rewrite this title The 2025 Cannes Film Festival Has Begun – Diving into New Cinema | FirstShowing.net

The 2025 Cannes Film Festival Has Begun – Diving into New Cinema

by Alex Billington May 14, 2025

The 78th Festival du Film de Cannes has officially begun. Everyone is back in the South of France this May for yet another cinema celebration in the sun on the Mediterranean coast. The next 12 days in Cannes are dedicated to discovery and art and storytelling as film lovers from around the world dive into screenings and conversations of all kinds. This is my 15th year attending and covering the Cannes Film Festival in France – to celebrate my 14th year last year I gave away 4 copies of Matt Singer’s excellent book “Opposable Thumbs”. While I’m not giving away more books for 2025, I am once again incredibly happy to be back, excited to dive into the films and anxiously awaiting each screening. However, something feels different in 2025. Something shifted in the world last fall, a perilous shift, and it seems to have disrupted the normal ebb & flow of things as everyone adjusts to the strange times we’re living in. Nonetheless there are amazing films waiting for us, hopefully some films that challenge our prejudices and biases, and allow us to see the world anew again. The festival is off to a more quiet start, but the buzz will build up over the next two weeks.

One other reason things feel a bit different at Cannes 2025 is because last year was such an important year. Sean Baker’s Anora and Gints Zilbalodis’ Flow and Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance (as well as Emilia Perez, The Seed of the Sacred Fig, Eephus, All We Imagine As Light) all premiered at Cannes 2024 then went on to win big at the Academy Awards, taking home some of the most-talked-about Oscars. This means there’s now a bit more excitement around Cannes being the place where the biggest Oscar contenders might (or might not) show up for the first time. Of course, this has been the norm for decades already, with films like Apocalypse Now and Do the Right Thing among many others. But a Cannes film winning Best Picture nowadays is another strong reminder that no one should ignore this festival and/or the films they show – even if this town is over 6000 miles away from Los Angeles. It’s as relevant and as important as ever. For cinephiles it’s just the place we all must return to every May and call our “home” (or “cinema heaven”) as we settle in for these two weeks and march from screening-to-screening around the Croisette, stuffing ourselves with delicious French croissants & croque-monsieur sandwiches during the few minutes between each film.

At the start of last year’s Cannes, I brought up the always intriguing question: “is it still possible to innovate anymore in cinema?” This year the most prominent question on my mind as we get underway in Cannes is – does cinema still matter in a time where fascism is on the rise again? Over in America, everyone is debating and analyzing the box office endlessly, wondering if movies are still culturally important. How many movies will most people watch each year? How can we convince them to watch more than what they usually watch? If many people took the time to watch Anora and Flow last year, can we convince them to watch more obscure & unique international cinema that premieres alongside these more mainstream films in Cannes? Of course! But it means we must keep talking about films, and we must keep the conversation going. It’s not just about “here’s my review” and that’s it. It’s about staying passionate, it’s about bringing up & supporting films you love outside of the festival. And my hope is that anyone reading my thoughts on Cannes might be persuaded to watch a couple of the films that are premiering here. It’s always my goal at this festival to go to screenings for films that I might not have considered at first glance but should take a chance with anyway.

Looking at the 2025 selection of films, my most anticipated are the expected picks: Ari Aster’s Eddington, Wes Anderson’s The Phoenician Scheme, Richard Linklater’s Nouvelle Vague, Kelly Reichardt’s The Mastermind (mainly because of Josh O’Connor), Lynne Ramsay’s Die My Love (as a big fan of We Were Never Really Here), Spike Lee’s Highest 2 Lowest, among others. My completely blind pre-festival Palme d’Or pick is the surprise last minute addition: Bi Gan’s Resurrection. I was in Cannes in 2018 for his last feature film Long Day’s Journey Into Night, which included an hour-long 3D segment at the end. They handed out 3D glasses as we were going in, which we were told not to put on until the right moment in the film, and everyone was curious to find out WTF this whole 3D finale was about. While this new one doesn’t have any 3D, I do believe it’s going to be entrancing cinematic experience that we’ll all be talking about for years after this festival. I’m also excited about Julia Ducournau’s Titane follow-up called Alpha, of course, along with Norwegian director Joachim Trier’s Worst Person in the World follow-up called Sentimental Value (both films will be released by Neon in the US later this year). I’m not actually excited about Ethan Coen’s Honey Don’t, but I am looking forward to watching Michael Angelo Covino’s new film Splitsville and Sebastián Lelio’s The Wave (both showing in the Cannes Premiere section out-of-competition). As for the rest – we’ll find out eventually and I’ll write reviews for films that I believe are worthy of extra attention.

I invite you to please follow along as I make my way from screening to screening at #Cannes2025, watching films from all kinds of different countries, catching up with friends and colleagues. And please make sure to follow updates, read reviews, and keep an eye on all of the film critics / journalists in Cannes this year. One thing I love about this festival is that it brings us all together! We fly in to be here at the same time. There’s different voices, different takes, different kinds of coverage, different reviews, always more to read, always more to consider. As strange as it is to say this out loud, I do love arguing about films here! Sometimes it’s fun to have a healthy debate, sometimes it’s fun to disagree about a new film, sometime it’s interesting to think about what someone else saw in a film, and how their interpretation is different (or similar). Festivals should always be about this kind of intriguing discussion, encouraging a vivacious discourse, where any/all voices can participate in the conversation about cinema. Thankfully the Cannes Film Festival is a beautiful place where conversations happen on every street, in bars, in restaurants, in apartments, and yes even in queues for the next screening. I’m ready to start watching, dedicating myself fully to two full weeks of films.

You can follow all of my Cannes 2025 coverage and reviews right here and on my Letterboxd with ratings and thoughts posted daily. I’m also still on Twitter @firstshowing. The festival begins on May 13th and runs until May 24th, and I’ll be watching as much as I can while the films are still playing on the screens in town.

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