May 26, 2025 7:08AM

13 Best Movies at Cannes 2025

From a breezy look back at a groundbreaking classic to funhouse-mirror portraits of our politically fractured moment — our picks for the film festival’s highlights

By DAVID FEAR

“Is this the most political Cannes festival since 1968?” asked a headline in a Hollywood Reporter article, shortly before the 2025 film fest’s halfway mark. It’s a legit question. Historians may remember that ’68 was the year that protests rocked the Croisette, filmmakers occupied the Palais, four jury members resigned, and the official competition was eventually shut down by organizers. Nothing of that magnitude happened at this year’s Cannes, which concluded yesterday — though there was a five-hour blackout right before the closing ceremony that, it was suggested by local media, might not have been accidental per se.

But you could feel a sense of instability and unease in the air, made all the more potent by a certain authoritarian president’s threat to level “100-percent tariffs” on movies produced outside of the U.S. Throw in Robert De Niro trolling the POTUS by name at his honorary Palme d’Or speech during the opening night’s ceremonies, and close to a dozen films playing throughout the main fest’s lineups (and Cannes-adjacent festivals) that directly took aim at both past and present fascist regimes, political strife, and the overall sense of IRL doomscrolling that is our collective reality right now, and it was hard not to wonder if the answer to that query was, to quote the title of one of the more incendiary films in the 2025 edition, “YES!”

Cinema continues to be a passport, an empathy machine, a way of bridging the gap between cultures and regions, a way of letting you walk kilometers in other peoples’ shoes a million times over. That was readily apparent to those of us stuck in the bubble of cinephilia that Cannes offered, especially since that bubble was anything but impermeable to everything happening elsewhere in the world. And while the baker’s dozen of movies that we’d argue were the best that this Cannes had to offer weren’t all explicitly political, they all served to underline that fact that the movies continue to be both an urgent reflection and a necessary refraction of the world around us. Here are our picks for the highlights of this year’s festival.

(And some quick shout-outs to: The Chronology of Water, Heads or Tails, The Mastermind, The Plague, The Sound of Falling, Two Prosecutors, and Urchin.)

From Rolling Stone US

The opening night movie of Semaine de la Critique — a side festival that, like Directors’ Fortnight, runs parallel to Cannes yet has also been folded into the main event; it’s complicated — Belgian filmmaker Laura Wandel’s medical procedural takes what might have been an E.R. subplot involving a doctor (Léa Drucker) and a single mother (Happening‘s Anamaria Vartolomei), going head to head over the care of the latter’s son (Jules Desart) after a court ruling, and uses it to examine how institutional protocols can both protect and cause irreparable harm. Like Wandel’s previous film Playground (2021), this dual character study knows how to dig into a hot-button social issue and peel back the layers in a way that seems intimate instead of dogmatic. And it’s also the perfect showcase for both actors, especially Drucker; paired with her turn in the competition entry Dossier 137, this year’s festival makes a strong case for the César winner being one of the best French actors currently working.

The 2025 festival certainly had its share of Cannes-troversies (if we never get roped into another heated discussion about Julia Ducournau’s hot mess Alpha ever again, it will be too soon). Ari Aster’s fever dream of an Op-Ed on American carnage circa right-fucking-now had the honor, however, of being the single most divisive film in this year’s edition. Which, frankly, fits Aster’s crackpot vision of a nation fatally at odds with itself — a macro-narrative boiled down to a showdown between a sheriff (Joaquin Phoenix) and a mayor (Pedro Pascal) in a small, fictional town in New Mexico. Here, all progressivism is performative, all red-pilled right wingers are one red cap away from going full MAGA, all painful personal experiences are ripe for political exploitation, all both-sides misanthropy is dialed up to 11. What starts as a broad parody soon reveals itself to be a paranoid conspiracy thriller eerily attuned to our country’s center-cannot-hold bad vibes. We’re still processing the overabundant all of it. We can’t wait to see it again.

An 11th hour addition to the festival’s Midnight Selection (a far better place for it than the special screenings or competition lineups, to be honest), the sophomore entry in Ethan Coen and Tricia Cooke’s self-proclaimed “lesbian B-movie trilogy” centers around one Honey O’Donoghue (Margaret Qualley) — a crime-solving, wisecracking gumshoe trying to figure out who left a burnt corpse in the New Mexico desert. The case soon turns out to be anything but open and shut, and ends up involving a popular local preacher (Chris Evans), mobsters, missing teens, and a mysterious French femme fatale (Lera Abova). Unlike the duo’s seven-car pile-up Drive-Away Dolls (2024), this still somewhat messy attempt to mix Coen-esque mayhem with Sapphic erotica shakes the ingredients into a far more satisfying cocktail; you’ll likely be talking about the sex scene between Honey and Aubrey Plaza’s tough-talking cop for a while. What really earns it a place here is the way Qualley turns this private investigator into an update of an old noir staple that’s equal parts screwball and hardboiled. It’s some of the best work she’s ever done, and we’d gladly watch a whole other trilogy just devoted to this sultry, take-no-shit sleuth.

Even if Jafar Panahi’s extraordinary revenge parable hadn’t won the Palme d’Or (and made him one of the very few filmmakers to take home the top prizes at Berlin, Venice and Cannes), it would still be considered a major victory: This was the first time in over 20 years that the politically persecuted Panahi had walked the red carpet at the festival. Seriously, you’d have thought Mick Jagger had entered the building when the Iranian writer-director walked into the Lumière for the movie’s premiere. The overall premise is simple: A man (Ebrahim Azizi) finds his family trip interrupted when his car breaks down. A mechanic (Vahid Mobasseri) thinks he recognizes him as the person who tortured him for years in prison. He abducts the traveler, and then proceeds to round up several other former inmates to confirm that he is indeed the culprit. It plays at times like a nailbiting thriller, an elliptical road movie, and a sort of backstage farce revolving around a payback killing instead a theatrical production. Every moment of it attests to the work of a master, however, right down to one sublime gut punch of a final shot. The win was more than deserved.

Set in 1993 Nigeria, Akinola Davies Jr.’s drama follows two preteen brothers (Godwin Egbo, Chibuike Marvellous Egbo) who go on a rare trip from rural Nigeria to Lagos with their father (Sope Dirisu) as he tries to collect backpay. Over the course of a day, they get to know him in a way that opens their eyes regarding their dad’s long absences from home. The turmoil surrounding the presidential election of MKO Abiola, however, is about to come to a full boil. Partially a memory film of sorts — even if you didn’t know that the director wrote it with his brother, or that one of the boys shares his first name, it feels achingly personal — and partially one of those films that frames historical upheavals through the eyes of children, this is the sort of discovery that reminds you why Cannes’ Un Certain Regard section devoted to new filmmakers is such a vital part of the fest.

Raoul Peck returns to the festival with a look at George Orwell’s transformation from a cog in Britiain’s colonialist machinery (he served on the police force in Burma in the 1920s) to political critic, essayist and world-renowned author of Animal Farm and 1984. Had the filmmaker merely delivered a documentary on the writer’s radicalization and warnings about power, corruption, and lies this would still make for essential viewing. But he goes several giant steps further, borrowing the expansive design of Exterminate All the Brutes (2021) and connecting the dots between those two dystopian novels, the 20th century’s totalitarian regimes, and the ways in which history tends to repeat itself. Like, say, in contemporary America. It’s a virtual firehose of doubleplusbad information on how fascism insidiously takes hold, collapsing the gap between then and now in a way that’s damn near overwhelming. You would not call the outlook “good.” You would recognize this dour primer as absolutely vital at this particular moment in time.

Anyone could technically craft a behind-the-scenes recreation of the making of Jean-Luc Godard’s gamechanging debut feature Breathless. Only Richard Linklater could turn it into a glorious hang-out movie, in which you get to ride shotgun with the critic-turned-cineaste-in-sunglasses as he and his fellow band of film-mad outsiders make history 24 frames per second. The way Linklater identifies everyone from 1960s Cahiers du Cinéma legends (Chabrol, Rivette, Truffaut, Rohmer) to deep-cut scenesters, then gathers all of the players together feels a little like he’s making The Avengers for the hardcore Letterboxd crowd — here’s all your favorite superheroes of the French New Wave, assembled for one great big collective adventure. Guillaume Marbeck’s take on Godard as a quote-spouting enfant terrible is priceless; Zoey Deutch chronicling Jean Seberg’s conversion from skeptic to true believer is sublime; Aubry Dullin’s Jean-Paul Belmondo is one big, goofy grin of a tribute. (Our vote for MVP: Matthieu Penchinat’s comic interpretation of Breathless cinematographer Raoul Cotard.) Pure bliss.

Wes Anderson scores big with this mix of corporate-espionage thriller, slapstick comedy, and father-daughter family drama, centered around Anatole “Zsa Zsa” Korda (Benicio Del Toro), international business-magnate of mystery. He’s trying to make sure his dream project involving a multinational transport system becomes a reality before he’s assassinated by rivals; if he can also mend fences with his estranged daughter (Mia Threapleton), who wants nothing to do with her dad and yearns to become a nun, that’s simply a bonus. It’s got all the usual hallmarks of an Anderson project, from an all-star ensemble cast to the meticulously composed imagery that’s made him a film-nerd idol. But this new film gels in a genuinely satisfying way that several of his recent works haven’t. And it gifts us with a real discovery in Threapleton, whose deadpan reactions, comic timing and chemistry with Del Toro make this feel like there’s a heart beating underneath it all.

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Set in Brazil circa 1977 — “a time of great mischief” — Kleber Mendonça Filho’s portrait of a fugitive (Narcos‘ Wagner Moura, who won the Best Actor prize) feels like its setting you up for a paranoid political thriller. It soon adopts a kitchen-sink approach that incorporates everything from outré horror-movie sketches (watch out for that hairy, dismembered killer leg!) to musings about the joys of remembering old movie theaters. You can tell this is the same filmmaker who made the pointed, character-driven drama Aquarius (2016), and co-directed the modern exploitation-cinema nugget Bacurau (2019), as well as the person who penned the elegiac love letter to Brazilian cinema, Pictures of Ghosts (2023). Yet the scope and ambitiousness of this extended period piece feels new for him, and a cryptic aside around the halfway mark soon turns into a revelation about what Filho has been chasing all along: the passage of time, and how it never really heals any or all wounds.

The closest thing to a consensus pick for the best movie at the festival — you could practically hear the whoops of joy across the pond when this won the Grand Prix — Joachim Trier’s family drama continues his winning streak after the highly praised The Worst Person in the World (2021) hit his creative reset button. It also reminded many of us why we initially fell in love with the Norwegian filmmaker’s work in the first place, dating back to his gobsmacking first feature Reprise (2006). Once again working with his longtime cowriter Eskil Vogt and his TWPITW star Renate Reinsve, Trier carefully constructs a morality tale around a once-prominent movie director (Stellan Skarsgård) hoping to make a comeback with a new project. He offers the role based on his daughter to his actual daughter, an anxiety-prone stage actor (Reinsve) with a grudge against dad. Then he decides to cast an American movie star (Elle Fanning) instead, and film the whole thing in their actual family house. Fanning wore a “Joachim Trier Summer” t-shirt during the movie’s photocall. That season can’t come soon enough.

One of the early breakout sensations of the festival, Oliver Laxe’s woozy, epic thriller plops a concerned father (Sergi López) into the middle of the Moroccan desert, as he tries to find his missing daughter amidst the nomadic hipsters frequenting underground trance-music concerts. You initially brace yourself for a riff on The Searchers, redone for the 21st-century rave-scene set. Then things take an extremely lysergic, extra-dark turn, and suddenly everything plunges into pure nightmare territory. No movie made better use of music and sound design as a way of immersing viewers into a world that somehow simultaneously utopian and dystopian, and you’ll want to see this in a theater with the best speaker get-up possible. A trip, in too many ways to count.

Because who doesn’t love a Thai movie about possessed household appliances and horny ghosts fucking everybody in sight? The winner of the big prize at this year’s Semaine de la Critique, Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke’s unclassifiable, truly wackadoo mix of comedy and supernatural shenanigans starts with a factory accident that traps the spirit of a dead worker into a vacuum cleaner. It ends with a moving meditation on memory, grief, and the lengths one will go to keep a deceased loved one from going gently into the night. In between all of this is a number of hilarious vignettes involving randy machinery, some sideways class commentary, a haunting (in more ways than one) performance from Thai actor Davika Hoorne, and a shit-ton of paranormal sex. No notes.

Israeli filmmaker Nadav Lapid has always cast a critical eye on his country’s political stances and social policies — see: Policeman, Ahed’s Knee, Synonyms… his whole filmography, really. His latest will not win him any friends among the more conservative side of the tracks back home. A songwriter (Ariel Bronz) and his wife (Efrat Dor) enjoy every hedonistic pleasure that’s available to the nation’s military, media and right-wing elite. When he’s asked to write an anthem extolling the nation’s moral superiority, he takes the gig. Soon, the combination of that commission and reconnecting with an old musical partner/friend-with-benefits (Naama Preis) begets a serious crisis of faith. It’s an angry scream-into-the-void of a movie, and one that rages against the normalization of daily atrocities and escalating death tolls blaring out from people’s phones. Not even the gonzo early scenes of sex, drugs, and dance battles with a gaggle of army generals can temper the sting.

13 Best Movies at Cannes 2025

From a breezy look back at a groundbreaking classic to funhouse-mirror portraits of our politically fractured moment — our picks for the film festival’s highlights

‘Adam’s Sake’

‘Eddington’

‘Honey Don’t!’

‘It Was Just an Accident’

‘My Father’s Shadow’

‘Orwell: 2+2=5’

‘Nouvelle Vague’

‘The Phoenician Scheme’

‘The Secret Agent’

‘Sentimental Value’

‘Sirat’

‘A Useful Ghost’

‘YES’

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