From The Next Yorgos Lanthimos, Paul Thomas Anderson & Spike Lee, To Scarlett Johansson & Kristen Stewart’s Directorial Debuts & A Tom Cruise Return To Cannes?: 71 Films From Around The World That Could Light Up Festivals In 2025

Happy New Year! As the Deadline team gears up for another busy and discovery-filled 12 months on the global film festival circuit, here is our annual (non-exhaustive) list of U.S. and international movies we expect to see on the way. While we scored better than an 80% strike rate for 2024, this year’s list features a few returnees we still hope to see at a festival soon. As in our previous prediction lists, we’ve focused on titles that have already started filming or are in post-production and which haven’t yet been announced for a festival.

A few notes on some big and exciting projects not listed below. Apple’s Brad Pitt Formula One pic F1 has a June release date leading to some question marks over a potential Cannes pit stop, but we get the impression a Croisette launch is unlikely for this one. Meanwhile, A24 and Timothée Chalamet’s Marty Supreme has just set a Christmas Day 2025 release meaning a fall festival berth isn’t impossible but we assume it’s more likely to sidestep festivals in the vein of crowdpleasers like Wolf Of Wall Street and Catch Me If You Can, which are said to be tonal inspirations, and recent Chalamet starrer A Complete Unknown, which also had a Christmas Day date. Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s anticipated untitled Tom Cruise film for WB and Legendary has just set an October 2026 launch so is out of the 2025 festival frame.

Eleanor The Great
Marvel regular Scarlett Johansson makes her feature directorial debut with this life affirming tale of a 90-year-old woman who moves back to New York after decades of living in Florida, where she strikes up an unlikely friendship with a 19-year-old student. Nonagenarian actress June Squibb – who is enjoying a late career renaissance thanks to her performance in Sundance 2024 breakout Thelma – tops a cast also featuring Chiwetel Ejiofor, Jessica Hecht, and Erin Kellyman.

Orphan
Expectations are running high for Hungarian director László Nemes’s third feature, after 2015 Oscar-winning Holocaust drama Son of Saul and 2018 follow-up Sunset. His first movie in six years, Orphan follows a boy who discovers a dark secret about his origins in the ruins of the 1956 Hungarian uprising against the communist dictatorship. Newcomer Bojtorján Barabas stars as the 12-year-old protagonist whose life changes when a man appears from his mother’s WW2 past.

Sentimental Value
Norwegian director Joachim Trier reunites with Renate Reinsve, star of his Oscar-nominated picture The Worst Person In The World, for this family drama about two sisters forced to deal with their estranged father following the death of their mother. Trier co-wrote the screenplay with Eskil Vogt, his long-time collaborator on The Worst Person In The World as well as Reprise and Oslo, August 31st.

Yellow Letters
Shot in secrecy in Hamburg in the early summer of 2024, German director Ilker Çatak taps into his Turkish roots for this tale of a married actress and a professor of dramatic arts at the university in Ankara, whose lives are sent into a tailspin when they both lose their jobs due to “state arbitrariness”. Çatak’s last film The Teachers Lounge premiered under the radar in the Berlinale’s Panorama section in 2023 ahead of being nominated for Best International Feature Film. It’s unlikely this new film will go quite so unnoticed as it hits the festival circuit.

Alpha
Four years after she shook Cannes with Palme d’Or-winning body horror Titane, Julia Ducournau’s third feature is eagerly awaited. Beyond key cast of Tahar Rahim and Golshifteh Farahani, little has been officially revealed about the plot, as was the case with Titane. Reports in the French press have suggested that the drama is set in the northern French port city of Le Havre in the 1980s and revolves around a girl who is ostracized by her classmates following rumors that she has contracted a strange new illness. Sales agents Filmnation and Charades have described the film as “Julia’s most personal, profound work yet.”

The Smashing Machine
Dwayne Johnson stars as legendary MMA fighter Mark Kerr opposite Emily Blunt as his long-suffering partner in Benny Safdie’s biopic charting the highs and lows of the champion’s chaotic life. There is growing buzz around Johnson’s performance, with Blunt saying recently that the actor was “extraordinary” in the role. Safdie and brother Josh launched their filmmaking careers at Cannes in 2007 with the quietly radical indie drama The Pleasure of Being Robbed, and were back there in 2017 with movie Good Time which debuted in competition. One of A24’s biggest budget efforts to date.

The Secret Agent
Brazilian director Kleber Mendonça Filho returns to his beloved coastal home city of Recife for this political thriller starring Wagner Moura as a man on the run against the backdrop of the military dictatorship in 1970s Brazil. As he tries to reunite with his son, the net tightens around him, against the backdrop of the heady atmosphere of carnival week.

Happy Birthday
After years of working closely alongside life and creative partner Mohamed Diab on his films such as Clash and the Marvel series Moon Knight, Egyptian American writer and producer Sarah Goher is branching out as a director in her own right. Her first film explores classism in contemporary Egypt through the tale of an eight-year-old maid, who is best friends with the daughter of the wealthy Cairo household where she works.

Chronology Of Water
Kristen Stewart long-gestated feature directorial debut starring Imogen Poots is adapted from writer Lidia Yuknavitch’s best-selling 2011 memoir of the same name. Described as a tale of turning trauma into art, it follows female protagonist Lidia from her childhood in the Pacific Northwest through to adulthood as she navigates explosive misfires and mistakes, children that almost-were, toxic relationships and art heroes.

Once Upon A Time In Gaza
Palestinian fraternal directorial duo Tarzan and Arab Nasser’s third feature is billed as a modern western unfolding in the Gaza Strip in 2007. It revolves around the unlikely friendship between a student and a big-hearted charismatic drug dealer, who find themselves up against a corrupt cop with an oversized ego.  The twin brothers previously visited their native Gaza cinematically with Dégradé and Gaza Mon Amour, even if they have not been able to return physically to the territory in more than a decade.

Romeria
Newcomer Llúcia Garcia stars as a teenager who tries to connect with the family of her biological father, a drug addict who died of AIDS when she was very young, but hits a wall when her presence stirs up bad memories. Romeria is the final film in a trilogy inspired by Spanish director Carla Simón’s extended family history, begun with Summer 1993 and Alcarràs, which won the Berlinale Golden Bear.

De Gaulle Part 1 & 2
French director Antonin Baudry’s two-part biopic is currently one of France’s biggest budget feature film projects, with each chapter costing $38M. Simon Abkarian (Notre Dame, Restless) stars as President Charle De Gaulle, accompanied by a top-flight cast including Mathieu Kassovitz, Anamaria Vartolomei, Niels Schneider and Simon Russell Beale (as Winston Churchill). Cannes has a tradition of showcasing bigger budget mainstream French movies in its second week and this could fit the bill.

Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning
Tom Cruise was honored with a fly past by the French Air Force’s aerobatic team Patrouille de France when he attended Cannes in 2022 with Top Gun: Maverick. Could the festival’s 2025 edition see the star abseiling off its Palais des Festivals in a repeat of his Paris Olympics stunt? We gather there are no plans for this to happen right now but a Cannes splash for Paramount’s latest instalment in the franchise would be a lot of fun and given its U.S. theatrical release window of May 2025 we can only hope the stars may yet align.

Morte Cucina
Thai director Pen-ek Ratanaruang’s thriller stars newcomer Thanatphon Boonsang as a talented young female chef who sets in motion a revenge plan after a chance encounter with a man who sexually abused her when she was a teen. The cast also features Japanese star Tadanobu Asano alongside veteran Thai actors Nopachai Chaiyanam and Kris Srepoomseth, whose exact roles have yet to be revealed. Christopher Doyle is the DoP.

Dracula: A Love Tale
Luc Besson reunites with Caleb Landry Jones, star of his comeback drama Dogman, for this romantic retelling of the Bram Stoker classic transposed to Belle Epoque Paris, over the original UK settings of Whitby and London, as well as Dracula’s castle in Romania’s Transylvanian Mountains.

Rental Family
In one of his first roles since his Oscar-winning performance in The Whale, Brendan Fraser stars as a down-on-his-luck, American long-time expat resident in Tokyo, who takes a job in an agency specializing in renting out family members. It is the second feature from Japanese American director Hikari, whose first film 37 Seconds premiered in the Berlinale’s Panorama section in 2019, winning the Audience Award. In between times, she directed episodes of Tokyo Vice and Beef. Fraser told a conversation event in at the Red Sea Film Festival in December that the film would be out in 2025.

Mother Mary
David Lowery’s latest for A24 follows the relationship between a fictional musician and a famous fashion designer. Anne Hathaway and Michaela Coel star as lovers battling fame in their own industries. Lowery is best known for movies including Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, A Ghost Story, The Old Man & The Gun and The Green Knight. This one began filming back in 2023 so it’s not a great sign it hasn’t seen the light of day yet but the elements mean it’ll very likely be in demand.

The Bride!
Oscar-nominated actress Maggie Gyllenhaal’s second feature in the director’s chair is one of two Frankenstein-themed movies in this list (see Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein below). Billed as a sci-fi monster musical, the picture takes its cue from James Whale’s 1935 film Bride of Frankenstein, which was in turn was inspired by the original Mary Shelley classic. Gyllenhaal has gathered a high-profile cast topped by Jessie Buckley, Christian Bale, Penélope Cruz, Peter Sarsgaard, and Annette Bening. Warner Bros has set a September 26, 2025 release for the U.S., which would work well for a fall festival launch

In The Hell Of Kabul: 13 Days, 13 Nights
After high-end period-dramas Eiffel and hit The Three Musketeers two-parter, French director Martin Bourboulon directs this contemporary drama starring Roschdy Zem as real-life French Commander Mohamed Bida, who oversaw security at the French embassy, the last Western mission to remain open as the Taliban marched on Kabul following the withdrawal from Afghanistan of U.S. troops in August, 2021. He is joined in the cast by Danish Bafta-winning Borgen star Sidse Babett Knudsen and Lyna Khoudri.

Paradise
Canadian director Jeremy Comte, whose short film Fauve was Oscar-nominated in 2019, makes his fiction feature debut with this drama about two young men on different sides of the globe, one in Canada, one in Africa, who connect through their search for the truth about their absent fathers.

The Captive
Spanish director Alejandro Amenábar explores Don Quixote author Miguel de Cervantes’ life changing experiences when he was captured by Turkish pirates in 1575 and held for ransom. The lavish period tale is Amenábar’s first feature in six years after a foray into series with the Moviestar+ adventure drama Fortune.

Late Fame
Willem Dafoe co-stars as a forgotten poet whose work is rediscovered by a group of young artists, opposite Greta Lee, as a mercurial yet alluring theater actress who upends his life. U.S. director and writer Kent Jones’ past directorial credits include Diane, while he has also recently taken writing credits on Martin Scorsese’s Life of Jesus and Home, with Todd Fields.

The Fires
After directing streamer shows Hanna, Snowfall and The Power, Ugla Hauksdóttir returns to her native Iceland for this high-octane adaptation of compatriot writer Sigríður Hagalín’s bestselling novel of the same name.  Vigdís Hrefna Pálsdóttir stars as a volcanologist who navigates a deadly flare-up in volcanic activity and an affair with a photographer, played by Danish star Pilou Asbæk. First footage drew applause at the Les Arcs work in progress showcase in December, while producers Grimar Jonsson and Atli Örvarsson at Netop Films confirmed they were plotting a festival launch.

Filipiñana
Filipino director Rafael Manuel and Jia Zhang-Ke protégé expands his short film of the same name following the titular Filipiñana, a tee-girl at an elite golf course and country club in Manila as she learns the rules and tests the boundaries of her new job. The original short won a raft of prizes including Berlin’s Silver Bear for best short film.

Dao
Béatrice Mendy stars as a woman who reconciles her past and her present as she prepares her daughter’s wedding in an outer Paris suburb, shortly after laying her father to rest in a special ceremony in Guinea-Bissau. The movie is French Senegalese Alain Gomis’ sixth feature after Thelonious Monk doc Rewind & Play and Kinshasa-set 2017 Berlinale Grand Jury Prize winner Felicité.

Musk
The indefatigable Alex Gibney tackles the controversial Tesla and X owner and newly minted political kingmaker. Musk is being called a “definitive and unvarnished examination” of the businessman, who generated headlines aplenty throughout 2024. HBO Documentary Films holds North American TV and streaming rights, with Black Bear International recently selling international rights to Universal Pictures Content Group. It’ll be very hard to know when to stop production on this one given how fast-paced political change has been and the growing influence of Musk in all walks of life. It remains in production.

Levitating
Indonesian director Wregas Bhanuteja taps into his country’s traditional trance party scene for this tale about a young musician with ambitions to become a spirit channeler who becomes involved in a battle to preserve a village’s sacred spring. Bhanuteja made history in 2016 as the first Indonesian director to win a prize at Cannes, for short film Prenjak. His second feature Andragogy premiered in Toronto.

Marie and Jolie
Inspired by an encounter with an Ivorian journalist turned pastor, Tunisian director Erige Sehiri explores themes of belonging and sisterhood in this tale about three women from Sub-Saharan Africa living under the same roof in Tunis in an old house, which also conceals an evangelical church. Sehiri previously made waves on the festival circuit with Under The Fig Trees, which premiered in Venice in 2021.

Emergency Exit
Prolific Spanish producer Lluís Miñarro (Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, Still The Water, Tehran Blues) returns to the director’s chair for this magic realism-inspired tale about 14 characters trapped in a mysterious vehicle travelling through fantasy landscapes. The cast features Spain’s Marisa Paredes, in one her last roles ahead of her death in December, and Emma Suárez as well as French actress Arielle Dombasle and Japanese filmmaker Naomi Kawase among others.

Hot Milk
She Said and Ida writer Rebecca Lenkiewicz makes her directorial debut with this adaptation of Deborah Levy’s 2016 novel about the complex relationship between a mother and daughter on holiday in Almeria in Spain. Fiona Shaw plays the wheelchair bound mother opposite Emma Mackey as her long-suffering, directionless daughter, with Vicky Krieps playing an infuriatingly enigmatic traveller who crosses the latter’s path. UK novelist Levy’s work is proving fertile territory for filmmakers, with Justine Anderson’s adaptation of her 2011 novel Swimming Home selected for the 2024 edition of Sundance. We hear Hot Milk is likely for Berlin.

The Ice Tower
Oscar-winner Marion Cotillard co-stars opposite newcomer Clara Pacini in this 1970s-set tale about a runaway orphan who falls under the spell of the enigmatic star of The Snow Queen, after secretly watching it being filmed in a studio where she has taken refuge. Director Lucile Hadzihalilovic was last on the festival circuit with Earwig, which premiered at San Sebastian in 2021, winning the Special Jury Prize.

Chien 51
Adapted from Laurent Gaudé’s dystopian novel of the same name, Cédric Jimenez sixth film is set in Paris in 2045, in which the population is under constant video surveillance overseen by an AI-powered entity called Alma. When Alma’s inventor is murdered, downtrodden cop Zem Sparak (Gilles Lellouche) and police inspector Salia Malberg (Adèle Exarchopoulos) tasked with finding the culprit . Jimenez has promised a work in the vein of Minority Report. His last two movies The Stronghold and November both played Out of Competition in Cannes.

Orwell
The fascinating life and work of Animal Farm and 1984 scribe George Orwell is explored here in documentary form by Raoul Peck (I Am Not Your Negro) and Alex Gibney. Neon has North American rights to Orwell, which will tell the story of the English maverick novelist known for searingly satirical critiques of authoritarianism. Jigsaw Productions, Velvet Films and Anonymous Content are co-producing.

Echo Valley
The in-demand Sydney Sweeney stars in this thriller about the daughter of a horse-trainer coping with personal tragedy. Sweeney stars opposite Julianne Moore and Domhnall Gleeson. Apple TV+’s pic is directed by Michael Pearce (Beast) and penned by Brad Ingelsby. This one is taking a little while to emerge given that filming began back in summer 2023.

Fuori
Italian director Mario Martone has taken inspiration from late Italian actress and writer Goliarda Sapienza’s autobiographical book L’Università di Rebibbia. Valerio Golino stars as a misfit actress and writer who finds redemption and understanding among young prison inmates after she lands in jail for stealing the jewellery of an acquaintance. On her liberation she remains friends with the women, unsettling her intellectual circle. Cannes and Venice regular Martone’s last film Nostalgia was a Palme d’Or contender and represented Italy in the 2022/23 Oscar run.

Nouvelle Vague
Sixty-five years after Jean-Luc Godard won best director at the Berlinale for Breathless, Richard Linklater reconstructs the making of the 1960 New Wave classic with Zoey Deutch in the role of its American star Jean Seberg. Shot in black and white, it brings a host of figures from the period to life, including Jean-Paul Belmondo (Aubry Dullin), Agnès Varda (Roxane Rivière), Juliette Greco (Alix Bénézech), and the film’s cinematographer Raoul Coutard. Linklater previously took inspiration from Breathless for his improvised shoot on early picture Slacker. The director last enjoyed major success on the festival circuit with Boyhood, which world premiered at the Berlinale in 2014.

Rosebush Pruning
Callum Turner, Riley Keough and Elle Fanning top the cast of this remake of Italian filmmaker Marco Bellocchio’s 1965 first film Fists in the Pocket by Karim Aïnouz. The Firebrand and Motel Destino director collaborated with long-time Yorgos Lanthimos collaborator Efthimis Filippou screenwriter (Kinds of Kindness, The Killing of a Sacred Deer, The Lobster) on the screenplay. He is promising “a contemporary parable about the explosion of the traditional patriarchal family”.

The Wave
Oscar-winning A Fantastic Woman director Sebastián Lelio’s musical film takes inspiration from a wave of feminist civil disobedience that swept Chile in the spring of 2018. The mass protests, sparked by a collective desire to bring attention to harassment and abuse against women, came to be known as the “Feminist May”. Its original musical compositions have been created by 17 female Chilean musicians in collaboration with award-winning composer Matthew Herbert.

Dreams
Mexican director Michel Franco reunites with Jessica Chastain for a second time, after their first collaboration on Memory. Chastain stars as socialite and philanthropist whose ballet dancer lover Fernando (played by real-life professional dancer Isaac Hernández) leaves everything behind in Mexico to join her in the U.S in a move that will be an unwelcome disruption to her carefully curated life.

Silent Friend
Set in the German university town of of Marburg, Hungarian director Ildikó Enyedi’s seventh movie follows three human stories intertwined with a century old tree in its botanical gardens. In The Mood For Love actor Tony Leung Chiu-wai stars as a visiting neuroscientist, with other cast members including Léa Seydoux, Luna Wedler and Enzo Brumm. Enyedi, who won Cannes Caméra d’Or for first film My Twentieth Century in 1989, was last on the festival circuit with The Story of My Wife which played in Cannes Competition in 2020, having previously won Berlin’s Golden Bear for On Body And Soul in 2017.

Vie Privée
Jodie Foster stars in French director Rebecca Zlotowski’s murder mystery movie as a renowned psychiatrist who mounts an investigation when one of her patients dies in suspicious circumstances. She is joined in the cast by Daniel Auteuil, Virginie Efira, Mathieu Amalric, Vincent Lacoste and Luana Bajrami. It is Zlotowski’s sixth film after Other People’s Children, An Easy Girl, Planetarium, Grand Central and Dear Prudence.

The Kidnapping of Arabella
Italian director Carolina Cavalli, who made waves in Venice and Toronto in 2022 with debut film Amanda, reunites with the film’s star Benedetta Porcaroli for this tale of a social misfit who believes she is the wrong version of herself until she meets a 7-year-old girl who leads her to change her mind. The cast of also features Chris Pine in his first Italian speaking role.

All Before You
Palestinian director Annemarie Jacir’s first feature in seven years promises to be her most ambitious yet. Set against the backdrop of Palestine under the British Mandate, it explores the events surrounding the 1936-39 Great Revolt, in which the local population rose-up against British colonial rule, through a host of characters including a young farmer, struggling widow, a resistance leader and sophisticated Jerusalem socialite. Jacir was last on the festival circuit with Nazareth-set father and son tale Wajib but has also directed a West Bank set episode of Ramy in between.

It’s A Sad and Beautiful World
Cyril Aris has long been a creative force in Lebanon’s film and TV scene with credits including hit TV series Beirut, I Love You, co-created with Mounia Akl, and doc Dancing on the Edge of a Volcano, capturing the difficult 2020 shoot of her feature Costa Brava, Lebanon. His timely fiction feature debut follows a Beirut-based couple across 30 years as they navigate love and parenthood against the backdrop of civil war, peace and then economic crisis. Akl co-stars opposite Hassan Akil.

Aisha Can’t Fly Away
Having taken assistant director credits on Ayten Amin’s well-travelled 2020 drama Souad, Egyptian filmmaker Morad Mostafa makes his feature debut with this drama about a young Sudanese woman living in a Cairo neighborhood which is home to a large African migrant community. Against a backdrop of violent tensions between Egyptians and various African nationalities, Aisha’s situation turns sour after a local gang offers her protection in exchange for a favor.

Amrum
German-Turkish director Fatih Akin’s WW2 coming-of-age drama is set on Germany’s North Sea island of Amrum in the spring of 1945, in the final days of World War Two. It revolves around a young boy who has seal hunted, fished and toiled in the fields across the conflict to help his mother feed the family. When peace is declared, he finds himself navigating a new reality as other new conflicts arise. Newcomer Jasper Billerbeck plays the young protagonist alongside German stars Laura Tonke and Diane Kruger. The screenplay is based on the childhood memories of German director and screenwriter Hark Bohm, a long-standing friend of Akin.

El Sett
After biopics devoted to iconic music artists Maria Callas (Maria), Amy Winehouse (Back to Black) and Bob Dylan (A Complete Unknown) in 2024, the life of famed Egyptian singer Umm Kulthum will hit the big screen in 2025. Directed by Marwan Hamed from a screenplay Ahmed Mourad, the movie stars popular Egyptian actor Mona Zaki as the late singer. Framed by a concert that Umm Kulthum gave in the wake of  Egypt’s defeat in the 1967 Six Day War, the movie follows the ailing singer as she reflects on rise from poverty to her becoming one of Egypt’s greatest singer of the 20th century, if not the Arab world.

Roofman
Channing Tatum stars as the real-life figure of Jeffrey Manchester, an eccentric and charming serial robber who broke into more than 60 McDonald’s overnight via their roofs, then emptied the cash register in the morning after herding staff into freezers. Director Derek Cianfrance’s second movie Blue Valentine played in Cannes in 2010, while he was last on the A-list festival circuit with The Light Between Oceans which played in competition in Venice in 2016.

No Other Choice
Veteran Korean filmmaker Park Chan-wook’s dark comedy and 12th feature is an adaptation of American novelist Donald Westlake’s 1996 novel The Ax. Korean star Lee Byung-hun stars as its middle-aged protagonist who is unable to get a job after being laid-off from his job at a paper company and starts killing off other potential candidates in a competitive employment market. Cannes regular Park was last at the festival with Decision to Leave, which won him best director.

Hedda
Nia DaCosta reunites with Creed III star Tessa Thompson for this epic reimagining of Henrik Ibsen’s 1891 stage play Hedda Gabler about the daughter of a general who is trapped in a marriage and a house that she does not want. DaCosta and Thompson previously worked together on the former’s hotly received debut Little Woods in 2018. The cast also features Imogen Poots and Tom Bateman.

Anemone
Daniel Day-Lewis exited retirement to star in son Ronan Day-Lewis’s feature directorial debut on which he also takes co-writing credits. Exploring family bonds between fathers, sons and brothers through personal journeys and generational conflicts, the film’s cast also features Sean Bean and Samantha Morton. Day-Lewis was last on the festival circuit with Phantom Thread for which he went on to scoop an Oscar.

The Battle of Baktan Cross
Billed as a crime-drama-thriller, little else has been revealed about Paul Thomas Anderson new movie beyond its starry cast featuring Leonardo DiCaprio, Regina Hall, Sean Penn, Alana Haim, Teyana Taylor, Wood Harris, and Benicio del Toro. It  is Anderson’s first feature since his 2019 Oscar-nominated drama Licorice Pizza which skipped the festival circuit due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

The History Of Sound
Josh O’Connor and Paul Mescal co-star in Oliver Hermanus’s historical romantic drama based on a short story of the same name. The pic charts the relationship between two young men who meet in 1916 and travel together to record the folk songs of their countrymen in rural New England. Hermanus previously enjoyed success with Living, which landed Oscar nominations for Bill Nighy and writer Kazuo Ishiguro.

Ann Lee
The team behind seven-time Golden Globe nominee The Brutalist are gearing up for an equally high-profile 2025 in on the festival circuit with this starry musical inspired by real-life religious leader Ann Lee. The founding leader of the Shaker Movement, who was proclaimed by her followers as the female Christ, built one of the largest utopian societies in American history. Mona Fastvold (The World To Come) serves as director and producer and also co-wrote the screenplay with life partner and filmmaker Brady Corbet, who won Venice Silver Lion for The Brutalist, on which she also collaborated. Amanda Seyfried plays the titular sect leader.

Stitches
French director Alice Winocour has gathered a high profile cast for this exploration of the Paris high fashion world topped by Angelina Jolie. The plotline revolves around three characters whose lives collide during Paris Fashion week. The movie is shot in French and English in a similar vein to Winocour’s 2019 Eva Green starring picture Proxima. The director’s last film Paris Memories played in Cannes Directors’ Fortnight in 2022.

After The Hunt
Luca Guadagnino latest feature stars Ayo Edebiri, Julia Roberts, and Andrew Garfield. Shot across London and Cambridge, the film was written by Nora Garrett and is described as a thriller about a college professor who finds herself at a personal and professional crossroads when a star pupil levels an accusation against one of her colleagues. Guadagnino — a self-described “Venice filmmaker” — has debuted his last four films on the Lido and won Best Director at the festival with Bones And All.

The Phoenician Scheme
Billed as spy comedy-drama thriller, Wes Anderson’s new film is largely under wraps apart from details of its stary cast featuring Benicio del Toro, Michael Cera, Bill Murray, Riz Ahmed, Tom Hanks, Benedict Cumberbatch, Scarlett Johansson, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Rupert Friend, Willem Dafoe and Bryan Cranston. Anderson was last out and about on the festival circuit with medium-length work, The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar which was given special screening in Venice in 2023

Highest 2 Lowest
Spike Lee re-teams with longtime collaborator Denzel Washington for this reinterpretation of Akira Kurosawa’s 1963 crime thriller High and Low. Kurosawa’s original film follows an executive at a Yokohama shoe company who becomes a victim of extortion when his chauffeur’s son is kidnapped by mistake and held for ransom. “In our film, Denzel Washington is a music mogul with his own label and his reputation as the best ears in the business,” Lee told Deadline at the Red Sea Film Festival in December. Kurosawa debuted his High and Low at Venice in 1963. Will Lee follow in Kurosawa’s footsteps or remain faithful to Cannes?

Caught Stealing
After ambitious technology-driven work Postcard from Earth, Darren Aronofsky returns to more familiar turf with this New York set crime thriller, written by and based on a book series by Charlie Huston. Austin Butler stars as Hank Thompson, a burned-out former baseball player who is plunged into a wild fight for survival in the downtown criminal underworld of 1990s New York. Aronofsky was last on the A-list festival circuit with The Whale which debuted in Venice in 2023 and then played at Toronto.

The Ballad of a Small Player
After Vatican-set intrigue Conclave and Oscar-winning WW1 drama All Quiet On The Western Front, German director Edward Berger heads to the casinos of Macau for this psychological thriller starring Colin Farrell as a high-stakes gambler who decides to lay low in the peninsular when past lies and debts catch up with him. There, he encounters a kindred spirit played by Tilda Swinton who might just hold the key to his salvation. The film marks the first project under Berger’s creative partnership and global first-look deal with Netflix, via his company Nine Hours.

The Way Of The Wind
Some five years after shooting wrapped, Terrence Malick’s long awaited picture chronicling key episodes in the life of Jesus is expected to land at Cannes this year (though it was also expected in previous years too). Hungarian actor Géza Röhrig (Son Of Saul), plays Jesus in a cast also featuring featuring Matthias Schoenaerts, Mark Rylance and Ben Kingsley Malick was last on the festival circuit with A Hidden Life, which premiered in Competition at Cannes in 2019.

At The Sea
Hungarian director Kornél Mundruczó’s penultimate movie Pieces of a Woman saw its star Vanessa Kirby clinch best actress in Venice as well as an Oscar nomination. His new pictures stars six-time Academy Award nominee Amy Adams in the role of a woman coming to terms with the next chapter of her life without the career that gave her fame, fortune and, most importantly, her sense of identity. The cast also features Brett Goldstein, Murray Bartlett and Dan Levy, Chloe East, Jenny Slate and Rainn Wilson.

Hamnet
After tapping into the zeitgeist with Oscar-winning Nomadland and then fantasy, with Marvel saga The Eternals, Chloé Zhao makes her first foray into historical drama with this adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s 2020 award-winning novel about the life of William Shakespeare. Paul Mescal stars as the playwright and poet opposite Jessie Buckley as his wife Agnes, as they come to terms with the death of their 11-year-old son.

Frankenstein
Close to 20 years after Guillermo del Toro declared “a Miltonian” tragedy version of Frankenstein was the project he “would kill to make”, his dream has come true. His Netflix-backed adaptation of Mary Shelley’s classic novel stars Jacob Elordi as the iconic monster alongside Oscar Isaac, as mad scientist Victor Frankenstein, who brings him to life. The ensemble cast also features Mia Goth, Christoph Waltz, Felix Kammerer, Lars Mikkelsen, David Bradley and Christian Convery.

Father, Mother, Sister, Brother
Jim Jarmusch has assembled a starry cast for this family relationships drama featuring Cate Blanchett, Vicky Krieps, Adam Driver, Mayim Bialik, Tom Waits, Charlotte Rampling, Indya Moore and Luka Sabbat. Described as a triptych, the movie revolves around three separate stories about difficult family relationships– titled Father, Mother and Sister Brother – set against the respective backdrops of Northeast U.S., Dublin and Paris. Jarmusch was last on the A-list festival circuit with zombie picture The Dead Won’t Die with Driver, which debuted in Competition in Cannes in 2019.

Sacrifice 
French director Romain Gavras’ loose re-telling of the Joan of Arc story, stars Anya Taylor-Joy leads as Joan, a zealous spirit driven by a volcanic prophecy who takes three hostages in the belief that they need to be sacrificed for the good of humanity. Following her bringing of ‘Brat Summer’ into the lexicon, Charli XCX is aboard a buzzy support cast that includes John Malkovich, Ambika Mod and Jeremy O. Harris.

28 Years Later
Nearly two decades after the last instalment of their popular zombie franchise, Alex Garland and Danny Boyle have re-teamed for 28 Years Later. The pic is a sequel to 2002’s 28 Days Later and stars Jack O’Connell, Jodie Comer, Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Ralph Fiennes. Sony has set a June 20, 2025 release — the trailer for this one almost broke the internet. What a fun addition it would be to the Croisette, though we hear there aren’t any plans for that at the moment.

Hamlet
Filmmaker Aneil Karia caught some heat with his first feature Surge, which debuted at Sundance, and now returns with this modern adaptation of Shakespeare’s classic play. Riz Ahmed stars as Hamlet in a retelling that moves from elite London to the city’s underground, from Hindu temples to homeless tent cities. Also starring are Morfydd Clark and Joe Alwyn.

Bugonia
Yorgos Lanthimos re-teams with Poor Things and Kind of Kindness collaborator Emma Stone for this remake of South Korean sci-fi comedy, Save the Green Planet!. The English-language version was developed by CJ ENM with Ari Aster and Lars Knudsen at Square Peg. In the movie, two conspiracy-obsessed young men kidnap the high-powered CEO of a major company convinced that she is an alien intent on destroying planet Earth. Jesse Plemons also stars. Focus Features has set a November 7, 2025 release, which would work well for a premiere in Venice where Lanthimos won the Golden Lion in 2023 for Poor Things

The 67th Summer (aka 67 Summer)
Set in 1967, with the events of the Arab-Israeli Six Day War in the backdrop, Egyptian director Abu Bakr Shawky’s third feature revolves around the pen pal relationship between a young man in Cairo, with aspirations to become a concert pianist, and an Austrian girl, who spurs him on in his ambitions. Shawky made waves with debut film Yommedine, which premiered in Cannes Un Certain Regard in 2018, while his second film camel racing drama Hajjan was one of the first features shot in Saudi Arabia in the wake of its opening up to cinema. The cast is topped by Nelly Karim, Amir El-Masry and Valerie Pachner.

Elio
Pixar’s latest movie follows Elio, an underdog with an active imagination, who finds himself inadvertently beamed up to the Communiverse, an interplanetary organization with representatives from galaxies far and wide. Mistakenly identified as Earth’s ambassador to the rest of the universe, he starts to form new bonds with eccentric aliens while discovering who he’s truly meant to be. Pixar has a strong history with Cannes and Annecy and this releases in June.

Mike Fleming Jr, Baz Bamigboye, Liz Shackleton, and Damon Wise contributed to this report.