Hollywood will not go to Cannes this year.
The world’s most important film festival kicks off on May 12 with a line-up of new films from some of global arthouse cinema’s most acclaimed filmmakers – Pedro Almodovar, Asghar Farhadi, Paweł Pawlikowski, Christian Mungeau – but not a single film from a major American studio. There won’t be any red carpet spectacle compared to last year’s premiere of “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning” or earlier Cannes launches like “Top Gun: Maverick” and “Mad Max: Fury Road.”
Is Cannes ignoring Hollywood? no way.
There are American films in the lineup. In the competition section, Ira Sachs is bringing the musical fantasy “The Man I Love” starring Rami Malek with James Gray’s “Paper Tiger” with Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver. Outside of the competition, John Travolta made his directorial debut with “Propeller One-Way Night Coach”, a passion project focused on aviation, and Andy Garcia directed and starred in the crime drama “Diamond”.
Missing are the big-budget studio tentpoles – those crowd-pleasing counterpoints to Cannes’ traditional diet of serious auteur cinema. Popcorn snacks in between more filling movies.
Studios have become wary of festival risks
It’s not just Cannes. The Berlin Film Festival in February was also notably devoid of studio fare, much to the dismay of the city’s star-studded audiences and celebrity-driven tabloids. Berlinale director Tricia Tuttle has suggested that major Hollywood companies are becoming wary of premiering big films at festivals, because they worry that negative reception or an awkward press cycle could hurt box office prospects just months before release.
She points to the 2024 Venice Film Festival, where Warner Bros. launched “Joker: Folie à Deux,” Todd Phillips’ musical follow-up to his billion-dollar hit “Joker.” The critics were cruel. The sequel grossed approximately $200 million worldwide, well below expectations and its reported budget. Lazy Cannes reviews for “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” may also have hurt that film’s performance, making it the weakest entry in the adventure franchise, adjusted for inflation.
Politics is another factor. Major festivals have become a point of protest and debate, with press conferences regularly asking questions about Gaza, Trump and Iran. This year, political tension in Berlin sometimes affected the discussion of films. For Hollywood studios, the risk of stars or projects being dragged into a divisive global debate could be counterproductive to a high-profile festival premiere.
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Without the studios, the number of international auteur cinemas at Cannes is doubling this year. Farhadi — a two-time Oscar winner for “A Separation” and “The Salesman” — returns with “Parallel Tales,” a Paris-set drama starring Isabelle Huppert, Catherine Deneuve and Vincent Cassel.
Almodóvar, the melodramatic master of Spanish cinema, is still in pursuit of his first Palme d’Or, Cannes’ top prize, with “Bitter Christmas,” a holiday drama about a woman abandoned by her partner during the festive season; This is his seventh film to participate in the main competition of the festival.
Long absent from the Croisette, Russian director Andrey Zvyagintsev returns with “Minotaur,” the story of a businessman whose world collapses.
Laszlo Nemes returns with “Moulin,” set in Nazi-occupied France, with Lars Eidinger playing Klaus Barbie, the so-called “Butcher of Lyon.”
Pawlikowski is bringing his Thomas Mann biopic “Fatherland,” starring Hannes Zischler and Sandra Hülser, while Belgian auteur Lucas Dhont is following up his Oscar-nominated “Close” with “Coward,” set in World War I.
Mungiu, who won the Palme d’Or with her feature film “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days,” made her English-language debut with “Fjord,” starring Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsway about a couple whose new life in rural Norway goes sour.
Germany is also back in the mix. While Mascha Schilinski’s “Sound of Falling” won last year’s jury prize, another German female writer, Valeska Griesbach, enters the Cannes competition with “The Dreamed Adventure,” her first feature film since 2017’s “Western,” which won Cannes’ Un Certain Regard prize.
Rounding out the competition, Danish provocateur Nicolas Winding Refn comes with “Her Private Hell,” while In Un Certain Regard, rising American indie filmmaker Jane Schonbrunn presents “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma,” a quirky slasher that’s already generating buzz as a potential breakout.
Without the Hollywood crowd on the Croisette, Cannes this year looks less like a global marketing platform and more like what it was always meant to be: a showcase for the world’s most exclusive filmmakers.
Edited by: Elizabeth Grenier