. Starring Noomi Rapace, Andrzej Konopka, and Reika Kirishima, Hot Spot continues with a film per four years pace and deals with themes of identity and memory pushed in genre cinema. Production took place in Greece in November of 2024.
Set in a society ruled by sentient AI, the film follows a private investigator who stumbles upon a rebel group capable of undermining the digital overlord while investigating a murder case.
I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning
Clio Barnard
Producers: Tracy O’Riordan
World Sales: TBD.
She has been more of a Directors’ Fortnight kind of gal offering 2013’s The Selfish Giant and 2021’s Ali & Ava, but we have a feeling that this humanist drama might cross over onto the big stage. Adapted by someone who has a lot of Cannes clout in Enda Walsh (he wrote 2008’s Hunger, Chatroom, Die My Love). Clio Barnard moved into production on I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning in the U.K. in April of last year with a cast populated by Anthony Boyle, Joe Cole, Jay Lycurgo, Daryl McCormack and Lola Petticrew.
Five childhood friends face adult struggles: Patrick and Shiv’s relationship strains over a secret, Oli parties destructively, Conor awaits fatherhood with business dreams, and wealthy Rian can’t escape his past despite moving away.
Les Roches Rouges
Bruno Dumont
Producetion Co.: Tessalit Productions, Italy’s Nightswim, Belgium’s Novak Prod and Portugal’s Rosa Filmes.
World Sales: Luxbox
A bona fide Cannes VIP card-carrying filmmaker loading up the Croisette with his inventory of films since The Life of Jesus premiered in the Directors’ Fortnight (it came close to claiming the Caméra d’Or prize in 1997), Bruno Dumont went slightly into incognito mode for his latest film Les Roches Rouges. A project that he would have filmed last year along the French Riviera, it stars child actors Kaylon Lancel and Kelsie Verdeilles. Carlos A.Corral (Roberto Minervini’s The Damned) is the cinematographer on this one.
Set in the French Riviera, the movie follows the story of Gèo, a seven year old child, boss of his peer gang that spend the summer through raids and reckless challenges on the cliffs over the sea. The arrival of a rival group coming from the capitol and the meeting with the mysterious Eve will give rise to a ruthless duel, where innocence and cruelty merge in a summer that will forever mark the characters.
L’inconnue
Arthur Harari
Producers: Nicolas Anthomé, Lionel Guedj
NEON
In what could be a triple dose of Léa Seydoux this year with Gentle Monster and Alpha Gang also tipped for Cannes, this role offered by Arthur Harari is perhaps the more obscure choice for the actress. The French filmmaker made quite the impression with Onoda: 10,000 Nights in the Jungle – the 2021 stranger than fiction true portrait was the opening film for the Un Certain Regard section, and let’s not forget that he co-wrote the Palme d’Or winning Anatomy of a Fall with his wife. L’inconnue is a true family affair – with Tom Harari as the cinematographer and the graphic novel’s Lucas Harari as the co-scribe here. Production took place in March of last year with Victoire Du Bois, Niels Schneider and Lilith Grasmug also cast.
Photographer David Zimmerman rarely leaves home until friends bring him to a wild party. He becomes fixated on a mysterious woman and follows her. By dawn, his life transforms-he awakens in her body.
Out of this World
Albert Serra
Producers: Albert Serra
World Sales: Les Films du Losange
We mentioned how Seydoux is poised to be the queen of the Croisette this year but that title could also belong to Riley Keough who could also have a three-peat presence with this speciality. She toplined the latest Albert Serra project – which moved into in June of last year but apparently the Catalan filmmaker might have his work cut out for him in post for Out of this World. Also featuring F. Murray Abraham, Evgenyia Gromova, and Liza Yankovskaia, this English language film follows an American delegation traveling to Russia in the midst of the Russo-Ukrainian war. Serra has loaded up the Quinzaine with 2006’s Honour of the Knights and 2008’s Birdsong, the Un Certain Regard section with 2016’s The Death of Louis XIV and 2019’s Liberté and finally he really swooned critics with Pacifiction in 2022.
Paper Tiger
James Gray
Producers: Raffaella Leone, Rodrigo Teixeira, Anthony Katagas, Gary Farkas, Marco Perego, Carlo Salem, Andrea Bucko
World Sales: Bankside
Scaling down a budget perhaps in the same range as 2022’s Armageddon Time, they had to switch some players along the way but finally Paper Tiger settled on a power-horse trio of Adam Driver, Scarlett Johansson and Miles Teller for the shot in New Jersey crime drama. No stranger to Cannes, this would be James Gray‘s sixth time in competition.
Two brothers pursue the American Dream but get entangled in a dangerous Russian mafia scheme that terrorizes their family, testing their bond as betrayal becomes possible.
Parallel Tales
Asghar Farhadi
Producers: Memento Production’s Alexandre Mallet-Guy with Asghar Farhadi and David Levine.
World Sales: Charades
He has populated Cannes with 2013’s The Past, 2016’s The Salesman, 2018’s Everybody Knows and 2021’s A Hero, and for the safe Croisette bet we’re slowly getting ourselves ready for what should be a sobering watch in Parallel Tales. Filmed in September of last year, power-house ensemble includes Isabelle Huppert, Virginie Efira, Vincent Cassel, Pierre Niney, India Hair, Adam Bessa plus Catherine Deneuve.
This centers on the November 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris. This looks at the chief of the BRI (Search and Intervention Brigade), the elite police unit that deployed the officers who killed the Bataclan terrorists and freed the hostages.
Roma elastica
Bertrand Mandico
Producers: Atelier de Production’s Thomas Verhaeghe and Mathieu Verhaeghe
World Sales: TBD.
This enfant maudit makes the kind of cinema that is definitely not for everyone but who doesn’t want to crawl back in time to the 1980s with this homage to Italian cinema. While most might dismiss Roma elastica as strictly midnight fun, our thinking is that Bertrand Mandico gets to strut his stuff in the comp with the likes of Marion Cotillard, Isabella Ferrari, Noémie Merlant, Tea Falco, Maurizio Lombardi, Ornella Muti, Martina Scrinzi and Franco Nero in tow. After shoring up in Venice and Locarno, 2023’s She Is Conann was his introduction to Cannes with a showcase in the Directors’ Fortnight. Production took place in May. Mandico re-teams with cinematographer Nicolas Eveilleau.
The story revolves around an actress who is going to shoot her latest film in Rome in the 1980s.
Sheep In The Box
Hirokazu Kore-eda
Producers: TBA.
NEON
A former Palme d’Or winner (2018’s Shoplifters) Hirokazu Kore-eda will be showcasing two films this year and the first out of the gate is a bonafide competition entry. Date for a domestic June release in Japan, filming on Sheep In The Box took place in September. This once again digs into the family unit psyche, childhood and like 2009’s Air Doll has a foreign object element to the festivities here. Our on screen trio is comprised of Haruka Ayase (who appeared in 2015’s Our Little Sister), Daigo Yamamoto and Kuwaki Rimu and this answers Kore-eda’s query of how technological advancement clashes with human inner values.
Set in the near future, Otone Komoto works as an architect. She is married to Kensuke Komoto, who runs a construction company. The married couple decide to welcome a humanoid robot into their home as their son.
Stéphane Brizé
Producers: TBD.
World Sales: Gaumont
A two-time Cannes competition selected filmmaker with 2015’s The Measure of a Man and 2018’s At War, Stéphane Brizé re-teamed with muse Vincent Lindon and actress Alba Rohrwacher (who starred in his remarkable 2023 film Hors-saison) for a specialty of sort from this French filmmaker: thoughtful chroniclers of work, labor struggles, personal crisis and moral conflict. Written by Stéphane Brizé, Coralie Amédéo and once again Olivier Gorce Un Bon Petit Soldat moved into production last May.
This follows Carla who’s recently been hired in the Human Resources department of a major insurance corporation and who’s tasked with leading an ambitious campaign to rebuild the company’s employer brand. Driven by the idea of reconciling employee well-being with the company’s performance objectives, she finds herself walking an increasingly fine line—until compromise becomes unavoidable