20 Most-Anticipated Movies of Cannes 2025

Filipino filmmaker Lav Diaz likes to take his time in terms of storytelling — his long, lovingly languorous movies regularly clock in somewhere between five to eight hours long. (A reminder that no great movie is too long, and no god-awful movie is too short.) At a shade under three hours, his biopic about Ferdinand Magellan, starring Gael García Bernal as the 16th century Portuguese explorer, is one of his more relatively concise statements on life, death, and the human experience. Rumor has it that this will focus on Magellan’s relationship with his wife Beatrice (Angela Azevedo) and the period leading up to his ill-fated expedition to the Philippines, and that this chapter is part of an eventual nine-hour cut Diaz hopes to do, which will include both Ferdinand and Beatrice’s side of the story. Honestly? Bring it. We’re so there for this.

Heist flicks? We dig ’em. Thrillers set in the 1970s? We like ’em a lot. Films directed by Kelly Reichardt, the Pacific Northwestern director whose character studies of bohos, outcasts, social misfits, and margin dwellers has made her one of the most significant American moviemakers working today? We love ’em. A heist flick directed by Reichardt, starring Josh O’Connor, Alana “One Third of HAIM” Haim, John Magaro, Bill Camp, Hope Davis and Gaby Hoffmann? It’s like we’ve been granted three wishes, and they’re all coming true at once.

The pride of the Berlin School film movement, Germany’s Christian Petzold (Phoenix, Transit, Afire) heads to the south of France with this Director’s Fortnight entry, in which a woman (Paula Beers) survives a rather intense car accident. A local (Barbara Auer) offers to take care of her while she convalesces, much to the suspicion of the woman’s husband and their adult son. Still, the caregiver comfortably settles into the family’s home. Maybe too comfortably. The fact that “Mirrors” is in the movie’s title gives us a strong hint as to where this is going.

Where better to see a movie about the making of the French New Wave classic Breathless than at Cannes? Richard Linklater pays homage to Jean Luc-Godard’s gamechanging 1960 debut, i.e. the movie that rewrote the rules of cinema, inspired a generation of film nerds to pick up cameras, and forever made self-conscious crime flicks cooler than cool. Newcomer Guillaume Marbeck gets the privilege of donning those iconic dark shades and spreading the word of God(ard); Aubry Dullin is Jean-Paul Belmondo; Zoey Deutch rocks a blond pixie cut as Jean Seberg.

Raoul Peck (I Am Not Your Negro, Exterminate All the Brutes) looks back at the work of George Orwell — specifically, how the author of Animal Farm and 1984 tackled the subject of totalitarianism in the 20th century, which regrettably did not magically disappear once the odometer turned over to 21st century. If anything, it’s become a lot worse… and way more close to home for a lot of us. We imagine this one’s going to be a huge conversation starter at Cannes.

Writer, director and Cannes mainstay Wes Anderson — who was just at the film fest last year with Asteroid City — is back with another ensemble movie, brimming with meticulous production design and movie stars. (A partial cast list includes Tom Hanks, Scarlett Johansson, Michael Cera, Bryan Cranston, Benedict Cumberbatch, Willem Dafoe, Riz Ahmed, Rupert Friend, and Charlotte Gainsbourg; Bill Murray, naturally, plays God.) The focus of the cult auteur’s latest comedy-drama, however, is largely on two characters: Anatole “Zsa-Zsa” Korda (Benicio Del Toro), an international business magnate and celebrity industrialist; and Liesl (Mia Threapleton), the heir to his fortune who yearns to join a convent. The father and daughter must trot the globe to secure one last deal before Korda retires or is assassinated, whatever comes first.

Norwegian writer-director Joachim Trier reunites with his The Worst Person in the World star Renate Reinsve for this family drama about an actor named Nora and her sister (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas) reconnecting with their father Gustav (Stellan Skarsgård), a famous filmmaker whose career has been on the skids. The good news is he’s in the middle of plotting his comeback via a film project with a lead role that Nora would be absolutely perfect for. What better way to bond with Dad? The bad news is that he’s decided to cast an American star (Elle Fanning) in the part instead, and she’s going to stay with all of them while they film it. Ouch.

Jafar Panahi once had to smuggle a film into Cannes while under house arrest, via a USB drive hidden inside a cake — thankfully, the Iranian filmmaker won’t have to resort to such drastic measures with his latest meditative work, though he remains in perpetual hot water with the powers that be in his home country. The program notes describe his new project as: “What begins as a minor accident sets in motion a series of escalating consequences.” It may sound cryptic, but given this world-cinema giant’s track record, we’re betting this continues his winning streak of the last decade or so.

A last minute addition to the festival via the “Cannes Classics” sidebar, this documentary about Shia LeBeouf’s controversial acting school in South Central Los Angeles had tongues wagging the minute it was announced. One of the free academy’s students, Leo Lewis O’Neill, brought a camera along to many of the sessions that the Honey Boy star oversaw, and was given carte blanche to film whatever happened in class for a potential doc. “Warts and all” is apparently a mild description for the end result, which is said to not show LeBeouf in the best light. The former mentor to O’Neill has given his blessing to the project, however, and will be at Cannes alongside the filmmaker to introduce the premiere. This should be interesting.

British actor, Babygirl star and current contender for No. 1 Internet boyfriend Harris Dickinson steps behind the camera for this tale of a young man (Frank Dillane) living on the streets of London and desperately trying to turn his life around. This sounds very much like the sort of rough-edged, clear-eyed drama that would come out of the Ken Loach School of Social Realism graduate course, which speaks well to Dickinson’s influences and sense of storytelling as a filmmaker.

Israeli filmmaker Nadav Lapid (Synonyms) brings what will assuredly be one of the highlights of this year’s Director’s Fortnight lineup: a satirical comedy centering on a couple who has decided to say “Yes” to whatever offer comes their way. The result is …well, you can only imagine how potentially wild and fucked up the notion of instant, no-holds-barred agreement might get in this day and age. A colleague compared this to “an especially high-octane episode of Euphoria,” which, y’know, yikes!