Oscar season only just ended and the summer movie season has barely begun, but cinephiles won’t have much time to catch their breath: The Cannes Film Festival begins Tuesday, unspooling its 79th edition over the next two weeks. Here are a few of the story lines to watch.
Hollywood will have a minimal presence.
Last year, Cannes mounted one of its most star-packed editions ever, with the likes of Jennifer Lawrence and Denzel Washington breezing through the Croisette, as well as the high-profile premiere of Tom Cruise’s final “Mission: Impossible” movie. But this year’s lineup is light on the glitz, with fewer English-language films in contention and no auteur-driven summer blockbusters like Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” or Steven Spielberg’s “Disclosure Day” to pump up the proceedings.
To make up for that starry shortfall, the festival director Thierry Frémaux added a last-minute anniversary screening of the original “The Fast and the Furious,” with the leads Vin Diesel and Michelle Rodriguez scheduled to be in attendance. He also stocked the competition jury with names like Demi Moore and Stellan Skarsgard, though rumors suggest that a broken foot prevented Jacob Elordi from joining them.
Among the A-listers still expected are Adam Driver, Scarlett Johansson and Miles Teller for James Gray’s crime drama “Paper Tiger”; Renate Reinsve and Sebastian Stan, who play a couple in “Fjord,” from the Romanian director Cristian Mungiu; and Rami Malek for “The Man I Love,” a musical from the writer-director Ira Sachs about an actor dying of AIDS.
Other buzzy English-language films include Nicolas Winding Refn’s “Her Private Hell,” starring Sophie Thatcher and Charles Melton; “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma,” featuring Hannah Einbinder and Gillian Anderson in a film by Jane Schoenbrun (“I Saw the TV Glow”); and “Butterfly Jam,” with Barry Keoghan and Riley Keough in a Kantemir Balagov production.
Directors will reign supreme.
Though Cannes counts on a healthy helping of glamorous stars, auteurs are still the most celebrated artists at the festival. With that metric in mind, this festival can still boast plenty of big names, including Pedro Almodóvar (“Bitter Christmas”) to Asghar Farhadi (“Parallel Tales”).
Many Cannes veterans are back this year: The “Drive My Car” director Ryusuke Hamaguchi returns with the French drama “All of a Sudden,” while Paweł Pawlikowski follows his acclaimed “Cold War” with “Fatherland,” starring Sandra Hüller. I’ve also got my eye on “Colony” from the “Train to Busan” director Yeon Sang-ho, Hirokazu Kore-eda’s “Sheep in the Box,” and “Coward,” from the young Belgian filmmaker Lukas Dhont, who won major prizes here for his first two films.
The Neon streak might continue.
The indie studio Neon has managed a remarkable record at Cannes, repping the last six winners of the Palme d’Or: “Parasite,” “Titane,” “Triangle of Sadness,” “Anatomy of a Fall,” “Anora” and last year’s “It Was Just an Accident.”
That streak is bound to snap someday. Still, with the company already securing rights to a sizable share of this year’s competition titles — including “Paper Tiger,” “Fjord,” “All of a Sudden,” “Sheep in the Box” and “The Unknown,” starring Léa Seydoux — it’s entirely possible that Neon could claim a seventh consecutive Palme. That is, unless …
A new Oscar rule could influence the Palme winner.
When it comes to filling out the Oscars’ international-film category, you rarely have to look much further than Cannes: This past year, all but one of the five academy nominees premiered at the festival, including the eventual winner, “Sentimental Value.”
Still, a new Oscar rule announced this month could strengthen that already formidable bond. Traditionally, each country can submit one official selection to contend in the international category. Under the new rule, films can also become eligible by winning the top prize at a major film festival, like the Palme d’Or at Cannes.
This will be a boon for dissident directors from countries that are unlikely to submit their work, like Jafar Panahi, whose Iranian film “It Was Just an Accident” won the Palme last year and had to be submitted to the Oscars as a French co-production. But will the rule change influence the deliberations of the Cannes jurors, who might be more inclined to give their top honor to a political film that needs an awards-season edge? Stay tuned.
Kyle Buchanan is a pop culture reporter and also serves as The Projectionist, the awards season columnist for The Times.
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