The Cannes Film Festival announces its 2018 lineup

IMAGE COURTESY OF A24

Another year, another excuse for the global film community to descend on the French Riviera to drink champagne on yachts. That’s right, another Cannes Film Festival is upon us—the 71st, to be exact—and earlier today the festival’s director Thierry Frémaux announced the initial lineup of movies that will probably not be heading to a theater near you. As expected, this year’s lineup is stacked with the latest work from an array of international auteurs, including the festival’s opening night movie Everybody Knows, a psychological thriller from Asghar Farhadi which stars Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz.

Cannes will host the world premiere of Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman, based on the real-life story of a black Colorado police officer (John David Washington) who goes deep undercover inside the Ku Klux Klan. The festival was the site of Lee’s first great success when he premiered Do the Right Thing back in 1989, and many are expecting this Jordan Peele-produced thriller to be a return to form for the director after a series of misfires. Also in competition will be David Robert Mitchell’s Under the Silver Lake, his highly anticipated follow-up to It Follows, which sees Andrew Garfield descending into a seedy criminal underworld in East L.A. as he searches for a missing woman.

That about does it on the American side of things (unless you count the out-of-competition premiere of Solo: A Star Wars Story), with most of the lineup being devoted to a diverse group of movies from around the world. One of those is The Image Book, from Jean-Luc Godard, whose last narrative feature, Goodbye to Language, premiered at the festival in 2014. Also worth noting is the lack of female directors being represented, a troubling trend that continues to plague the festival. Lebanese filmmaker Nadine Labaki, Italian director Alice Rohrwacher, and French director Eva Husson will all have films in competition, inclusions which Frémaux stressed should not be conflated with the #MeToo movement. The world is not the same as it was last September,” he said at the press conference announcing the lineup. “We have to make a difference between the women filmmakers and the issues. There are not enough women directors but we don’t have time to talk about that here. Our point of view is that the films are selected for their intrinsic qualities. There will never be a selection with a positive discrimination for women.”

Missing from the lineup are new movies from a hall-of-fame roster of directors who were rumored to have movies at this year’s festival, including Brian De Palma, Harmony Korine, Claire Denis, Lars von Trier, Mia Hansen-Løve, and Luca Guadagnino. It’s possible that some of these will be added before the festival begins on May 8.

You can see the entire Cannes lineup below.

Opening Night Film
Everybody Knows, Asghar Farhadi

In Competition
Ash Is Purest White, Jia Zhang-Ke
At War, Stéphane Brizé
BlacKkKlansman, Spike Lee
Burning, Lee Chang-dong
Capernaum, Nadine Labaki
Cold War, Pawel Pawlikowski
Dogman, Matteo Garrone
Girls of the Sun, Eva Husson
The Image Book, Jean-Luc Godard
Lazzaro Felice, Alice Rohrwacher
Leto AKA Summer, Kirill Serebrennikov
Netemo Sametemo AKA Asako I & II, Ryusuke Hamaguchi
Shoplifters, Kore-Eda Hirokazu
Sorry Angel, Christophe Honoré
Three Faces, Jafar Panahi
Under the Silver Lake, David Robert Mitchell
Yomeddine, A.B. Shawky

Special Screenings
Dead Souls, Wang Bing
10 Years in Thailand, Aditya Assarat, Wisit Sasanatieng, Chulayarnon Sriphol & Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Pope Francis – A Man Of His Word, Wim Wenders
La Traversée, Romain Goupil
To The Four Winds, Michel Toesca
Le Grand Cirque Mystique, Carlos Diegues
The State Against Mandela and the Others, Nicolas Champeaux & Gilles Porte

Midnight Screenings
Arctic, Joe Penna
The Spy Gone North, Yoon Jong-Bing

Out of Competition
Le Grand Bain, Gilles Lellouche
Solo: A Star Wars Story, Ron Howard

Un Certain Regard
Long Day’s Journey Into Night, Bi Gan
Little Tickles, Andréa Bescond & Eric Métayer
Sofia, Meyem Benm’Barek
Border, Ali Abbasi
Sextape, Antoine Desrosières
The Gentle Indifference of the World, Adilkhan Yerzhanov
El Angel, Luis Ortega
In My Room, Ulrich Kohler
The Harvesters, Etienne Kallos
My Favorite Fabric, Gaya Jiji
Friend, Wanuri Kahiu
Euphoria, Valeria Golino
Angel Face, Vanessa Filho
Girl, Lukas Dhont
Manto, Nandita Das