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The Cannes Film Festival is Back –  Here’s The Films To Watch Out For

Blake Lively appears on the Red Carpet back in 2014

The Cannes Film Festival is Back, Promising to Make Up for Lost Time –  The Films To Watch Out For. Report by Lucy Broadbent.

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Last year, the streets of Cannes were eerily quiet.  No celebrities.  No red carpets.  Not even the usual gaggle of fans along the Promenade de la Croisette.

Lupita Nyong’o on the red carpet Cannes in 2015

This year, with a line up of glittering heavyweights like directors Wes Andersen and Paul Verhoeven, competing for the prestigious Palme D’Or, the 74th Cannes Film Festival is set to be a film-lover’s dream come true.

Naomi Watts at a previous Cannes Film Festival in 2015

More than 2,500 films were submitted for consideration for this year’s event, according to festival director Thierry Frémaux.  Of these, 24 were selected for the main competition, which also contains two rollovers from last year’s selection that have not yet been screened.  The director Spike Lee will oversee the panel of judges.

Although the number of Coronavirus cases continue to rise and fall in France, the competition’s organizers, as well as the mayor of Cannes, want the show to go on, commencing July 6 to 17. Let the glamour begin. Here now follows a sneak peak at some of the the films that look set to get us all talking:

The French Dispatch

Wes Anderson’s humorous take on journalists working in Twentieth Century France, with Timothée Chalamet, Frances McDormand and Tilda Swinton.

Marion Cotillard

Annette

This year’s opening film about a singer and a stand up comic whose lives turn upside down with the arrival of their child, directed by Leos Carax, starring Marion Cotillard and Adam Driver.

Benedetta

Virginie Efira plays a 17th century nun who performs miracles during a devastating plague in Paul Verhoeven’s erotic thriller.

Mothering Sunday

It’s 1924 and a maid, played by Odessa Young, gets the day off, while her employers, played by Colin Firth and Olivia Colman, attend a celebration to mark the engagement of the maid’s lover, played by Josh O’Connor.

Bergman Island

Tim Roth and Vicky Krieps play an American filmmaking couple who head to the island of Faro in the Baltic to get inspiration from Ingmar Bergman who lived and died on the island.

Memoria

Written and directed by Thai filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul, who won the Palme d’Or in 2010, this film will keep you in suspense.  Tilda Swinton plays a Scottish woman who hears strange sounds in the night.

The Story of my Wife

A sea captain bets his friend that he will marry the next woman to walk in the door of the tavern where they are drinking.  Lea Seydoux plays that woman, Lizzy.  Set in the 1920s, and based on the Hungarian novel by Milan Fust. Directed by Ildiko Enyedi.

Categories: World
Robyn Foyster: Robyn Foyster is a multi-award-winning journalist, media executive, and the owner and publisher of The Carousel, alongside the Women Love Network (which includes Women Love Wellness, Women Love Travel, and Women Love Tech). At the forefront of digital lifestyle and tech publishing, Robyn was named the 2025 Winner of the Samsung IT Journalism Award for Best Corporate Content and is a 2026 Lizzies Finalist. Voted one of B&T’s 30 Most Powerful Women In Media, she previously served as the Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Australia’s three biggest flagship magazines—The Australian Women’s Weekly, Woman’s Day, and New Idea—and was a senior executive at the Seven Network. A sought-after speaker and an eight-year judge for the Telstra Business Awards, Robyn remains dedicated to championing women's voices across lifestyle, wellness, and technology.