Cannes 2025 film fest names 21 contenders, including ‘Die My Love’, ‘The Phoenician Scheme’ and ‘Young Mothers’

PARIS, May 6 — A total of 21 films have been announced in the main competition at Cannes film festival, which kicks off on the French Riviera on May 13.

Here is a list of the titles vying for the Palme d’Or which will be awarded by this year’s jury president Juliette Binoche and her seven fellow judges including Oscar-winner Halle Berry and “Succession” star Jeremy Strong.

• ‘A Simple Accident’ by Jafar Panahi (Iran) — The repeatedly detained Iranian director, who has been banned from making films, asked organisers “not to say anything about his movie” which is his latest act of defiance.
• ‘The Phoenician Scheme’ by Wes Anderson (United States) — A typical madcap comedy-drama by the American director about a maverick businessman, with an A-list cast including Benicio Del Toro, Scarlett Johansson, and Mia Threapleton, Kate Winslet’s daughter.
• ‘Young Mothers’ by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne (Belgium) — The Belgian brothers, who have already won the Palme d’Or for best film twice, tell the story of five young mothers staying in a maternity home in their native Belgium.
• ‘Alpha’ by Julia Ducournau (France) — Four years after winning the Palme d’Or with “Titane”, the French director presents a new film starring Iranian-French Golshifteh Farahani and Tahar Rahim about a young girl confronted with the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s.
• ‘Sentimental Value’ by Joachim Trier (Norway) — A comedy drama featuring a filmmaker trying to reconnect with his daughters from a director whose last feature “The Worst Person in the World” also premiered in competition at Cannes in 2021.
• ‘Romeria’ by Carla Simon (Spain) — The Spanish director returns to her traumatic childhood with a family journey of a young Catalan girl in Galicia who has lost her parents to AIDS.
• ‘Sound of Falling’ by Mascha Schilinski (Germany) — A drama that brings together four women from four different generations living on the same farm.
• ‘Eagles of the Republic’ by Tarik Saleh (Sweden/Egypt) — On the brink of losing everything, Egypt’s most adored actor accepts a role he can’t refuse under pressure from the country’s authorities.
• ‘The Mastermind’ by Kelly Reichardt (United States) — The story of an art heist set against the backdrop of the Vietnam War and the nascent women’s liberation movement.
• ‘Dossier 137’ by Dominik Moll (France) — An investigator at France’s IGPN agency, which investigates police abuses, probes an incident in which a police officer injures a young man during a protest.
• ‘The Secret Agent’ by Kleber Mendonca Filho (Brazil) — A political thriller set in the late 1970s, during the final years of Brazil’s military dictatorship.
• ‘Fuori’ by Mario Martone (Italy) — A biopic about the Italian actor and writer Goliarda Sapienza by the Naples-born veteran director who has been a European arthouse favorite for more than 30 years.
• ‘Two Prosecutors’ by Sergei Loznitsa (Ukraine) — The maker of the 2018 “Donbass” documentary about the war in eastern Ukraine returns with a feature film set in the 1930s USSR during Stalin’s purges.
• ‘Nouvelle Vague’ by Richard Linklater (US) — A drama set in 1960 Paris about the making of Jean-Luc Godard’s cinema classic “Breathless”.
• ‘Sirat’ by Oliver Laxe (Spain) — A “road movie of misfits, of people outside society,” according to Cannes Festival director Thierry Fremeaux.
• ‘The Last One’ by Hafsia Herzi (France) — The French actor and director adapts Fatima Daas’s eponymous novel, telling the story of the youngest member of an Algerian immigrant family who gradually frees herself from her family and traditions.
• ‘The History of Sound’ by Oliver Hermanus (South Africa) — Hermanus, who tackled apartheid-era brutality in the South African army in his 2022 film “Moffie”, tells the story of two young men in World War I who decide to record the lives, voices and music of their American compatriots.
• ‘Renoir’ by Chie Hayakawa (Japan) — A coming-of-age drama about resilience, the healing power of imagination and a traumatised family struggling to reconnect.
• ‘Eddington’ by Ari Aster (US) — Aster, the new master of American horror whose previous credits include the “Hereditary” and “Midsommar”, has cast Joaquin Phoenix in this story about a small-town mayor in New Mexico during the Covid 19 pandemic.
• “Die My Love” by Lynne Ramsay (Britain) — The director of “We Need To Talk About Kevin” will premiere this thriller about a young mother suffering from depression, starring Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson.
• “Mother and Child” by Saeed Roustaee (Iran) — Roustaee’s last feature in Cannes three years ago, “Leila’s Brothers”, landed him with a prison sentence but his new film has been hailed in state-controlled Iranian media. — AFP