The official lineup for the 79th Cannes Film Festival was announced on Thursday morning, greeted with as much fanfare as anyone can muster these days for a list of arthouse movies. Which, actually, is kind of a lot! Cannes has rocketed out of whatever slump it was in ten or so years ago and become the premier destination for international (and some domestic) movies looking to gain Stateside awards attention. Which, of course, is not the festival’s sole purpose, but such success certainly has helped boost the festival’s profile as others, like Sundance and Toronto, have struggled to maintain relevance. There’s much to be excited about this year, even if there is a curious dearth of American films on the list (for example, A24 doesn’t have anything on the lineup as of now). Let’s take a look! 

Before we get into the Cannes lineup, I have a small request: I'm preparing to go to the festival next month for the first time as an independent journalist—rather than on a magazine's dime. How much coverage, and what kind of coverage, I can do there heavily depends on the support of Premiere Party paid subscribers. So if you've been thinking about upgrading, now’s the time! I’d really rather not have to sleep on the beach.

The Man Love, Ira Sachs

From the director of the 2025 blockbuster Peter Hujar’s Day comes this musical about 1980s New York, where a vibrant arts scene is brutally upended by the AIDS crisis. (At least that’s what I’ve gleaned from what little plot information is out there.) Sachs is a wonderful filmmaker—watch Love Is Strange and Passages, among others, if you haven’t already—and it’s always exciting to see a director who typically works small take a bigger swing like this. I am a little concerned that the film stars Rami Malek, who I’m pretty sure is a malevolent character from The Neverending Story, but maybe this will finally be the performance that makes me love him. Musicals have an interesting track record at Cannes: Lars von Trier and Björk both won top prizes for Dancer in the Dark a quarter century ago, more recently Adam Driver and Marion Cotillard parented a marionette in Annette to some adoration and some confusion. I think this movie will be a bit more grounded than those two, but I hope that Sachs does enough bold things to make this a festival standout. 

Fatherland, Pawel Pawlikowski

The road-trip genre gets a kooky tweak in this madcap comedy about the writer Thomas Mann traveling across Cold War Germany with his daughter. Okay, well, I don’t actually think this is a wacky lark, but it would be fun if the guy who made (among other things) Ida took a left turn like that. Whatever category Fatherland falls under, it is one of the higher profile films in the main competition. Because Pawlikowski has had great Cannes success in the past, and because one of the film’s leads is Sandra Hüller, who became an international movie star the last time she was at Cannes, with Anatomy of a Fall, and just last month sent Ryan Gosling on a suicide mission to space.

Fjord, Cristian Mungiu 

Mungiu, one of the pillars of the Romanian New Wave, took a flight from Bucharest to Oslo to make this drama about a Romanian husband (Sebastian Stan, who was born in Romania) and his Norwegian wife (Renate Reinsve, a Cannes best actress winner for The Worst Person in the World) encountering trouble with the locals in a rural town that is, presumably, situated alongside the titular topographical feature. Mungiu won the Palme d’Or for the harrowing 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days in 2007 and has been a Cannes fixture since—though, Fjord is only his fourth film in 19 years. I’m eager to see what he does in a different landscape, with internationally famous actors who will bring their own glow to his usually spare, unadorned pictures of life’s hardships. It won’t be a cheery one, but one doesn’t go to Cannes for cheery.

Gentle Monster, Marie Kreutzer 

Kreutzer made a great thriller, The Ground Beneath My Feet, and a pretty good period drama, Corsage, and now enters the Cannes main competition for the first time with this movie starring Léa Seydoux as a pianist who moves her family to the countryside and discovers something shocking. “Kreutzer,” “Seydoux,” and “shocking countryside secret” are all I need to hear to be sold. Kreutzer is one of dismayingly few female directors on the slate this year, so I hope this movie is big and robust enough to vie for jury attention amidst the loud, male heavy-hitters elsewhere in the lineup. Catherine Deneuve is in the film, which will help; for whatever reason, Cannes goes absolutely nuts for her, like she’s French or something. 

The Black Ball, Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi

The creators of the beloved series Veneno, a creative duo (and former couple) known in Spain as Los Javis, direct this period piece which follows three gay men across nearly a century of Spanish history (specifically stopping in 1932, 1937, and 2017). It is loosely based on an unfinished work by Federico García Lorca and a play by Alberto Conejero, though I’m sure the Javis have added their own Javi spin to it. In addition to the handsome men who make up the core cast (see above image), the Javii have enlisted Penélope Cruz and none other than Glenn Close to join the company. (Image search Close with the Javis; it’s cute.) For the people I hang out with in Cannes, this is probably right at the top of the priority list. And it has basically already won the Queer Palm—which is a little unofficial side competition (well, they’re not all sides) that culminates in a fun party toward the end of the second week of the festival. Unless, of course, the movie is a complete disaster. Which it won’t be! We must have faith.