Cannes Film Festival 2025 Selection: Anderson, Aster and Ducournau Heading to La Croisette

After announcing earlier this week that Mission-Impossible: The Final Reckoning will screen out of competition, the Cannes Film Festival has revealed its full lineup. During the press conference in Paris, festival director Thierry Frémaux and festival president Iris Knobloch unveiled the competition lineup, which includes big Hollywood names, familiar faces, and highly anticipated features.

One of those certainly is Wes Anderson’s The Phoenician Scheme, of which the first trailer was released earlier this week. This mystery-comedy marks the director’s return to the festival since 2021 when he walked down the red carpet with The French Dispatch. Alongside him will be a star-studded cast including the likes of Benicio del Toro, Tom Hanks, Bryan Cranston, Benedict Cumberbatch, and Scarlett Johansson. Equally stunning is the cast of Eddington, the latest festival entry by Ari Aster. This black comedy, the third collaboration between the Beau is Afraid director and A24, stars Joaquin Phoenix, Austin Butler, Emma Stone and Pedro Pascal and will be Aster’s first entry into the main competition.

Another director making his Cannes competition debut is Oliver Hermanus, bringing his The History of Sound to the Palais des Festival. In this queer romance, Paul Mescal and John O’Connor will battle their way through World War I to give their fellow American countryman a loud and impactful voice. O’Connor is also leading The Mastermind, a Vietnam War-era movie which marks Kelly Reichardt’s return to the prestigious festival. Another female director whose work will be a close watch this year is Julia Ducournau. Ducournau, who won the Palme d’Or with Titane in 2021, hopes to win the prize again. This time with her French-English Alpha, which will be released in the US courtesy of Neon.

Cannes Film Festival takes place between the 13th and 24th of May. Check the full festival lineup here:

Opening film

• • Partir un Jour (dir. Amélie Bonnin)

In Competition

• • A Simple Accident (dir. Jafar Panahi)

• • Alpha (dir. Julia Ducournau)

• • Dossier 137 (dir. Dominik Moll)

• • Eddington (dir. Ari Aster)

• • Fuori (dir. Mario Martone)

• • La Petite Dernière (dir. Hafsia Herzi)

• • Nouvelle Vague (dir. Richard Linklater)

• • Renoir (dir. Chie Hayakawa)

• • Romeria (dir. Carla Simón)

• • Sentimental Value (dir. Joachim Trier)

• • Sirat (dir. Oliver Laxe)

• • Sound of Falling (dir. Mascha Schilinski)

• • The Eagles of the Republic (dir. Tarik Saleh)

• • The History of Sound (dir. Oliver Hermanus)

• • The Mastermind (dir. Kelly Reichardt)

• • The Phoenician Scheme (dir. Wes Anderson)

• • The Secret Agent (dir. Kleber Mendonça Filho)

• • Two Prosecutors (dir. Sergei Loznitsa)

• • Young Mothers (dir. Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne)

Un Certain Regard

• • A Pale View of Hills (dir. Kei Ishikawa)

• • Aisha Can’t Fly Away (dir. Morad Mostafa)

• • Eleanor the Great (dir. Scarlett Johansson)

• • Heads or Tails? (dir. Alessio Rigo de Righi, Matteo Zoppis)

• • Homebound (dir. Neeraj Ghaywan)

• • Karavan (dir. Zuzana Kirchnerová)

• • L’inconnue de la Grande Arche (dir. Stephane Demoustier)

• • Meteors (dir. Hubert Charuel)

• • My Father’s Shadow (dir. Akinola Davies Jr)

• • Once Upon a Time in Gaza (dir. Arab Nasser, Tarzan Nasser)

• • Pillion (dir. Harry Lighton)

• • Promised Sky (dir. Erige Sehiri)

• • The Last One for the Road (dir. Francesco Sossai)

• • The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo (dir. Diego Céspedes)

• • The Plague (dir. Charlie Polinger)

• • Urchin (dir. Harris Dickinson)

Special Screenings

• • A Magnificent Life (dir. Sylvain Chomet)

• • Stories of Surrender (dir. Bono)

• • Tell Her That I Love Her (dir. Romane Bohringer)

Cannes Premiere

• • Amrum (dir. Fatih Akin)

• • Connemara (dir. Alex Lutz)

• • Orwell: 2 + 2 = 5 (dir. Raoul Peck)

• • Splitsville (dir. Michael Angelo Covino)

• • The Disappearance of Josef Mengele (dir. Kirill Serebrennikov)

• • The Wave (dir. Sebastián Lelio)

Midnight screenings

• • Dalloway (dir. Yann Gozlan)

• • Exit 8 (dir. Genki Kawamura)

• • Songs of the Neon Night (dir. Juno Mak)