The announcement of the Cannes film festival’s selection list, like the unveiling of a mountain of still-wrapped Christmas presents, is a ritual that this year again affirmed its high-minded internationalism, its loyalty to its big-hitting auteurs of festivals past, its commitment to cinema as a live, in-person event and its repudiation of movies that are only shown on streaming TV. General delegate Thierry Frémaux was at pains to emphasise that that Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro – showing out of competition and probably his hottest ticket – is getting a proper theatrical release.
And for Cannes Kremlinologists and readers of the runes, Thursday’s announcement also shows the festival’s distinctive semi-detachment from the sexual and gender politics of the Anglo-Hollywood world. Of the films in competition, just six are from women directors: Catherine Breillat, Justine Triet, Jessica Hausner, Ramata-Toulaye Sy, Alice Rohrwacher and Kaouther Ben Hania. Score-keeping on the issue is said to exasperate the Cannes selectors; Cannes has its first ever female president in the form of former Warner Bros executive Iris Knobloch and in fact the opening film is directed by a woman: the historical drama Jeanne du Barry by Maïwenn. Yet starring as Louis XV is the bedraggled and contentious figure of Johnny Depp, so recently in an acrimonious court case with Amber Heard: which would in itself make North American festivals chary of giving the film quite so much prominence.
As for other issues, there are no Russian or Ukrainian films in competition, and this lineup is very different from last year’s in which Putin’s war was a hot-button issue. But the topic of climate crisis is there with Jessica Hausner’s Club Zero, which is reportedly about youth resistance in Austria.
And this year’s Cannes has given patriotic supporters of British film-makers a lot to feel happy about. Cannes regular Ken Loach returns with his longtime screenwriter Paul Laverty with The Old Oak, a study of Syrian refugees in the UK, and Steve McQueen, now stunning audiences with his Grenfell film at London’s Serpentine Gallery, is back in Cannes with his documentary Occupied City in the Special Screenings sidebar, based on his wife Bianca Stigter’s illustrated history Atlas of an Occupied City, Amsterdam 1940-1945.
General delegate Frémaux praised Britain’s “brilliant actress” Phoebe Waller-Bridge who is in James Mangold’s blockbuster Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, with Harrison Ford, and showing out of competition – another film that is bringing the Hollywood red-carpet glitz.
Perhaps the most intensely awaited film is Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest, based on the novel by Martin Amis, about a camp commandant at Auschwitz, starring Sandra Hüller. Glazer’s previous movies Under the Skin, Birth and Sexy Beast each have claims to classic status and The Zone of Interest might well be another – and this could be the festival’s controversial film.
Elsewhere, 29-year-old British director Molly Manning Walker is in the Un Certain Regard sidebar with her feature How to Have Sex, a movie about young girls losing their virginity on holiday in Mallorca, under peer pressure to “do it”.
Firebrand by Brazilian director Karim Aïnouz is to all intents and purposes a British film: the story of Henry VIII’s sixth wife Catherine Parr, based on Elizabeth Fremantle’s novel Queen’s Gambit – with Jude Law as Henry VIII and Alicia Vikander as Parr.
More titles will almost certainly be added to the competition list later on, but for now we have the silverback gorillas and the big names, most of whom have won major prizes at Cannes in the past. Wim Wenders has in fact got two films in the selection overall, but his competition contender is Perfect Days, and out of competition is his Anselm, a documentary study of painter Anselm Kiefer. Wes Anderson is back with another of his rectilinear, eccentric, starstudded contrivances, this entitled Asteroid City. Anderson is a Croisette favourite and certainly loved for his ability to assemble a huge glamorous cast for the red carpet – but juries are a little cool on Anderson these days when it comes to prizes.
Todd Haynes is back with his May December, a romantic drama starring Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore from screenwriter Samy Burch, about a married couple with a big age disparity whose relationship once shocked the nation. Japanese master Hirokazu Kore-eda is in Cannes again with his Monster, about a disputed incident at school between a pupil and a teacher, and Thierry Frémaux is hinting at a “Rashomon” dimension to this film.
Finnish auteur Aki Kaurismäki is that rare director who has been able to infiltrate the Cannes competition with comedies: his latest film is Fallen Leaves, one which he describes as a “tragicomedy”. Franco-Senegalese director Ramata-Toulaye Sy comes to Cannes with her debut feature Banel and Adama, about the love affair of two young people in a remote Senegalese village. Chinese director Wang Bing comes to Cannes with one of the rare documentaries to make it into the competition list: Shanghai Youth, about young people who leave the mountainous region of Yunnan and come to the city to work in factories.
Marco Bellocchio is one of the Cannes veterans who has been having a remarkable burst of productivity. At 83, he returns to the festival with his Rapito, about a child kidnapping case in the early 20th century. Bellocchio is in fact one of three Italian stars at Cannes: the others are Nanni Moretti, with his self-referential comedy The Future Sun, and Alice Rohrwacher’s The Chimera, starring Isabella Rossellini and Josh O’Connor, about the black market in archaeological artefacts.
Niri Bilge Ceylan, the Turkish auteur and Palme winner known for his sober and enigmatic dramas and tragedies, comes to Cannes with his new film, forbiddingly entitled About Dry Grasses, about a young teacher in a remote village pining for a new big-city career in Istanbul. Catherine Breillat’s Last Summer, starring Léa Drucker, is an explicit study of sexual transgression, remade from May el-Toukhy’s Queen of Hearts.
Tran Anh-Hung’s The Passion of Dodin Bouffant is thought to be in that high-risk genre, a “foodie” film, based on the fictional gourmand created by food writer Marcel Rouff in 1924. Justine Triet’s Anatomy of a Fall is a thriller, with Sandra Hüller making her second red carpet appearance, playing a woman suspected of her husband’s murder while her blind son is under pressure to reveal what he knows. Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania’s Four Daughters, is a family drama on the cusp of fiction and documentary, about the true story of a Tunisian woman whose daughters joined Islamic State.
It’s another mouth-watering list from Cannes – and next month we will see if it fulfils its promise.
• The caption to the first picture was amended on 13 April 2023 to correct the spelling of Maïwenn’s name.
