Cannes Film Festival Lineup Includes New Films by Wes Anderson, Richard Linklater, Scarlett Johansson

New films from Wes Anderson, Richard Linklater and the Dardenne brothers will premiere at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, Cannes organizers announced at a press conference in Paris on Thursday.

Anderson will be back in Cannes with”The Phoenician Scheme,” which premiered a baffling trailer at CinemaCon last week. Linklater is heading to France with a bold movie, “Nouvelle Vague,” which tackles the sacred ground of Jean-Luc Godard and the filming of “Breathless” in the 1960s. The Dardenne brothers have “Young Mothers,” which give them a chance to become the first filmmakers to win the Palme d’Or three times.

Actors in the festival making their directorial debuts include Scarlett Johansson. who is in Un Certain Regard with “Eleanor the Great,” starring Joan Squibb; and Harris Dickinson, the star of the Palme d’Or winner “The Triangle of Sadness,” with “Urchin.”

The selection also includes “Stories of Surrender,” a film from U2 lead singer Bono.

Missing from the list are a few films expected to be at the festival, including Spike Lee’s “Highest 2 Lowest,” Jim Jarmusch’s “Father Mother Sister Brother” and Lynne Ramsay’s “Die, My Love.”

Previously, the festival announced that Christopher McQuarrie’s “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning” would screen out of competition, giving Tom Cruise his second big Cannes premiere in the last three years after 2022’s “Top Gun: Maverick” saw fighter jets buzzing the Croisette.  

Thursday’s announcement was made a year after Cannes revealed a 2024 lineup that included “Emilia Pérez,”  “The Substance,” “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga,” “The Apprentice” and “Anora,” which became only the third film in the last 70 years to win the Palme d’Or in Cannes and then go on to take the Oscar for Best Picture. Two of those double wins, “Anora” and 2019’s “Parasite,” took place in the last five years, with the tastes of an increasingly international Academy more closely aligning with typical Cannes fare.

According to Knobloch, 25 million viewers around the world saw last year’s Cannes films in theaters.

This year’s films were chosen after programmers considered 2,909 submissions, according to Fremaux. That figure is a record for Cannes.

The 2025 Cannes Film Festival will take place from May 13 through May 24 in the South of France. Robert De Niro will receive the Honorary Palme d’Or at the festival’s opening ceremony, while French actress Juliette Binoche will serve as president of the jury.

Here is a partial list of announced titles.

More to come.

MAIN COMPETITION
“Sentimental Value,” Joachim Trier
“The Mastermind,” Kelly Reichardt
“Case 137,” Dominik Moll
“The Secret Agent,” Kleber Mendonca Filho
“Fuori,” Mario Martone
“Two Prosecutors,” Sergei Loznitsa
“Nouvelle Vague,” Richard Linklater
“La Petite Dernier”
“The History of Sound,” Oliver Hermanus
“Alpha,” Julia Ducournau
“Young Mothers,” Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne
“Eddington,” Ari Aster

CANNES PREMIERE

“Amrum,” Fatih Akin
“Splitsville”
“The Disappearance of Joseph Mengele,” Kirill Serebrennikov
“The Wave,” Sebastian Lelio

SPECIAL SCREENINGS
“Stories of Surrender,” Bono
“The Magnificent Life of Marcel Pagnol,” Sylvain Chomet
 “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning”
“The Richest Woman in the World,” Thierry Klifa
“Songs of the Neon Night”
“The Coming of the Future”

UN CERTAIN REGARD
“The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo,” Diego Céspedes
“My Father’s Shadow,” Akinola Davies Jr.
“Urchin,” Harris Dickinson
“A Pale View of Hills,” Kei Ishikawa
“Eleanor the Great,” Scarlett Johansson
“Caravan”
“Pillion,” Harry Lighton
“Aisha Can’t Fly Away,” Murad Mustafa
“Once Upon a Time in Gaza” Tarzan Nasser

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