Cannes 2025: What Caught Our Eye

The point of festival movies isn’t to make something so indigestible that the mere thought of watching it leads to burnout. A good movie should tell an engaging story without force.

Here’s a list of promising movies premiering at Cannes this year.

EDDINGTON

Joaquin Phoenix and Pedro Pascal in Eddington (2025)

In the early 2010s, Joaquin Phoenix announced his retirement from acting and said he was reinventing himself as a rapper. He had Casey Affleck (his then brother-in-law) follow him around with a camera for an entire year, filming him as he launched this rap career—all for it to turn out to be a performance act in the end, for their mockumentary (?) I’m Still Here. People forget about this a lot, and it’s so sad that they do. Not because of the movie itself, but because the whole thing was so bizarre, and it speaks volumes about the kind of actor Phoenix is. So unedited.

Pascal, on the other hand—I deeply wish for a project that overrides the ridiculous online “babygirl” narrative about a man who is so very clearly talented. I understand why people love him—there is something so genuine, a certain kind of warmth, about the guy, and it bursts through the screen.

This project feels like it was made for the craft, not the press tour. I hope it falls into the hands of the right crowd.

I LOVE PERU

By Raphaël QUENARD & Hugo DAVID

Very Eat, Pray, Love-eque. Love to see men in female dominated fields. 

PARTIR UN JOUR

Juliette Armanet & Bastien Bouillon in Partir Un Jour

I would love to see this because I’ve only seen this Hallmark type of storyline in American movies (filmed in Ottawa, of course) and it would be an outer body experience to witness the French manifestation of it. 

SIRÂT

By Oliver Laxe

If you thought we would not get a layered cinematic take on the complexities of today’s rave culture, believe it or not, you were wrong. 

I HUVUDET PÅ BO

By Jon Asp & Mattias Nohrborg

Another movie about people making movies. But this one is about being in the shadow of  Ingmar Bergman. I cannot explain it but it’s giving tea. 

L’INCONNU DE LA GRANDE ARCHE

By Stéphane Demoustier

It’s giving Brutalist? I haven’t seen neither so what do I know. 

Yet, just purely based on the fact that this one does not have Harvey Weinstein’s ex wife’s current boyfriend in it, I’ll bet on this being a better, more tolerable, digestible watch. 

RENOIR

By Chie Hayakawa

It’s a dire situation told from a child’s perspective. Those are usually good, right? It’s low hanging fruit, but I’ll indulge. 

MY FATHER’S SHADOW

By Akinola Davies

Set over the course of a single day, this is a story rooted in a real, politically tense event—told by someone who lived through it at a young age. No heroes, no wins—just blunt reality.

Stories like this are often passed around for critical praise, but this feels different. There’s something striking about having endured something so extreme—and having accepted it as ordinary at the time.

This film isn’t dramatized for effect—it speaks from a place of truth. We should be championing narratives like this.

ÁSTIN SEM EFTIR ER

By Hlynur Pálmason

Amid all the trauma-centric films about war, identity, and discrimination, it’s movies like this that quietly stand out.

There’s nothing especially catastrophic here—just two people navigating separation . It’s not irreversible, not even irrecoverable. And yet, it lands heavy.

Regardless of your lived experience, you are subject to possibly experiencing (or witnessing) the slow burn of falling out of love one day. The sheer honesty of movies like this make them so terrfiying. But it is also a testimony- you don’t have to dig deep to hit deep.