Cannes You Spot the Next ANORA?
The Streamer's Guide to Cannes 2025
Remember Anora? It won Best Picture two months ago. The festival that launched its improbable journey to the film industry’s top prize, Cannes, kicked off today in the South of France.
When I attended the festival at the ripe and impressionable age of 19, Cannes was seen more as a platform for prestige and global cinema credibility that didn’t necessarily translate into awards season glory. But now, as Variety explains, that positioning in the hunt for Oscars has changed:
“As the theatrical landscape continues to evolve post-COVID and the Academy embraces a more international membership, Cannes’ early slot is being reframed as a strategic advantage rather than a liability.
The strategy reflects a larger shift in industry thinking: Cannes isn’t merely a festival — it’s a platform for long-term positioning. A breakout at Cannes doesn’t simply generate acclaim; it sets in motion a year-long campaign arc that can culminate at the Oscars.
‘We’re building narratives for our films months ahead of the fall fests,’ says one executive at a studio with projects in this year’s lineup. ‘If the reception is huge, we’ve got time to ride that momentum into the fall and fine-tune our campaign.’
So as we await the white smoke for cinephiles to emerge from the Palais des Festivals on the Croisette indicating that Habemus Palmam — I’ve forgotten most of my Latin vocabulary but assume that means “We Have a Palme d’Or Winner” — I’ve curated a Riviera for the rest of us. Here are 10 movies from the directors in the Cannes competition lineup that showcase why they’re in contention to win the biggest prize on the festival circuit … and maybe continue their awards run into 2026.
Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, Young Mothers
The Dardennes have already won the Palme d’Or twice, so the likelihood of an unprecedented third feels unlikely. But that should not discount the vibrant cinema they make out of Belgium, which responds to the pressing moral issues of our times like few others working today. Young Mothers takes place in a shelter for — you guessed it — young mothers as they work to create better conditions for their children. The audacity of hope in a bleak world has come to take center stage in the brothers’ work, although some critics argue has also added a didacticism to their work that wasn’t present there before. Their previous film, Tori and Lokita, was something of a blunt force instrument to detail the tragic conditions for Belgian migrants … but it comes by its preachiness with a sense of earnest conviction and care for their characters as people. “Whether it’s Tori and Lokita, Rosetta, or Igor in La Promesse,” Jean-Pierre Dardenne told me about the brothers’ body of work, “we want them to be people, not symbols of what is going on.”
Tori and Lokita is available on the Criterion Channel.
Bi Gan, Resurrection
The last-minute addition of Bi Gan’s Resurrection to the Cannes competition lineup had my curiosity. But then I read it will be scored by M83, and then it had my attention. The longest film vying for the Palme certainly sounds like it’s going to make the most of its runtime as Gan’s narrative follows a woman who enters the dreams of a monster in a world that has largely forgotten how to enter such a reverie. It feels only fitting that Gan would continue down the rabbit hole of hallucination given how his previous film, Long Day’s Journey Into Night, felt something like a waking dream. He’s probably the last director to do anything interesting with the 3D format here, as a mid-film title card prompting viewers to put on their glasses ushers in a staggeringly impressive unbroken take. I’d be hard-pressed to tell you what exactly happens in this phantasmagoric tale of hunting down a lost love, but I can certainly regale you with the stories of how it made me feel.
Long Day’s Journey into Night is available to rent from various digital platforms.
Chie Hayakawa, Renoir
I genuinely try to finish every movie I start watching, no matter how bad it gets. So I was a bit shocked to recall that I really thought the first hour of Plan 75 was great when I watched it on a plane a few years back … and for whatever reason never finished the film! This is like the gentle Black Mirror episode you didn’t know you needed, and perhaps a glimpse at our own future in the United States if the birthrate doesn’t increase. Director Chie Hayakawa finds life lessons abounding in this story about death where, to control Japan’s graying population, the government facilitates and incentivizes their assisted suicide. It’s a bleak yet beautiful warning that we should appreciate life long before we approach death. I’m curious to see what Hayakawa has up her sleeve in Renoir, which follows a protagonist at the complete opposite end of the age spectrum (an 11-year-old).
Plan 75 is available on the Criterion Channel.
Oliver Hermanus, The History of Sound
If there’s any film I’m sure will generate salivating online chatter out of Cannes, it’s The History of Sound. This historical romance stars Internet boyfriends Paul Mescal and Josh O’Connor as two men who travel together to record folk songs of the people from New England. (Fun fact: the source text is written by Ben Shattuck, AKA Mr. Jenny Slate.) I’ve been told to expect more yearning rather than physicality from this one, which is perfect for director Oliver Hermanus. I’m particularly fond of his international breakout Moffie, set in his native South Africa. This drama follows Kai Luke Brummer’s army conscript Nicholas as he tries to avoid revealing his sexuality, and it aches with his burning desire to stop hiding his true self. “My version of a sex scene in the film is somebody touching somebody else’s face because of the nature of the army, particularly in South Africa,” Hermanus told me in an interview about the film back in 2021. “I knew it was such a fear-mongered environment that that act of softness, of interhuman gentleness, would have been transgressive. It was about how you retained that tension that any sense of being human, any sense of sensitivity would be the greatest kind of gesture.”
Moffie is available to rent from various digital platforms.
Kleber Mendonça Filho, The Secret Agent
I’m hearing The Secret Agent, Kleber Mendonça Filho’s political thriller set at the height of the Brazilian military dictatorship, tipped as an early favorite for a big prize at the festival. As a big fan of his last narrative feature Bacurau, for which the co-director sat for a lengthy interview with me on the week the world shut down, I’d be happy to see it! I still can’t believe he or star Sonia Braga didn’t take home anything in 2016 for Aquarius, a film modest in scope yet major in impact. It’s a character study of a high order, though that character — Sonia Braga’s retired music critic Clara — does butt heads with people and institutions that can stand in for ones in the nation at large. It’s a rollicking great time with Clara as she attempts to fend off greedy land developers who will stop at nothing to force her from a beachside apartment, a piece of property with intrinsic and sentimental value to her and her family. The duo raise a defiant fist in solidarity with all those who go to the mattresses against the forces of gentrification and celebrate a local cultural heritage at dire risk of erasure.
Aquarius is available to rent from various digital platforms.
Dominik Moll, Case 137
There’s a maxim I’ve come to abide by at the major film festivals in Europe: never see homegrown product at its own country’s festival. So no German films in Berlin, Italian films in Venice, or French films in Cannes. This would seem to be a tipoff for Dominik Moll’s Case 137 as he makes the jump from a festival sidebar into the main competition of Cannes. But given that he’s already crushed one investigative drama with The Night of the 12th, I’m hoping he can run it back. This is one for all my true crime fanatic friends who’ve felt themselves getting exhausted with the familiar formula. The Night of the 12th provides a grim diagnosis of a French town roiled by an atmosphere of misogyny that claims the life of a 22-year-old girl in a burning attack … and the police whose detective work to catch her killer amounts to little more than pushing paper. It resists easy conclusions and reflects back on the genre’s overwhelming maleness in intriguing ways.
The Night of the 12th is available to rent from various digital platforms.
Jafar Panahi, A Simple Accident
Every film is a miracle, but this is doubly true for anything Jafar Panahi creates. The Iranian dissident filmmaker has faced imprisonment his work, and yet still goes to extreme lengths to covertly create projects that speak truth to the regime’s power. Little is known about A Simple Accident — I only learned of its existence when it popped up in the Cannes lineup — but I suspect it will be similarly self-reflexive and metafictional in the way that most of Panahi’s work made under fire has been. I’ve found some of his films a little impenetrable, but his previous film No Bears clicked for me. This film about filmmaking folds reality inside of itself as borders between reality and nations become increasingly arbitrary to Panahi playing a fictionalized version of himself. It’s as close to a rallying cry for artistic freedom as someone as committed to aesthetic standards as the director is. “Our fear empowers others,” so tells a man to Panahi, “No bears!”
No Bears is available on the Criterion Channel.
Lynne Ramsay, Die My Love
A new film by Lynne Ramsay is a true event given that Die My Love will be only her fifth film across a quarter-century. (Let’s not talk about why she should have more, or I’ll only get angry.) I already named this one of my most anticipated movies of 2025 period back in January, but the synopsis for this drama about Jennifer Lawrence trapped in a suffocating marriage to Robert Pattinson only got me more excited:
Love
Madness
Madness
Love
^ Yep, that’s it. That’s the synopsis.
The one film in Ramsay’s oeuvre that hadn’t entirely bowled me over until now was Morvern Callar, so I thought the occasion called for a revisit. It’s still my least favorite, which doesn’t sound like an endorsement … but Ramsay’s weakest film is still something most filmmakers could only dream of making. Her filmmaking style is an extraordinary and expressionistic translation of the protagonist’s inner world, making vivid and tangible all the jagged lines of a woman trying to pass off her dead boyfriend’s novel as her own to make a quick buck.
Morvern Callar is available on Amazon Prime Video.
Kelly Reichardt, The Mastermind
I couldn’t be more excited that a pair of members of the exclusive two-time Marshall interviewees club, Kelly Reichardt and Josh O’Connor, have teamed up to maximize their joint slay. The Mastermind, which stars O’Connor as an art thief in the 1970s (La Chimera much?), looks like it might be the biggest canvas yet for Reichardt as she enjoys a belated surge of appreciation. I’m always intrigued to see the filmmaker tackle masculinity given how her gentle observations about its limitations fueled her 2006 breakthrough, Old Joy. This film offers little in the way of optimism about human relationships. Two friends, careerist Mark (Daniel London) and nomadic Kurt (Will Oldham), head into the mountains to escape their lives and reconnect. They go through the motions in seeming expectation that something they see, do or experience will move them – or, at the very least, jolt them out of numbness. No such luck. Things happen, just as they do in everyday life. They are not transformed. Everyone in Reichardt’s universe seems paralyzed by the seeming inability of our actions and desires to noticeably alter the reality we must face.
Old Joy is available on Max and the Criterion Channel.
Joachim Trier, Sentimental Value
If I had to pick an odds-on favorite for the Palme d’Or, it would be Joachim Trier for Sentimental Value. (This prediction is not just because it’s being distributed by the Palme whisperers at Neon, though it doesn’t hurt!) The Norwegian director is still basking in the glow of 2021’s The Worst Person in the World, which won star Renate Reinsve the Best Actress prize at Cannes and has since enjoyed a long shelf life with cinephiles. The duo will reunite once again in this film, which is billed as “an intimate and moving exploration of family, memories, and the reconciliatory power of art.” While that logline might sound generic, I hear the potential for a fascinating echo with Trier’s directorial debut, Reprise. His 2006 freshman feature is very much a young man’s movie about two writers whose rivalry fuels revelations about what matters in life. I’m curious to see how his attitudes toward these topics has evolved over the last two decades.
Reprise is available to rent from Amazon.
The Final Destination series is about as close as I have to “guilty pleasure” movies. (Reminder: if a movie makes you feel good, it can never be entirely bad!) So it was a great pleasure for me to review the franchise’s revival for Slant Magazine. Turns out Bloodlines is a blast!
Paid subscribers also got to hear about my excursions to two art exhibitions by multi-disciplinary artist and filmmaker Steve McQueen:
You can keep track of all the freelance writing I’ve done this year through this list on Letterboxd.
You can always keep up with my film-watching in real-time on the app Letterboxd. I’ve also compiled every movie I’ve ever recommended through this newsletter via a list on the platform as well.
A strong conversation grounded in real principles, not just amorphous vibes.
I dug this analysis of The Studio by the comedy critic of The New York Times (gift article). Jason Zinoman gets at some of what I talked about in my recent “Satire with Bite” newsletter: “The show’s script pokes fun at Remick’s dreams, but its look buys into them. That tension is part of the fun.”
This Alison Willmore deep dive into the canonization of Patrick Bateman on Vulture really has to make you wonder why Patrick Schwarzenegger is so obsessed with getting to play this part. And elsewhere on the site, Nate Jones has a great talk with the casting director of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood… to learn how the film launched a new generation of stars. (Good knowledge on how that role functions, too, ahead of them getting their own Oscar category soon!)
See you this weekend, paid subscribers.
Yours in service and cinema,
Marshall