The 15 Best Cannes Films That Will Dominate This Awards Season

Elle

27-05-2025

With its clear blue Mediterranean waters, unpredictable May weather, red carpet glitz and glamour, and timed standing ovations, the Cannes Film Festival was once again a glorious sight to behold in its 78th edition. But as always, the real heroes were the movies themselves, as well as the artists who brought their cinematic offerings to the French Riviera.
It's always hard to pick out the best titles out of a festival as richly multifaceted as Cannes. But out of the 40 features I was able to screen, here are 15 outstanding films you should look forward to in the coming months, through the awards season and beyond. (Shout-out to honorable mentions Sound of Falling and Yes!.)
In what could be called a departure for the Turkish-German auteur of Head-On, Akın's classical Amrum follows a kid on the eponymous German island in the final days of WWII. He is Nanning (Jasper Billerbeck, a gifted newcomer), a burdened child raised by a Nazi mother, indoctrinated by the Hitler youth ideology against his will. But as he slowly discovers his own moral compass, he realizes that it's always been there to help him know right from wrong. Structured like a dark but graceful fable that follows Nanning across the island as he looks for basic supplies to feed his mother, Amrum (written by Hark Bohm and based on his own memories) becomes an act of generosity in featuring one such selfless good deed. It's a quietly soul-stirring watch.
Fear the exploding fury of an unsatisfied new mother living in the sticks, and revel in one of Jennifer Lawrence's career-best performances. After Causeway (2022), it is still an unparalleled experience to see her embrace the freewheeling and risky corners of independent cinema, the Winter's Bone kind that made us fall in love with her in the first place. Wild, feral, and meticulously designed, Lynne Ramsay's fiercely original Die, My Love puts Lawrence and Robert Pattinson through the ringer as they sexily and boundlessly portray a ferocious couple. The buzz in Cannes coined this as a 'postpartum depression movie,' but that incomplete shorthand misrepresents the truth at the heart of Ramsay's film. Die, My Love is both a scorching dissection of coupledom, and a cinematic ode to every untamable woman in touch with her desire-filled heart and prickly mind—women who unapologetically want it the way they want it.
Living in the ever-divided U.S. and witnessing some of the country's worst instincts around science-denying bigotry can make one go insane. In his follow up to Beau is Afraid's intoxicating odyssey into the human psyche, Ari Aster transforms that everyday American insanity into one of the most artistically complete and compulsively watchable doom-scrolls of the year. It's insightful, gloriously bonkers, and often very funny. (Perhaps it's time we acknowledge that Aster's sense of humor is just as sharp as his horror chops.) His Eddington is both the definitive COVID movie and a modern-day Western of sorts, culminating into a superbly directed and gradually darkening finale. Now an Aster mainstay, Joaquin Phoenix is unsurprisingly sensational here as his town's corrupt sheriff. As is Pedro Pascal, in the role of his primary adversary.
Hermanus's beautiful 2022 film Living was a masterclass in tender restraint, and the same can be said for his pitch-perfect Paul Mescal and Josh O'Connor starrer, steering a quietly epic love story between two young musicologists against the backdrop of WWI. While the matter-of-fact way Hermanus treats the love and longing between the two men as a given in a period movie is quietly radical, what's most special about The History of Sound is how timelessly classical it feels. Its continents-spanning scope and journey through the unique sounds and musical notes of the olden Americana (the soundtrack is achingly beautiful) put you inside the pages of a great, lost novel, all the way through the movie's richly earned, Atonement-like ending. Back in the '90s, we used to get this type of high-brow yet accessible prestige picture often enough. Today, it feels like a rare treat to luxuriate in.
It was a historic event for Jafar Panahi to return to Cannes in person for the first time since 2003. The Iranian master who's been frequently targeted by the Iranian regime, arrested for years on end, and banned from filmmaking has never stopped challenging his government through groundbreaking work like This Is Not a Film (2011). Released from prison in February of 2023, Panahi now signs his name under one of his best and most personal films to date, following a group of everyday people as they try to determine whether the man they've captured is actually the one who's tortured them in prison. Initially a revenge thriller, then an expansive and dignified interrogation of notions like vengeance, forgiveness, morality, and closure, this year's deserving Palme d'Or winner makes an exquisite case for grabbing onto our humanity for dear life, whatever the circumstances might be.
Movies as soulfully lived-in and intimately observed as The Little Sister are hard to come by. Led by a stunningly assured performance by Nadia Melliti (this year's Best Actress winner at the festival), Herzi's low-key meditation is a patient and compassionate little drama about a practicing Muslim girl in Paris, navigating the beats of her possibility-filled city, discovering her burgeoning identity as a lesbian, and trying to reconcile her needs and desires with the teachings of her religion. Among the film's finest achievements lies in Herzi's absolute refusal of cliches. Where a lesser movie would have milked the conservative Muslim family trope (which this Muslim critic has had enough of), The Little Sister fashions a beautiful mother-daughter scene where unconditional love is deeply felt, and packs a profoundly universal punch.
What would a Kelly Reichardt heist movie look and feel like? You'll have your answer with the dazzling little caper The Mastermind, a gentle and wonderful dramedy of sorts enlivened by the spirit of the '70s cinema (but low-key and unfussy). Josh O'Connor touchingly and deviously plays an art thief in a New England town, both down on his luck and hampered by a series of poor decisions. With a winsomely jazzy score that brings out the idiosyncratic humor of the film, The Mastermind is a new American gem, and perhaps Reichardt's most commercial film date.
The first Nigerian film to ever premiere at Cannes, Davies Jr.'s impressive debut tells a pressure-cooker of a story unfolding across a single day in 1993, following a mostly absent father (the incredible Ṣọpẹ́ Dìrísù) as he journeys from a rural town to Lagos with his two young sons who idolize him. With the backdrop of the country's presidential election, Davies Jr.'s introspective first film is an accomplished study of contrasts: violence juxtaposed against humanity, social unrest against the gentle and genial moments shared by the family, and a childlike wonder against the dire circumstances. The film is also a multilayered portrayal of Black masculinity, both adoringly seen through the eyes of the film's young characters and carried with poetic poise by Dìrísù.
Linklater's elegant love letter to the influential era in French cinema (which even inspired the New Hollywood generation) would be a towering achievement even if it did no more than generously invite budding cinephiles to film history without intimidating them. But the American auteur of loose-limbed rhythms and organically flowy dialogues accomplishes a lot more with his joyously beautiful telling of the making of Jean-Luc Godard's game-changing Breathless. In stunning black and white, and with the grainy sound quality of the era, he gives new life to the period picture, making it romantic, exquisitely detailed, and timeless. With Guillaume Marbeck and Zoey Deutch's enthralling and uncannily exacting performances as Godard and Jean Seberg, the list of masters Nouvelle Vague honors (François Truffaut, Claude Chabrol, Agnès Varda, and more) is as rich as the film that surrounds them. Linklater loves this period, and he wants to make you a lover, too.
'Sweet' probably wouldn't be the first word that a BDSM romance would bring to mind. Yet that word perfectly sums up Pillion, the new film from debuting writer-director Harry Lighton. Living with his supportive and amiable parents, Harry Melling's instantly lovable young chap tries to understand the full spectrum of his identity as a gay man, while (in the film's words) an 'impossibly handsome' Alexander Skarsgård portrays a hardcore motorcyclist that becomes Melling's object of attraction. There is kinky sex, instances of abusive dynamics, boot licking and some other shocking images throughout Pillion, fearlessly realized by the two performers. But thanks to the delicate tonal line Lighton radiantly walks with feeling and humor within a subculture, all that takes a back seat to the deeply resonant and disarming coming-of-age story at the film's core.
A terrific debut that brings thriller vibes to an all-boys summer camp for water polo, The Plague asks timely questions about bullying, budding masculinity, and sportsmanship. Ingeniously utilizing the staple moves of the horror genre, this brilliantly written feature starts off as a Conclave of sorts among tween boys (complete with a restlessly pursuing camera and a seesaw-y score), to later on settle into a disturbing probe into the existential dreads of male adolescence. Everett Blunck is marvelous as the newly bullied kid infected by a symbolic and mysterious plague, as is Joel Edgerton with his limited screen time as the boys' coach. But the real showstopper is the chief tormentor of the camp, played by Kayo Martin in a performance that signals the arrival of a future movie star.
The most adventurous and formally ambitious film of this year's competition (and one of the section's most gorgeous, too), Bi Gan's follow-up to Long Day's Journey Into Night feels like being inside a dream. And like a dream, it's hard to do justice to by mere words, and is perhaps even more impossible to classify. A chaptered yet fluid narrative takes us through a volatile journey throughout the history of cinema with nods to its varying styles, eras, and masters like Méliès and Murnau, while the film thrillingly reinvents itself at every turn. Stars Jackson Yee and Shu Qi are continually surprising, and the mind-blowing oner that Resurrection culminates into is a soul-stirring feat that will inspire generations to come.
You won't see a better political thriller this year than Filho's ultra-chic genre entry, loosely in the spirit of a Costa-Gavras picture. On the heels of last year's Oscar-winning Brazilian masterwork I'm Still Here, this is another knockout set against the traumatic backdrop of the country's dictatorship. Recently seen in Civil War, Wagner Moura delivers a deeply enigmatic performance in his return to Brazilian cinema as a '70s-era tech man who aims to reconnect with his son in a small town, while assassins slowly close in on him. With an agile and gradually darkening script that traces a mysterious severed leg amid the corrupt enclaves of a country's harrowing past, The Secret Agent is poised to have a strong showing throughout the awards season (after already winning Best Director and Actor prizes in Cannes). Bonus: You'll love all the well-calibrated needle drops and nostalgic cinematic references that include Jaws.
You've likely heard that singer Charli xcx declared the upcoming season as the 'Joachim Trier Summer,' a phrase immortalized by Elle Fanning with the stylish T-shirt she wore in Cannes. Well, let's also call this a 'Joachim Trier Awards Season,' as his deeply reflective film on generational trauma and familial healing through art and cinema is about to make a splash on the heels of his beloved The Worst Person in the World. Reuniting with his Worst Person star Renate Reinsve—she plays a feverish actress haunted by the past—and giving Stellan Skarsgård one of his career-defining roles as a dispassionate film director steering an unconventional personal project, Trier tells a heart-swelling and unexpectedly humor-filled tale that will break you before it makes you whole again. You might detect traces of Chekhov and hints of the best qualities of the director's Oslo Trilogy here, and leave the movie with a newfound gratitude for all that cinema can do.
The future of British social realism in cinema looks more promising than ever, thanks to actor Harris Dickinson's directorial debut, telling the contemporary story of a homeless man in London and the dead-end cycle he finds himself in. The fact that Urchin studiously resembles the British classics isn't the least bit surprising, given it's steered by an avid cinephile who proudly wears a tattoo of Kes on his arm, and evidently knows his Ken Loach and Mike Leigh inside and out. Still, Urchin doesn't at all carbon-copy what came before it. Lifted up by Frank Dillane's searing breakthrough performance and deepened by Dickinson's profoundly humanistic writing, the actor-director's thoughtful vision is completely modern and his own. He might be the most exciting new auteur to watch since the Safdie Brothers.