Next week, all of Hollywood will turn its eyes south to the French Riviera and the increasingly influential Cannes Film Festival. A bold statement to make, considering the film festival’s storied history. Still, last year’s Palme d’Or winner, Anora, taking Best Picture, just 5 years after Parasite earned the same honor, was a watershed moment for the festival and Global cinema at The Academy. Sean Baker’s Cinderella tale, about a spunky sex worker with a dream, took home both prizes, cementing the festival once again as the marquee place to showcase award-worthy films on their way to Oscar glory.
Last year’s edition also honored the work of Oscar nominees The Substance, and the much-talked-about musical Emilia Pérez. And we anticipate that this edition will be no different. It is nearly a foregone conclusion that several titles premiering over the next two weeks will appear frequently during Oscar season and lead to box office success. Those first embers of the buzz will spark on the Croisette. Read on to hear our picks for our most anticipated buzz-worthy titles at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival. And be sure to check our Cannes Diary, where we break down every major festival moment for the first 10 days.
Are you buzzing about a film we missed? Let us know in the comments.
Director: Kristen Stewart
Cast: Imogen Poots, Thora Birch, Earl Cave, Kim Gordon, Jim Belushi
Official Synopsis: Growing up in an environment ravaged by violence and alcohol, Lidia, a young woman, struggles to find her way. She manages to escape her family and enters university, where she finds refuge in literature. Little by little, words offer her an unexpected freedom.
Why We Want to See It: Oscar-nominated actress Kristen Stewart makes her directorial debut in The Chronology of Water, an adaptation of Lidia Yuknavitch’s semi-autobiographical novel. The feature she co-wrote with Andy Mingo closely follows the novel and seeks to showcase not just Lidia’s life but also explore how trauma can be transformed into art. After several years as a prolific actress on screen, Stewart looks to find her voice behind the camera almost 20 years after she burst on the scene in the Sundance breakout Speak. Given Stewart’s popularity and clear directorial ambitions, we’re more than intrigued by this one, and we assume it will be a tough ticket to secure.
Director: Harris Dickinson
Cast: Frank Dillane, Northam Amr Waked, Karyna Khymchuk, Shonagh Marie
Official Synopsis: In London, Mike lives on the streets, going from odd jobs to petty theft, until the day he is imprisoned. Upon his release, with the help of social services, he tries to get his life back on track by fighting his old demons.
Why We Want to See It: Following the box office and social media success of Babygirl, English actor Harris Dickinson is likely to be drowning in rom-com and romantic drama offers. Instead, he opts to play one of the most famous musicians ever to live: The Beatles’ John Lennon. Dickinson then writes/directs a quiet indie drama about a drifter, and we’re excited to see what he has been quietly cooking up. He’s clearly an actor who aspires to keep us guessing.
Director: Wes Anderson
Cast: Benicio del Toro, Mia Threapleton, Michael Cera, Riz Ahmed, Tom Hanks, Bryan Cranston, Mathieu Amalric, Richard Ayoade, Jeffrey Wright, Scarlett Johansson, Benedict Cumberbatch, Rupert Friend, and Hope Davis
Official Logline: The story of a family and a family business.
Why We Want to See It: Wes Anderson got together with his very famous, talented friends in an exotic locale and made a movie. He also invited some new faces to tell a new story, and it’s premiering at the Cannes Film Festival. And yeah, we’re gonna see it—just like the last time. And the time before that. And the time… well, you get it.
Director: Chris McQuarrie
Cast: Tom Cruise, Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames, Ciarán Hinds, Vanessa Kirby, Hayley Atwell, Shea Whigham, Pom Klementieff, Janet McTeer, Nick Offerman, Hannah Waddingham, Tramell Tillman, and Henry Czerny.
Official Logline: Our lives are the sum of our choices. Tom Cruise is Ethan Hunt in Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning.
Why We Want to See It: Tom Cruise returns to Cannes to premiere the final installment of the Mission: Impossible franchise. After nearly 30 years and eight films, Tom Cruise and the name Ethan Hunt have been synonymous, and this week on the French Riviera, that story will come to a close. Sign us up!
Director: Richard Linklater
Cast: Zoey Deutch, Guillaume Marbeck, Aubry Dullin
Official Synopsis: This is the story of Godard making Breathless, told in the style and spirit in which Godard made Breathless.
Why We Want to See It: Richard Linklater made a black-and-white docu-narrative feature about Godard’s Breathless in the French New Wave style and language. The piece’s audacity has us and everyone else buzzing. The thought that Linklater will likely create a masterpiece while simultaneously paying homage to one has us well…breathless.
Director: Ari Aster
Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Pedro Pascal, Luke Grimes, Deirdre O’Connell, Micheal Ward, Austin Butler, and Emma Stone
Official Logline: In May 2020, in Eddington, a small town in New Mexico, a confrontation between the sheriff (Joaquin Phoenix) and the mayor (Pedro Pascal) ignites the powder keg by turning the residents against each other.
Why We Want to See It: When we discovered that Ari Aster, the man who gave us Midsommar and Hereditary, was going to reframe and canonize that very weird, strange, and highly charged time that was the early pandemic, we were sold. The fact that it re-teams him with Pheonix, and we’ve heard whispers that this might be the best thing he’s made, has us dying to grab a ticket and be at the premiere, dead center, eyes open, ready to devour it.
Director: Lynne Ramsay
Cast: Jennifer Lawrence, Robert Pattinson, LaKeith Stanfield, Sissy Spacek, Nick Nolte
Official Logline:
Love
Madness
Madness
Love
Why We Want to See It: It has been eight long, quiet years since Lynne Ramsay blessed us with her haunting, thrilling, and bleak 2017 feature, You Were Never Really Here, starring Joaquin Phoenix. Though that film never won the awards or recognition it deserved, we hope Die, My Love will right that wrong for Ramsay. Throughout her filmography, the Scottish filmmaker has gifted us with dark and often disturbing tales that leave us questioning things long after the critics roll, and Die, My Love looks right at home with her earlier filmography. Based on the 2017 novel by Ariana Harwicz about a new mother who develops postpartum depression and enters psychosis, it also marks the first time Pattinson and Lawrence will be seen on screen together. Hunger Games and Twilight fans shall marvel and rejoice.
Director: Spike Lee
Cast: Denzel Washington, Jeffrey Wright, ASAP Rocky, Michael Potts, Dean Winters, Ilfenesh Hadera, Ice Spice
Official Synopsis: A music mogul (Denzel Washington), reputed to have “the best ears in the business,” is the target of a ransom demand that forces him into a moral dilemma between life and death. Longtime partners Denzel Washington and Spike Lee reunite for the fifth time in this adaptation of the thriller Between Heaven and Hell by the great filmmaker Akira Kurosawa, set in the slums of modern-day New York.
Why We Want to See It: When Spike Lee last headed to the Cannes Film Festival with a new feature film, he was with John David Washington right before he unveiled BlacKkKlansmen on the way to the first competitive Oscar win of his career. This year, he returns to Cannes 36 years after Do the Right Thing wowed the Riviera. We’re more than a little intrigued to see yet another re-teaming between Spike Lee and Denzel Washington. The addition of ASAP Rocky and the Kurosawa adaptation has us most intrigued. We, for one, remember ASAP Rocky’s turn in a memorable and scene-stealing role from Dope. And as a lifelong fan and student of Kurosawa, could Highest 2 Lowest earn NYU Professor Spike Lee his second competitive Oscar? We will be there on the premiere night to find out.
Director: Ethan Coen
Cast: Margaret Qualley, Aubrey Plaza, Charlie Day, Billy Eichner, Chris Evans
Official Synopsis: A dark comedy that tells the story of Honey O’Donahue, a small-town private investigator who investigates a series of strange deaths linked to a mysterious church.
Why We Want to See It: They say, Honey Don’t!, and we say we can’t help it. Recently, Focus Features unveiled an electric Star-filled trailer for Ethan Coen’s latest solo effort, Honey Don’t, and we have been a-buzzing since. In said trailer, we spot Margaret Qualley as our protagonist private detective, a spiritually fraudulent con man in Chris Evans, and Aubrey Plaza as a flirtatious cop. This is all wrapped up in a Coen Brothers-style murder mystery that looks like The Big Lebowski meets The Righteous Gemstones. The trailer also gave us a glimpse of a stellar rake performance by Chris Evans. Perhaps a rival to his work in Knives Out? Here’s hoping.
Director: Oliver Hermanus
Cast: Josh O’Connor, Paul Mescal,
Official Synopsis: Lionel, a talented young singer from Kentucky, grew up listening to the songs his father sang on their front steps. In 1917, he left the family farm to attend the Boston Conservatory, where he met David, a brilliant and handsome composition student. Their budding bond was abruptly cut short when David was drafted at the war’s end. In 1920, reunited for a winter, Lionel and David traveled the forests and islands of Maine to collect and preserve endangered folk songs. This interlude would forever mark Lionel. Over the next decades, Lionel experienced recognition, success, and more romances as he traveled across Europe. But his memories of David still haunted him until one day, a trace of their shared work resurfaced and revealed how this relationship had resonated more strongly than any other.
Why We Want to See It: The Internet’s boyfriends are teaming up for a film courtesy of filmmaker Oliver Hermanus, who previously made a name for himself directing Bill Nighy’s career-best performance in Living. Many would turn up if the film were just Paul Mescal and Josh O’Connor sitting together in a room. When we found out they would be romancing each other in this dramatic period feature? Wild Horses couldn’t keep us away.
Thumbnail image by ©Paramount Pictures
