Advertisement
2025 Cannes Film Festival has latest Wes Anderson, Scarlett Johannson’s directorial debut
Anderson’s black comedy vies with Richard Linklater’s ode to French cinema; Johannson’s Eleanor the Great screens in secondary competition
Reading Time:2 minutes
Why you can trust SCMP
New films from Wes Anderson, Ari Aster, and Richard Linklater will compete for the Palme d’Or at the 78th Cannes Film Festival, organisers announced.
Coming off a 2024 edition that produced the Academy Award best-picture winner Anora, as well as a number of Oscar contenders in Emilia Pérez, The Substance and The Apprentice, the French film festival responded with a 2025 line-up bursting with big-name auteurs.
Thierry Frémaux, Cannes’ artistic director, announced the selections in a news conference in Paris with festival president Iris Knobloch.
Advertisement
Entries include Aster’s Eddington, a pandemic-set Western starring Joaquin Phoenix, Pedro Pascal and Emma Stone; Anderson’s The Phoenician Scheme, starring Benicio Del Toro as a European profiteer, with Scarlett Johannson and Tom Hanks co-starring; and Linklater’s appropriately French-language Nouvelle Vague, about Jean-Luc Godard and the French New Wave.
Julia Ducournau, whose Titane won the Palme d’Or in 2021, making her only the second female filmmaker to ever receive Cannes’ top honour, will return to the festival with the 1980s New York-set Alpha, about an 11-year-old with a parent who has Aids.
Advertisement
Other Cannes regulars coming back include two-time Palme winners Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne. The Belgian filmmaking brothers’ latest is titled Young Mothers. Joachim Trier, whose The Worst Person in the World was a highlight of the 2021 Cannes, is back in competition with Sentimental Value, which likewise stars Renate Reinsve.
Advertisement
Select Voice
Choose your listening speed
Get through articles 2x faster
1.25x
250 WPM
Slow
Average
Fast
1.25x