For the 78th time, visionary filmmakers and discerning viewers will gather for the Festival de Cannes, one of the world’s great film festivals. The 2025 festival will take place on the seaside boulevard La Croisette from May 13-24 – and it’s going to be a big one!

Tom Cruise is hang gliding in on the wing of a biplane. Festival organizers are lighting up social media with last-minute additions to the official lineup: Spike Lee is bringing Highest 2 Lowest starring Denzel Washington after a late-breaking announcement. (The list of featured filmmakers keeps growing.) And Neon is poised to claim the Palme d’or for the sixth consecutive year if either Julia Ducornau’s Alpha or Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value wins the competition.

Here’s everything you need to know to be ready for Cannes 2025!

Host

This year, the Master of Ceremonies is French stage actor and filmmaker Laurent Lafitte.

Lafitte rose to fame for his one-man comedy show, Laurent Lafitte: Comme son nom l’indique (Laurent Lafitte: As His Name Indicates). Subsequently, from 2012-2024, he worked as a member of Comédie-Française, the almost 400-year-old theatrical acting company. His stage roles have included Dom Juan (Molière’s spelling) and Cyrano de Bergerac.

In addition to his distinguished career onstage, Lafitte is a celebrated film director and screen actor. After costarring with Oscar® nominee Isabelle Huppert in Paul Verhoeven’s Elle (2016), Lafitte made his feature directorial debut with L’Origine du monde (literally, The Origin of the World, but known in English as Dear Mother). The film was part of the Official Selection for Cannes in 2020.  

Four years later, Lafitte won a BAFTA Television Award for Best International Show (as lead actor) for Tapie (known in English as Class Act). In the miniseries, Lafitte portrayed Bernard Tapie (1943-2021), a businessman and politician who was convicted of fixing a soccer match, so he became an actor!

Beginning in December, ticket holders at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris can see Lafitte play Albin in Olivier Py’s production of La Cage aux Folles (literally, The Madhouse, but better known to English speakers as The Birdcage).

Guest of Honor

At the opening ceremony, festival organizers will confer an honorary Palme d’or on American actor Robert De Niro.

When De Niro played Johnny Boy in Mean Streets (1973), he could not have known that he was embarking on a 50-year collaboration with another future Oscar® winner, the American director Martin Scorsese. De Niro earned the Best Actor Oscar® for portraying boxer Jake LaMotta in Scorsese’s Raging Bull (1980). The New York City-born duo most recently teamed up for Killers of the Flower Moon (2023), which brought De Niro his EIGHTH Oscar® nomination for acting.

De Niro won the first of his two Oscars® in 1975 for the supporting role of Vito Corleone in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather Part II.  In addition, De Niro starred in Scorsese’s Taxi Driver (1976) and Roland Joffé’s The Mission (1986), both of which won the Palme d’or at Cannes.

Reacting to news of the honorary Palme d’or, De Niro said, “Especially now when there’s so much in the world pulling us apart, Cannes brings us together – storytellers, filmmakers, fans, and friends.”

Juries

French actress Juliette Binoche will serve as president of the Feature Film Jury, which selects the winner of the Palme d’or.

Over a career that has already spanned 40 years, Binoche has won some of the world’s most prestigious acting awards. At Venice in 1993, she won the Volpi Cup for starring in Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Three Colors: Blue. Her supporting role as Hana in Anthony Minghella’s The English Patient (1996) earned Binoche prizes at Berlin, the BAFTA Awards, and the Oscars®. Finally, Binoche won Best Actress at Cannes in 2010 for playing Elle in Abbas Kiarostami’s Certified Copy.

The other members of the Feature Film Jury are American actress Halle Berry, Indian writer-director Payal Kapadia, Italian actress Alba Rohrwacher, French-Moroccan writer Leïla Slimani, Congolese director Dieudo Hamadi, South Korean writer-director Hong Sangsoo, Mexican writer-director Carlos Reygadas, and American actor Jeremy Strong.

Italian writer-director Alice Rohrwacher will lead the Caméra d’or Jury, which recognizes one director with a prize for best debut.

Rohrwacher has been a favorite at Cannes for years. She won the Grand Prix (second place) in 2014 for Le meraviglie (The Wonders), and tied for Best Screenplay in 2018 for Lazzaro felice (Happy as Lazzaro). Her most recent feature, La chimera (2023), is an adventure film about tomb raiders, starring Josh O’Connor (Challengers).

The other members of the Caméra d’or Jury are Tommaso Vergallo, Frédéric Mercier, Rachid Hami, and Geraldine Nakache.

English writer-director Molly Manning Walker has agreed to serve as president of the Un Certain Regard Jury,  which awards a prize for the most innovative work by a rising filmmaker.

Walker won the Un Certain Regard competition in 2023 for How to Have Sex, a drama about three British teenagers on a summer vacation in Crete. Walker’s feature directorial debut earned many other honors, including a BAFTA Rising Star Award for lead actress Mia McKenna-Bruce.

The other members of the Un Certain Regard Jury are French-Swiss writer-director Louise Courvoisier, Rotterdam Film Festival Director Vanja Kaludjercic, Italian writer-director Roberto Minervini, and Argentinian actor Nahuel Pérez Biscayart.

Films

The official lineup has more than 50 films, including about 20 screening in the main competition and 20 more screening in Un Certain Regard. We cannot tell you about them all, so we’re highlighting a few directorial debuts and new works from celebrated directors.

Feature Directorial Debuts

Fourteen feature directorial debuts are on the program, beginning with Amélie Bonnin’s Partir un Jour (Leave One Day). Bonnin released a short with the same title in 2021, but the main character Julien (Bastien Bouillon) has been replaced by Cécile (Juliette Armanet) for the feature. Although Partir un Jour is not in competition, it has been honored as the opening film of the festival.

One contender for the Camera d’or is British actor Harris Dickinson, who moved into the director’s chair for Urchin, a film about a homeless Londoner. Dickinson starred alongside Nicole Kidman in Halina Reijn’s Babygirl (2024) and played a starring role in Ruben Östlund’s Palme d’or winner, Triangle of Sadness (2022). His other acting credits include David Von Erich in The Iron Claw (2023), Prince Philip in Maleficent: Mistress of Evil (2019), and Frankie in Beach Rats (2017).

Scarlett Johansson has likewise moved behind the camera for her feature directorial debut, Eleanor the Great. It stars June Squibb (Thelma) as a 70-year-old woman who decides to start over in New York City.

Johansson is already well known and widely loved – after all, she’s a past nominee for the Lead Actress Oscar® (for Marriage Story, 2020) and a Marvel® superstar (she plays Black Widow)! Some of her other notable roles are Charlotte in Lost in Translation (2003), Olivia Wenscombe in The Prestige (2006), and Major Mira Killian in Ghost in the Shell (2017).

And, as you are just about to read, Johansson appears in one of the films competing for the Palme d’or!

New Works by Celebrated Auteurs

Johansonn plays the role of Cousin Hilda in Wes Anderson’s The Phoenician Scheme, a film about the mad capers of Zsa-zsa Korda (Benicio del Toro), an international arms dealer, survivor of six plane crashes, and rather difficult father. Just ask one of the many children Korda disinherits in favor of his daughter, a nun named Liesl (Mia Threapleton)!

American writer-director Wes Anderson is known for both live-action features and animated films. His most celebrated works in each category are The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) and Isle of Dogs (2018). But Anderson has been honored with EIGHT Oscar® nominations! In 2024, his The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar won the Oscar® for Best Live Action Short.

A previous winner of the Palme d’or, French writer-director Julia Ducornau is competing for it once again with Alpha, a film about a rebellious teenage girl and her mother.

Continuing Neon’s winning streak, Ducornau took home the Palme d’or in 2021 for Titane. IndieWire called it “the work of a demented visionary in full command of her wild mind.” You can find a legal streaming option today!

As a final example, American director Richard Linklater is screening Nouvelle Vague (New Wave), written by his previous collaborators from Where’d You Go, Bernadette (Holly Gent and Vincent Palmo, Jr.), as well as by Laetitia Masson (For Sale). Linklater’s latest film is about the making of a New Wave masterpiece, Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless (1960).

Linklater won the Silver Bear at Berlin, a BAFTA Award, and a Golden Globe® for Boyhood (2014), a coming-of-age story told over twelve years. His Oscar®-nominated films include not only Boyhood but also Before Sunset (2005) and Before Midnight (2014).

Vive le Cinéma – and Enjoy the Festival!

As you can see, there are plenty of reasons to be excited for Cannes 2025! Who needs hyperbole or melodrama when there are so many wonderful films to see, directed by so many new and established filmmakers, working in so many different cinematic traditions?

Please join us in thanking the organizers for supporting international cinema with another thrilling festival. And please join us in wishing good luck to all the filmmakers featured on La Croisette this year!