Cannes lineup unveiled

Cannes did what Cannes often does on lineup day: it turned one press conference in Paris into a map of the next six months of movie conversation. The 79th festival runs from May 12 to May 23, and the official selection was unveiled on April 9 by president Iris Knobloch and general delegate Thierry Frémaux. (festival-cannes.com) The main competition is heavy on directors Cannes treats like returning champions. Pedro Almodóvar, Asghar Farhadi, Hirokazu Kore-eda, Paweł Pawlikowski, László Nemes, Ira Sachs and Ryûsuke Hamaguchi are all back with new films competing for the Palme d’Or, the festival’s top prize. (variety.com) That tells you what kind of year this is. Trade coverage from Variety and The Hollywood Reporter both described the slate as auteur-driven, which is industry shorthand for a lineup built around directors with strong personal styles rather than franchise movies or studio spectacles. (variety.com) (hollywoodreporter.com) The competition section alone is crowded with films people had been whispering about for months. Hamaguchi’s *All of a Sudden*, Lukas Dhont’s First World War drama *Coward*, Cristian Mungiu’s *Fjord*, Farhadi’s French-language *Parallel Stories* and Almodóvar’s *Bitter Christmas* all made the cut. (thefilmstage.com) (screendaily.com) Hamaguchi’s film is getting early attention because it looks like another cross-border Cannes play in the mold of *Drive My Car*. Deadline reported in February that Neon bought North American rights to *All of a Sudden*, and The Film Stage singled it out as one of the first lineup highlights after today’s announcement. (deadline.com) (thefilmstage.com) The numbers behind the selection show why getting in matters. Screen reported that Cannes received 2,541 feature submissions this year and named 21 titles in the main competition at the press conference, with Frémaux saying one more title could still be added. (screendaily.com) The festival also leaned hard into international range instead of one national cinema dominating the board. Screen counted three Japanese filmmakers, three Spanish directors and five French filmmakers in the lineup, while The Hollywood Reporter noted that five of the competition films announced today are from female directors. (screendaily.com) (hollywoodreporter.com) Outside competition, Cannes kept its usual mix of prestige and curiosity. Steven Soderbergh’s *John Lennon: The Last Interview* is set for a special screening, Volker Schlöndorff’s *Visitation* landed in Cannes Première, and Nicolas Winding Refn’s *Her Private Hell* is in the out-of-competition section. (thefilmstage.com) The opening-night choice says a lot too. The festival had already announced that Pierre Salvadori’s 1920s-set *La Vénus électrique* will open Cannes on May 12, which means this year begins with a period piece rather than a giant Hollywood launch. (hollywoodreporter.com) Cannes matters beyond the Riviera because it now functions like a first draft of awards season and art-house distribution. The Hollywood Reporter pointed to last year’s Cannes premieres *Sentimental Value*, *It Was Just an Accident*, *The Secret Agent* and *Sîrat* as films that later turned into Oscar nominees or winners. (hollywoodreporter.com) So the real story in this lineup is not just who got invited. It is that by early April, Cannes has already told distributors, critics and moviegoers which directors are likely to define the spring and which titles will spend the next six weeks arriving with the words “premiering in competition at Cannes” attached to every trailer and review. (festival-cannes.com) (variety.com)