20 films we’d like to see at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival

As the years go by, it seems like the win­dow between the actu­al Oscars cer­e­mo­ny and when peo­ple start talk­ing about the Oscars gets wider and wider. So, with the 2016 Acad­e­my Awards lit­tle more than fad­ing glint in our smudged rear-view, we thought we’d look ahead to some of the hot­ly-antic­i­pat­ed movies which could be set to com­pete at the next major event on the dock­et: the 2016 Cannes Film Fes­ti­val. What fol­lows is an ide­alised ver­sion of the offi­cial competition.

Span­ish direc­tor Pedro Almod­ò­var has won a fair few major awards in his time, but the one that still eludes him is the top hon­our at the Cannes Film Fes­ti­val, the Palme d’Or. He’s won Best Direc­tor (for Talk To Her in 2002) and Best Screen­play (for Volver in 2006), but he’s nev­er quite man­aged to snag the big one. As much as you can pin any hope on a trail­er, his new one, Juli­eta, looks sus­pi­cious­ly like a return to his melo­dra­ma hey­day of the late ​’90s/​early ​’00s. The film opens in Spain a month before the fes­ti­val, so we should get an inkling of its awards prospects pret­ty soon.

As sure as eggs is eggs, the new film by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dar­d­enne will receive its offi­cial world pre­mière in com­pe­ti­tion at the 2016 Cannes Film Fes­ti­val. Put down a bet and bill us if we’re wrong. To add excite­ment to this utter­ly non-sur­pris­ing cer­tain­ty, the broth­ers are extend­ing their run of work­ing with name actors (Cécile de France in The Kid with the Bike; Mar­i­on Cotil­lard for Two Days, One Night) and are team­ing up with French fire­crack­er Adèle Haenel.

Roman­ian mav­er­ick Christi Puiu deliv­ered a bril­liant curve­ball in 2010 with his three-hour thriller, Auro­ra, and we’re extreme­ly excit­ed for his return to the movie fray. Where Auro­ra bare­ly con­tained a line of dia­logue, his new one, Sier­ra-Neva­da, looks to take the oppo­site tack, cen­tring around a fam­i­ly gath­er­ing on the anniver­sary of a patriarch’s recent death, result­ing in a whole lot of chatter.

It should be con­sid­ered a scan­dal that it has been near­ly eight years since Argen­tine direc­tor Lucre­cia Mar­tel has released a film – and that film would be 2008’s mas­ter­piece, The Head­less Woman. This new one is based on the most famous nov­el by author Anto­nio di Benedet­to which, inci­den­tal­ly, has been trans­lat­ed into Eng­lish for the first time and is being released smack bang in the mid­dle of this year’s fes­ti­val. It looks a lit­tle dif­fer­ent to her con­tem­po­rary dra­mas of social and polit­i­cal alien­ation, but we couldn’t be more enthu­si­as­tic to final­ly see it.

Mr Dadaist prank him­self, Shia LaBeouf, is one of the stars of this new work by British direc­tor Andrea Arnold, her first since she trav­elled back to the misty moors of Wuther­ing Heights in 2011. It’s also her first film to be set in the USA, its sto­ry con­cern­ing a gang of tear­away teens who sell mag­a­zine sub­scrip­tions by day and par­ty all through the night. Super­cool Amer­i­can indie label, A24 (Room, The Witch), have picked up the film for dis­tri­b­u­tion in the US, which is a very good ear­ly sign.

We were big fans of Jeff Nichols’ sci-fi spec­tac­u­lar, Mid­night Spe­cial, but since that film was com­plet­ed the direc­tor has made anoth­er project, which could well sneak into the Cannes line-up. Set in 1958, the film stars Joel Edger­ton and Ruth Neg­ga as an inter­ra­cial mar­ried cou­ple who are sen­tenced to a prison term because of their illic­it and polit­i­cal­ly provoca­tive partnership.

With a US release date pen­cilled in for 15 July, it would seem like a sage move to launch Damien Chazelle’s fol­low-up to Whiplash at Europe’s pre­mier film jam­beroo. Jazz still makes an appear­ance in this tale of a piano play­er (Ryan Gosling) who falls in love with an actress (Emma Stone), but con­sid­er­ing the man­ic for­mal stylings of that pre­vi­ous fea­ture, we’re cer­tain all will not be as sim­ple as that.

The pro­duc­er Said Ben Said has revealed him­self as a cham­pi­on of the ​“old mas­ters”, recent­ly mak­ing movies with Bri­an De Pal­ma and Roman Polan­s­ki. Now, he brings Paul Ver­ho­even on to his rar­i­fied ros­ter, enabling the direc­tor to make his first fea­ture film in ten years – since his spec­tac­u­lar World War Two thriller, Black Book. With Elle, this is the first time the Dutch native has made a film in the French lan­guage, and the great Isabelle Hup­pert in the star­ring role. Even if a tiny speck­le of that old Ver­ho­even mojo is appar­ent, it will be enough to war­rant a major celebration.

Brazil­ian crit­ic-turned-direc­tor Kle­ber Men­donça Fil­ho made the lit­tle film that could in 2012, his Neigh­bour­ing Sounds leap­ing from the mod­est spring­board of the Rot­ter­dam Film Fes­ti­val and grow­ing in stature as the months rolled by. His fol­low-up looks like it could be incred­i­ble, boast­ing a log-line that’s pos­si­bly as good (if not bet­ter) than Yor­gos Lan­thi­mos’ The Lob­ster: An age­ing crit­ic lives in an apart­ment packed with books, films and music, but luck­i­ly she has the abil­i­ty to trav­el through time. Sign. Us. Up. Now.

Rewind three years and the idea of the direc­tor Bruno Dumont mak­ing a com­e­dy fea­ture would be enough to make any self-respect­ing cinephile weep into his/​her Chee­rios. Well it hap­pened, and even more sur­pris­ing was the fact that his four-part ser­i­al ​’Lil Quin­quin was bloody hilar­i­ous. His new fea­ture, Slack Bay, appears to cov­er sim­i­lar ter­rain, billed as a dark com­e­dy based around a num­ber of dis­ap­pear­ances in north­ern French coastal towns. Plus, it stars Juli­ette Binoche, who last appeared with Dumont in one of his most painful and extreme movies: Camille Claudel 1915.

Billed as a ghost sto­ry set in the fash­ion under­world in Paris, Olivi­er Assayas’ Per­son­al Shop­per sees the direc­tor re-team­ing with Kris­ten Stew­art, the star of his pre­vi­ous film Clouds of Sils Maria. On paper, this looks like one sage move, as on the evi­dence of Clouds this artis­tic rela­tion­ship just clicked in a pret­ty spec­tac­u­lar way. Stew­art went on to win a slew of crit­ics awards – and a César award! – for her work, con­firm­ing to the world that she had more to offer than being the third point in a bray­ing vam­pire-wer­wolf love triangle.

We were might­i­ly impressed by David Michôd’s sec­ond fea­ture, The Rover, which saw the direc­tor head­ing in the oppo­site direc­tion from main­stream cash-in after his laud­ed debut, Ani­mal King­dom. This new film is based upon Michael Hast­ings’ non-fic­tion best­seller, ​‘The Oper­a­tors: The Wild and Ter­ri­fy­ing Inside Sto­ry of America’s War in Afghanistan’, which gives a pret­ty good idea as to the film’s con­tent. Brad Pitt, Ben Kings­ley and Emory Cohen head up a dude heavy cast.

Accord­ing to IndieWire, Roman­ian direc­tor Cris­t­ian Mungiu wrapped shoot­ing of his fol­low-up to the bril­liant Beyond the Hills in August of 2015, so it seems like he and his col­lab­o­ra­tors are play­ing the wait­ing game in order to show­case Fam­i­ly Pho­tos at Cannes this year. Ear­ly word sug­gests the film exam­ines the life of a small town doc­tor in a small Roman­ian vil­lage where every­one knows one another.

The French-Cana­di­an wün­derkind threw a strop in 2012 when his film Lawrence Any­ways was not select­ed for the main Cannes com­pe­ti­tion, though he was sat­ed the fol­low­ing year when not only did Mom­my make the cut, but it saw him shar­ing an award with no less than Jean-Luc Godard. Although he has an Eng­lish lan­guage fea­ture planned with Jes­si­ca Chas­tain (among oth­ers), he’s made anoth­er film with a claque of French super­stars (Gas­pard Ulliel, Nathalie Baye, Mar­i­on Cotil­lard, Léa Sey­doux, Vin­cent Cas­sel) con­cern­ing a man who returns home to a fam­i­ly reunion to tell them he doesn’t have long to live.

In a film which looks to be the con­tem­pla­tive, intense Yin to the Wolf of Wall Street’s brash, par­ty-cen­tric Yang, Mar­tin Scorsese’s adap­ta­tion of Shusaku Endo’s 1966 nov­el – a book which the direc­tor has long cher­ished – is sure­ly going to make for essen­tial view­ing. New­ly freed from Mar­vel jail, Andrew Garfield stars along­side Kylo Ren as two catholic priests fac­ing per­se­cu­tion dur­ing their mis­sion­ary work in Japan. Co-star Liam Nee­son spoke about his expe­ri­ences on a pan­el at the Los Cabos Film Fes­ti­val, con­firm­ing that it was a gru­elling shoot and the film pos­es and attempts to answer the ulti­mate ques­tion: is there a God?

It’s fair to say that Nico­las Wind­ing Refn’s Only God For­gives divid­ed audi­ences into those who loved it beyond words and those who want­ed to burn the neg­a­tive. The prospect of his fol­low-up – what looks to by an art­ful­ly-inclined hor­ror movie set in the world of high fash­ion – has become all the more intrigu­ing. The Neon Demon stars Elle Fan­ning as a hot-off-the-bus mod­el look­ing to break in to the LA cat­walk scene, though there are strange forces mak­ing sure that task is as dif­fi­cult as pos­si­ble. The com­pos­er Cliff Mar­tinez recent­ly described an ear­ly cut of the film as ​“The Val­ley of the Dolls meets the Texas Chain Saw Mas­sacre,” so of course we’re insane­ly keen to see the outcome.

Maybe it might be a bit of a stretch to hope that Ger­man direc­tor Maren Ade makes the leap to the Cannes com­pe­ti­tion with her long-await­ed third fea­ture, Toni Erd­mann, but con­sid­er­ing that her pre­vi­ous fea­ture, Every­one Else, was one of the best of the 00s, she cer­tain­ly deserves a shot at a big­ger plat­form. Per IonCin­e­ma, the film is said to be about a father recon­nect­ing with his adult daugh­ter, and we’re sure han­ker­ing to catch a glimpse of this one, in Cannes or otherwise…

Now this is an intrigu­ing prospect: the South Kore­an direc­tor of Old Boy (aka, one of the most oper­at­i­cal­ly vio­lent films of the new mil­len­ni­um) returns with an adap­ta­tion of the les­bian-tinged crime nov­el ​‘Fin­ger­smith’ by British author Sarah Waters. The action has been trans­posed to 1930s Korea and Japan. Accord­ing to direc­tor Park, his script diverges quite a bit from Waters’ nov­el, hence the chang­ing of the name and the fact that it’s a film ​“inspired by” rather than ​“based on” the source.

He said that Jimmy’s Hall was going to be his final movie, but it turns out that Ken Loach was telling porkies. Return­ing once more with a Paul Laver­ty script under his arm, I, Daniel Blake takes the vet­er­an direc­tor up to the means streets of New­cas­tle to tell the tale of join­er who sud­den­ly requires treat­ment for ill­ness. Accord­ing to a report in Screen Dai­ly, the film is said to be con­cerned with the dec­i­ma­tion of the British wel­fare state and the face­less bureau­cra­cy that’s tak­en over – a sub­ject that Loach explored in his 2013 doc­u­men­tary, The Spir­it of ​’45. And because it’s Ken, be sure to see this in a Cannes com­pe­ti­tion slot come May.

With three great films already under his belt (About Elly, A Sep­a­ra­tion and The Past), Iran­ian direc­tor Asghar Farha­di returns to Tehran to for Forushande. It looks at a cou­ple whose rela­tion­ship turns sour dur­ing a pro­duc­tion of Arthur Miller’s ​‘The Death of a Sales­man’ – Farha­di says it looks at how a seem­ing­ly sym­pa­thet­ic man can make the tran­si­tion to being a mali­cious brute. As film­ing only began ear­li­er this year, it seems like a Cannes slot could be some­thing of a stretch, but this is some­thing to get excit­ed for come autumn.