The lineup for the 70th Cannes Film Festival was revealed overnight (or earlier today, if you’re in France) and, while it includes some major American movie stars—Nicole Kidman alone has four projects screening at the festival—major American movie studios have been shut out from the big opening-night slot. Instead, the festival will open with French director Arnaud Desplechin’s Ismael’s Ghosts, starring Mathieu Amalric as a filmmaker whose relationship with his current partner (Charlotte Gainsbourg) is thrown into chaos by the return of a former flame (Marion Cotillard) once thought dead.
The competition slate includes a few expected picks, including Sofia Coppola’s languid Civil War-era drama The Beguiled, Todd Haynes’ Wonderstruck with Julianne Moore, Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Lobster followup The Killing Of A Sacred Deer, Right Now, Wrong Then director Hong Sang-soo’s The Day After, and Michael Haneke’s ironically titled Happy End with Isabelle Huppert. New on the Cannes scene this year is Netflix, which has two films—The Host and Snowpiercer director Bong Joon-ho’s Okja and Noah Baumbach’s Dustin Hoffman and Adam Sandler-starring The Meyerowitz Stories—in competition. (Amazon Studios also returns with two films in competition, Wonderstruck and We Need To Talk About Kevin director Lynne Ramsay’s new project You Were Never Really Here, starring Joaquin Phoenix.)
Showing out of competition are new films from Takashi Miike, Agnès Varda, and John Cameron Mitchell, as well as the premiere of the first two episodes of David Lynch’s new season of Twin Peaks ahead of its May 21 Showtime debut and a special screening of the Jane Champion-directed second season of Top Of The Lake. Speaking of the decision to include TV series in perhaps the world’s highest-profile film festival, Cannes general delegate Thierry Frémaux says, “We’re not going to start debating here the fact that even [television] series, unless proven otherwise, are using the classical art of filmmaking and of cinematic narration….It’s because those two series are signed David Lynch and Jane Campion, who are filmmakers and friends of the Cannes Film Festival, that we are showing their work.”
Also reflective of the shifting cinema landscape are the inclusion of more female directors (12 of the 49 features announced are directed by women, which, yes, is an improvement) and a VR movie from technology-loving The Revenant and Birdman director Alejandro G. Iñárritu, the first to screen at Cannes. Called Carne y Arena, the film follows the journey of migrants across the U.S./Mexico border.
You can see the lineup—excluding the Directors’ Fortnight and Critic’s Week series, which have yet to be announced—below, courtesy of Variety. And you can read The A.V. Club’s coverage of Cannes, where we’ll be on the ground starting May 17, next month.
Opening Night
Ismael’s Ghosts (Arnaud Desplechin)
Competition
120 Beats Per Minute (Robin Campillo)
The Beguiled (Sofia Coppola)
The Day After (Hong Sang-soo)