Cannes Lines Up Another Hot Festival With Wes Anderson, Spike Lee, Richard Linklater, Ari Aster Premieres (Full List)

The 78th edition of the Cannes Film Festival is looking to be another knockout, with some of this year’s hottest features, including Wes Anderson’s The Phoenician Scheme, Richard Linklater’s Nouvelle Vague and Ari Aster’s Eddington set to premiere on the Croisette.

Cannes delegate general Thierry Frémaux and president Iris Knobloch announced this year’s lineup at a press conference in Paris on Thursday morning.

The 2025 competition lineup is packed with auteur heavyweights, including Kelly Reichardt, who returns to Cannes competition with The Mastermind, an art-heist drama starring Josh O’Connor and John Magaro, set against the backdrop of the Vietnam War; Norwegian filmmaker Joachim Trier, who returns to the Croisette after his 2021 triumph (with The Worst Person of the World) with Sentimental Value, also featuring Renate Reinsve; and dissident Iranian director Jafar Panahi, who will be back in Cannes competition with his latest drama, A Simple Accident.

Two-time Palme d’Or winners the Dardenne brothers return with their latest slice of Belgian social realism, The Young Mother’s Home; South African director Oliver Hermanus (Moffie) will get his competition debut with The History of Sound, a World War I gay romantic road movie starring Paul Mescal and Josh O’Connor; and French veteran Dominik Moll will be repping the home side with his latest, the French crime drama Dossier 137.

Julia Ducournau, who won the Palme d’Or in 2021 with her explosive, and divisive, body horror classic Titane, returns to Cannes competition with Alpha, a 1980s-set shocker that follows an 11-year-old girl who is rejected by her classmates after it is rumored she has been infected with a new disease.

Spike Lee, who prematurely announced Ducournau’s Palme win when he was Cannes jury president, will also be returning to the Croisette. Frémaux did not name Lee in his presser on Thursday, but the Brooklyn-based director took to social media to announce his upcoming feature Highest 2 Lowest, starring Denzel Washington, will premiere out of competition. Cannes later confirmed the news, saying the film, an adaptation of Akira Kurosawa’s 1963 classic High and Low, will premiere May 19.

U.S. distributor Neon, which is coming off an unprecedented five-year winning streak of Palme d’Or winners — Parasite (2019), Titane (2021), Triangle of Sadness (2022), Anatomy of a Fall (2023) and Anora (2024) — has two shots at making it six straight, with both Alpha and Trier’s Sentimental Value in its stable.

Cannes on Tuesday confirmed this year’s worst-kept festival secret: Tom Cruise will return to the Croisette for the world premiere of Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, which will have an out-of-competition bow in Cannes ahead of its May 23 global release by Paramount.

Frémaux said the festival screened 2,909 features in its selection process, an all-time record.

Cannes reaffirmed its position as the world’s No. 1 film festival last year, with Cannes 2024 selections racking up a total of 31 Oscar nominations, and nine wins, led by Sean Baker’s 2024 Palme d’Or winner Anora, which rode its success on the Croisette all the way to five Academy Awards, including best picture. Last year’s festival also produced the breakout successes of Emilia Pérez, The Substance and animated winner Flow, further stoking interest in this year’s selection.

Among the out-of-competition highlights this year are Jodie Foster starrer Vie Privée, directed by Rebecca Zlotowski; the music documentary Bono: Stories of Surrender, from Blonde and Killing Them Softly director Andrew Dominik, on the U2 frontman; Amrum, the latest feature from German director Fatih Akin, starring his In the Fade collaborator Diane Kruger; Sebastián Lelio‘s Spanish-language feminist musical The Wave; and The Disappearance of Joseph Mengele from Russian director Kirill Serebrennikov.

Cannes’ Un Certain Regard sidebar will be packed with directorial debuts, including Eleanor the Great, Scarlett Johansson’s first turn behind the camera, which stars June Squibb; Harrison Dickinson’s Urchin, a British drama about a homeless man in London; and My Father’s Shadow, a hotly anticipated debut from British-Nigerian filmmaker Akinola Davies, starring Gangs of London and Slow Horses actor Sope Dìrísù.

Another directorial debut, the French drama Partir un Jour from first-timer Amélie Bonnin, will open this year’s festival, screening out of competition.

French star and Oscar winner Juliette Binoche will head up the 2025 Cannes jury, which is picking the Palme winners, as president. Robert De Niro will be honored with an honorary Palme d’Or for lifetime achievement at the Cannes opening ceremony this year.

COMPETITION

Alpha, Julie Ducournau
Dossier 137, Dominik Moll
The Eagles of the Republic, Tarik Saleh
Eddington, Ari Aster
Fuori, Mario Martone
The History of Sound, Oliver Hermanus
La Petite Derniere, Hafsia Herzi
The Mastermind, Kelly Reichardt
Nouvelle Vague, Richard Linklater
The Phoenician Scheme, Wes Anderson
Renoir, Chie Hayakawa
Romeria, Carla Simon
The Secret Agent, Kleber Mendonça Filho
Sentimental Value, Joachim Trier
A Simple Accident, Jafar Panahi
Sirat, Oliver Laxe
Sound of Falling, Mascha Schilinksi
Two Prosecutors, Sergei Loznitsa
Young Mothers, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne

UN CERTAIN REGARD

Aisha Can’t Fly Away, Morad Mostafa
Eleanor the Great, Scarlett Johansson
Heads or Tails?, Alessio Rigo de Righi, Matteo Zoppis
Homebound, Neeraj Ghaywan
Karavan, Zuzana Kirchnerová
L’inconnu de la Grande Arche, Stéphane Demoustier
The Last One for the Road, Francesco Sossai 
Meteors, Hubert Charuel
My Father’s Shadow, Akinola Davies Jr
The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo, Diego Céspedes
Once Upon A Time In Gaza, Tarzan Nasser and Arab Nasser
A Pale View of the Hills, Kei Ishikawa
Pillion, Harry Lighton
The Plague, Charlie Polinger
Promised Sky, Erige Sehiri
Urchin, Harris Dickinson

OUT OF COMPETITION

Colours of Time, Cedric Klapisch
Highest 2 Lowest, Spike Lee
Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning, Christopher McQuarrie
Partir un jour, Amélie Bonnin — opening film
The Richest Woman in the World, Thierry Klifa
Vie Privée, Rebecca Zlotowski 

SPECIAL SCREENINGS

Bono: Stories of Surrender, Andrew Dominik
The Magnificent Life of Marcel Pagnol, Sylvain Chomet
Tell Her I Love Her, Romane Bohringer

MIDNIGHT SCREENINGS

Dalloway, Yann Gozlan
Exit 8, Kawamura Genki
Songs of the Neon Night, Juno Mak 

CANNES PREMIERE

Amrum, Fatih Akin
Connemara, Alex Lutz
The Disappearance of Josef Mengele, Kirill Serebrennikov
Orwell: 2+2 =5, Raoul Peck
Splitsville, Michael Angelo Covino
The Wave, Sebastián Lelio