Sure, Cannes can feel a little hoity-toity and distant to the average cinema goer, with its weird sense of unattainability and surplus of unnecessarily large yachts. But it’s well worth keeping an eye on the films that emerge from the fest, which are often transformative – both for cinema goers and chin-stroking awards types. This year’s Best Picture winner, Anora, of course, was last year’s Palme d”Or victor, another indicator that a few films on this May’s line-up could well be packing out theaters well into 2026. Here’s ten from the newly-announced 2025 line-up to look out for.
10 Thrilling Cannes 2025 Movies
1. Eddington
Director: Ari Aster
Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Pedro Pascal, Micheal Ward, Austin Butler, Emma Stone
Finally, a film set during the COVID-19 pandemic that’s likely to pull people back into cinemas. Midsommar director Ari Aster, known for his psychologically intense horror films, takes a different turn with this western black comedy. Joaquin Phoenix is a small-town New Mexico sheriff with big aspirations and Pedro Pascal, Austin Butler and Emma Stone for charismatic co-stars.
2. Alpha
Director: Julia Ducournau
Cast: Tahar Rahim, Golshifteh Farahani
French auteur Julia Ducournau already shook Cannes with her Palme d’Or winning Titane, and Alpha – her first English language film – promises to be just as visceral and haunting. It sounds like it’s going to hit hard as Ducournau doesn’t do surface-level. Tahar Rahim is rumoured to have dropped 20kg to play the father of an 11-year-old navigating a gritty, fictional 1980s city during the height of the AIDS Crisis.
3. The Phoenician Scheme
Director: Wes Anderson
Cast: Benicio del Toro, Michael Cera, Riz Ahmed, Tom Hanks, Bryan Cranston, Mathieu Amalric, Richard Ayoade, Jeffrey Wright, Scarlett Johansson, Benedict Cumberbatch
Wes Anderson returns to Cannes with most, if not all of his pals in town. Michael Cera joins the jamboree this time for a movie billed as an ‘espionage black comedy’ that could continue his recent run of (very) subtly politically-minded movies. Whether or not you enjoy the artful register at which he operates, Anderson always delivers something mind-blowingly intricate with a handcrafted feel and an ebullient, unquenchable spirit. And we all need that, right?
4. New Wave
Director: Richard Linklater
Cast: Guillaume Marbeck, Zoey Deutch
Richard Linklater’s new film is basically a Cannes Film Festival wet dream: an Oscar-winning American auteur making a movie in French about the making of Breathless – the 1960 classic that didn’t just launch Jean-Luc Godard, but an entire film movement, while making pixie cuts, striped shirts, and smoking Gauloises impossibly cool. Zoey Deutch as Jean Seberg? Ooh la la!
5. Sentimental Value
Director: Joachim Trier
Cast: Renate Reinsve, Stellan Skarsgård, Elle Fanning
The Worst Person in the World director Joachim Trier and his breakout star Renate Reinsve reunite to prove they still have that same magic in Sentimental Value, a comedy-drama about two sisters, Nora (Reinsve) and Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas), grieving their mother’s death while confronting the return of their estranged filmmaker father, Gustav (Stellan Skarsgård). Gustav’s inappropriate suggestion of casting Nora in his new film only adds to the tension.
6. The History of Sound
Director: Oliver Hermanus
Cast: Paul Mescal, Josh O’Connor
Based on Ben Shattuck’s short story, this World War I-era drama by Oliver Hermanus (Moffie and Living), with loud echoes of Brokeback Mountain, is likely to reignite the debate about Brits playing Americans. Paul Mescal and Josh O’Connor star as Lionel and David, two men on an intimate journey through rural New England, recording the sounds and lives of their fellow Americans during a time of great turmoil.
7. Urchin
Director: Harris Dickinson
Cast: Frank Dillane, Amr Waked, Murat Erkek
The Cannes Film Festival has a soft spot for creating filmmaking royalty, and Harris Dickinson, who starred in the Palme d'Or-winning Triangle of Sadness, is starting to feel like part of the beach furniture. Now, he’s turned his hand to writing and directing, and the early buzz is that Urchin is a raw, absurdist gem. Starring Frank Dillane as a homeless street urchin roaming London’s trendy East End, this drama is already generating serious excitement.
8. A Magnificent Life
Director: Sylvain Chomet
No one makes animations quite like Sylvain Chomet. The French master is a hand-crafter of nostalgic time capsules to bygone ages that are spiced with magic realism. The Triplets of Belleville is a masterpiece, with The Illusionist not far behind it. His latest celebrates the life of his compatriot, novelist and playwright Marcel Pagnol, the man who wrote Jean de Florette and Manon des Sources. We’d put a few francs on it being as enchanting as a glass of rosé on a summer’s afternoon.
9. Highest 2 Lowest
Director: Spike Lee
Cast: Denzel Washington, ASAP Rocky, Ilfenesh Hadera
After a will-he/won’t-he saga, it turns out Spike Lee will be in Cannes with his new Big Apple thriller – and with Denzel Washington, somehow making his first red carpet appearance at the fest, in tow. Akira Kurosawa’s 1963 crime thriller High and Low – and the Evan Hunter pulp thriller, King's Ransom, on which it’s based – are getting a modern-day updating with Washington in the Toshiro Mifune role as a tycoon who falls victim to a extortion plot.
10. The Mastermind
Director: Kelly Reichardt
Cast: John Magaro, Josh O'Connor, Alana Haim
Kelly Reichardt, one of America’s greatest living filmmakers, mostly specialises in the contemplative end of the moviemaking spectrum. So her latest, a crime film, immediately feels like a departure. Starring Josh O’Connor and her First Cow star John Magaro, it charts ‘an audacious art heist amidst the backdrop of the Vietnam War’. Is the prospect of the first ever Reichardt car chase too much to hope for?
The best movies of 2025 (so far).