Mar­tin Scors­ese, Jonathan Glaz­er, and Wes Ander­son lead the 2023 Cannes Film Fes­ti­val lineup

The cinephile equiv­a­lent of Christ­mas morn­ing, with its atten­dant mix of excite­ment and flat­ly ful­filled expec­ta­tions, has come once again. That charge in the air you’re feel­ing sig­nals the announce­ment of the Offi­cial Selec­tion for the Cannes Film Fes­ti­val, led by their Com­pe­ti­tion line­up of mar­quee titles from the cus­tom­ary mur­der­ers’ row of world-renowned auteurs.

A hand­ful had already been con­firmed, most buzz­wor­thy among them Killers of the Flower Moon, which will occa­sion direc­tor Mar­tin Scorsese’s first appear­ance on the Croisette in decades. He won’t be in Com­pe­ti­tion, how­ev­er, pre­sum­ably due to Apple’s reluc­tance to release their big-tick­et title right to French cin­e­mas after the fes­ti­val, as is Cannes law. Among his fel­low john­ny-come-ear­lies were Pedro Almod­ó­var (with the West­ern short Strange Way of Life), Wes Ander­son (unveil­ing the space­far­ing adven­ture Aster­oid City), James Man­gold (whose Indi­ana Jones and the Dial of Des­tiny will ful­fill the oblig­a­tory Hol­ly­wood tent­pole out-of-Comp spot pre­vi­ous­ly held by Top Gun: Mav­er­ick), and Maïwenn (for the out-of-Comp Open­ing Night pick Jeanne du Bar­ry, which has shov­eled heaps of coal into the con­tro­ver­sy fur­nace by bring­ing John­ny Depp to the festival).

But this morn­ing belongs to the big reveals, some pre­vi­ous­ly tipped for inclu­sion in Com­pe­ti­tion and oth­ers com­ing in out of nowhere. We’d pre­pared for Todd Haynes’ off-kil­ter romance May Decem­ber, Jes­si­ca Hausner’s school-set psy­chodra­ma Club Zero, and Cather­ine Breillat’s dar­ing erot­ic dra­ma L’Été Dernier. Here at Lit­tle White Lies HQ, we’re pleas­ant­ly sur­prised by the appear­ance of Com­pe­ti­tion new­com­er Rama­ta-Toulaye Sy with the Sene­galese pro­duc­tion Banel and Adama, Wang Bing with the rare doc­u­men­tary to break into the big dance (it’s called Jeunesse, dou­bling the Bing at this year’s Cannes with the Spe­cial Screen­ing pick Man in Black), and the long-absent Jonathan Glaz­er with The Zone of Inter­est, his first fea­ture in near­ly ten years.

This year’s Com­pe­ti­tion slate has been filled out by the usu­al art­house sus­pects, such past Palme win­ners as Hirokazu Kore-eda, Nuri Bilge Cey­lan, and Ken Loach all mak­ing their way back to the site of their past vic­to­ry. A sol­id chunk of the line­up boasts at least one past Com­pe­ti­tion appear­ance, from Mar­co Bel­lo­chio to Nan­ni Moret­ti, with a good­ly hand­ful of excep­tions: Green, Glaz­er, Sy, Bing, and Un Cer­tain Regard alum­ni Tran Anh Hung, Karim Ain­ouz, and Kaouther Ben Hania. (Nowhere to be seen are the rumored Yor­gos Lan­thi­mos, Bertrand Bonel­lo, and Bruno Dumont, past friends of the fest.)

But the Offi­cial Selec­tion entails more than just Com­pe­ti­tion, the cur­tain hav­ing been pulled back on the Un Cer­tain Regard side­bar and Spe­cial Screen­ings. The lat­ter includes works from Steve McQueen (Occu­pied City, his doc­u­men­tary about Ams­ter­dam under Nazi occu­pa­tion dur­ing World War II) and Wim Wen­ders (with a doc about artist Anselm Kiefer, pulling dou­ble duty with the Comp pick Per­fect Days). Mean­while, UCR col­lects an array of film­mak­ers slight­ly far­ther from the radar, most notable among them War­wick Thorn­ton (with The New Boy, star­ring Cate Blanchett) and Mol­ly Man­ning Walk­er (whose dar­ing­ly-titled How To Have Sex has already raised an eye­brow or two).

More announce­ments will trick­le in over the next cou­ple of weeks, but a cou­ple trends have already pre­sent­ed them­selves, most encour­ag­ing among them a bumper year for female film­mak­ers. Sy, Haus­ner, Ben Hania, Breil­lat, Alice Rohrwach­er, and Jus­tine Tri­et all made it to Com­pe­ti­tion, their num­ber rais­ing the ratio a bit high­er than usu­al while still falling a ways short of gen­der par­i­ty. Cannes head hon­cho Their­ry Fre­maux has long been vocal about his belief that his selec­tions should be informed only by mer­it, with no con­sid­er­a­tions to diver­si­ty or equi­ty — all the same, heart­en­ing to see.