Cannes Film Festival 2025: Top directors, Trump-Zölle and Tom-Cruise-Sequel

Cannes Film Festival 2025: Top directors, Trump-Zölle and Tom-Cruise-Sequel

For two weeks in May, Cannes gathers more stars than there is in heaven or in the old MGM backlot. This year the French Film Festival will be even more glittering than usual when a who's who of the Hollywood talent arrives on the Côte d’Azur to celebrate with the biggest and best of the international film scene.

a promising year for Cannes

All characters indicate an outstanding year for Cannes, which is strongly performed by the Academy Awards. Filmmakers stand in line to walk over the red carpet and accept the tuning of the sleepless critics.

The US team and prominent returnees

The American delegation at the festival, which begins on Tuesday, is great. After three years, Tom Cruise returns with "Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning" and hopes to repeat the successful formula of "Top Gun: Maverick", which recorded over a billion dollars on the box office. However, this time there is no honorary palm for cruise; Instead, this honor is given to the Cannes veteran Robert de Niro, just a year before the 50th anniversary of "Taxi Driver", which the Palme d’Or won. Spike Lee, who acted as a jury president (not without incident), will also return with "Highest 2 Lowest", his adaptation of Akira Kurosawa's "High to Low" (1963), in which Denzel Washington plays a music mogul that is confronted with a blackmail plan.

The competitive and newcomers

"Highest 2 Lowest" is shown outside of the competition alongside the Ethan Coen comedy "Honey Don’t!", Which is a sequel to "Drive Away Dolls". Whether it is simply due to the strong selection or on disputes about the French legal requirements regarding demonstration windows (Lee's film will appear on Apple TV+ in September, which seems to ensure that it does not run in the cinema in France), it is a sign of the vitality of the festival that these cannes bad weights do not fight for the palm d’OR.

Who will win the Palme d’Or? The competition for the main prize shows a change in the film landscape. Some Cannes trim guests remain: The two-time Palme winners Dardenne brothers from Belgium with "Young Mother", the Ukrainian Sergei Loznitsa with "Two Prosecutors" and the Scottish Lynne Ramsay, whose adaptation of the novel "Die, My Love" by Ariana Harwicz with Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Patinson is occupied. Wes Anderson will also be in competition for the fourth time with "The Phoenician Scheme", which includes some of his usual actors (Bill Murray, Jeffrey Wright) and some new, exciting additions (Riz Ahmed, Mia Threapleton, daughter of Kate Winslet). The cast is complemented by Tom Hanks, Scarlett Johansson, Benicio del Toro, Willem Dafoe and many more - you have the most star -rich red carpet of the entire festival.

women in directing

Joachim Trier, who broke into the mainstream with the much celebrated film "The Worst Person in the World" (2021), works again with the main actress Renate Reinsve for the "sentimental value", which is eagerly awaited. The Iranian author Jafar Panahi, whose 2011 film "This is not a film" was smuggled on a USB stick in a cake for the festival, will be again in competition with "A Simple Accident", a sequel to his 2022 work "No Bears", which won the main prize at the film festival in Venice. The American indie director Kelly Reichardt, most recently in Cannes with "Showing Up", debut with "The Mastermind", a historical Heist drama, which is listed by Josh O’Connor and can be seen in two competitive films-the other is "The History of Sound", which is led by South African Oliver Hermanus and Paul Mescal on board has.

Reichardt, Ramsay, Simón and Schilinski are four out of a total of seven directors who are nominated for the palm this year - a third of the total participants and a positive step towards better gender representation at the festival. But none of them can look back on a previous Palme d’Or win, like Julia Ducournau. Ducunknau’s "Titane" won in 2021 and is now returning with "Alpha", which is reportedly a body horror context against the background of an AIDS epidemic.

Latest projects and social topics

Ari Aster, known for "Hereditary" and "Midsommar", gives his cannes debut with "Eddington". The film, which alludes to the AIDS crisis of the 1980s and supposedly plays during the Covid 19 pandemic, combines Aster with his "Beau Is Afraid" star Joaquin Phoenix, who plays a sheriffs in New Mexico who lies with the mayor Pedro Pascals. The jury for the Palme d’Or, led by the French actress Juliette Binoche and with Halle Berry and the "succession" actor Jeremy Strong, will keep an eye on the 22 competition films and announce the winner on May 24th.

Current social issues in focus

elsewhere at the festival take the actors behind the camera. In the UN Certain Regard category for aspiring filmmakers, Kristen Stewart Imogen Poots in "The Chronology of Water", an adaptation of the memoirs by Lidia Yuknavitch. Scarlett Johansson's "Eleanor the Great" has June Squibb in the leading role, and Harrison Dickinson - most recently busy nicole Kidman in "Babygirl" - writes and stages "Ungin", which plays on the streets of London. The title "My Father’s Shadow", which was the first Nigerian film in the official selection of Cannes, deserves a special mention in the UN Certain Regard category.

The festival shy away from a risk of programming films about ongoing global events. The Israel-Hamas conflict is addressed on the screen. The Israeli director Nadav Lapid brings his way of social satire to the Directors ’Fortnight with" Yes! ", A film that plays in the time after the October attacks. At the same time, "Put Your Soul On Your Hand and Walk" by the Iranian filmmaker Sepideh Farsi is shown in the ACID department and highlights the life of the war documentary Fatima Hassouna, which already caused a sensation on this cinematic stage before she died in documenting the conflict in Gaza.

The future of the festival

in Cannes is also talking about US politics. Apart from the premieres, the busy film fair will probably discuss whether President Donald Trump's announcement, he intends to introduce tariffs to films that "are produced in foreign countries" - and if so, how this could be implemented.

The legacy of the festival

Despite all the latest political developments, Cannes moves into his latest edition with a lot of self -confidence. The festival sifted almost 3,000 films to curate its official selection and programmers were in a hurry up to the last minute to integrate big names into the selection. A lot should go wrong so that 2025 will not be a very special year.

you may say it quietly, but a lot has changed. In the zero years, Cannes was involved in a cold competition with the Venice Film Festival to win the most exciting titles. Cannes was a disadvantage - Venice had an open door for the big streaming providers, while Cannes refused to absorb them in the scope of competition. Venice quickly earned the call as a starting signal for the Awards season.

But Cannes had a significant win with Bong Joon Hos "Parasite", the winner of the Palme d’Or 2019 and the winner of the best film at the Academy Awards 2020-the first non-English language winner of the best film and the first film that reached the Cannes Oscar double since "Marty" in 1955. The festival, a champion of the world cinema, knew about the importance of the moment. It was a profit for both sides and repositioned Cannes in the Oscar discussion, without endangering the mission of the festival.

Since then, Cannes has recorded a series of Oscar nominations (no doubt, supported by the internationalization of the Academy). In the past five years, four of the Palme d’Or winners have also been nominated for the Oscars as the best film. The Oscar winners "Anatomy of a Fall" and "The Zone of Interest" celebrated its premiere in Cannes in 2023, while the last issue of "The Substance", "Emilia Perez", "Flow" and "Anora" won the Academy Awards and the best picture as well as the palm d’OR. Cannes will never need the Oscars, but confirmation does not harm.

For all the glamor and the A-List guests, the greatest capital of the festival is its ability to create a hit out of nowhere and to bring a director and his film to an exciting track of success. What will start in 2025? We don't know yet - and that is exactly what makes the expectation so exciting.

The Cannes Film Festival takes place from May 13th to 24th.