15 films we’d like to see at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival

Pan­dem­ic be damned, the 2021 Cannes Film Fes­ti­val will move for­ward with in-per­son screen­ings this July after tak­ing a hia­tus last year. To prove that they mean busi­ness, this week has seen fes­ti­val head Thier­rym Fré­maux con­firm three high-pro­file selec­tions for the main Com­pe­ti­tion section.

Wes Ander­son​’s trip­tych The French Dis­patch, Leos Carax​’s musi­cal fan­ta­sy Annette, and Paul Ver­ho­even​’s erot­ic nun dra­ma Benedet­ta will all grace the banks of the Croisette this sum­mer, which means that spec­u­la­tion sea­son is offi­cial­ly upon us. The full line-up will be announced at the end of May, so until then, we’re free to float our hopes and best guess­es for what else will wel­come Cannes back to the world. Read on for fif­teen such like­ly possibilities:

(One note: due to the con­tin­u­ing enmi­ty between Net­flix and Cannes over the French the­atri­cal exclu­siv­i­ty win­dow, some note­wor­thy upcom­ing titles can be safe­ly ruled out, such as Andrew Dominik​’s Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe biopic Blonde, Adam McK­ay​’s envi­ron­men­tal­ist satire Don’t Look Up, Pao­lo Sor­renti­no​’s qua­si-auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal The Hand of God, and Jane Cam­pi­on​’s fam­i­ly dra­ma The Pow­er of the Dog.)

Mia Hansen-Løve​’s com­plex, per­son­al dra­ma of cre­ative sta­sis in a stalled rela­tion­ship has been sit­ting around for more than a year, wait­ing for the right time to flat­ten a fes­ti­val crowd. That time seems to have come at last, with the hot­ly antic­i­pat­ed char­ac­ter piece star­ring Christoph Waltz, Vicky Krieps, and Tim Roth all but guar­an­teed for Com­pe­ti­tion in a few months. Waltz and Krieps play dis­tanced lovers search­ing for inspi­ra­tion on the Swedish island of Faro, one-time home of Ing­mar Bergman, mak­ing this an ide­al fit for the cinephiles flood­ing the south of France each year.

Claire Denis was said to be work­ing on a radio sta­tion-set project with Juli­ette Binoche and Vin­cent Lin­don titled Radio­scopie, but reports now indi­cate that her next film will instead be Fire, also star­ring those two actors, along with Mati Diop. Whether this is mere­ly a rebrand­ing or anoth­er script entire­ly will be clar­i­fied with time, but the gist of her lat­est is a love tri­an­gle between a woman, her long­time lover, and his best friend (who also hap­pens to be her ex from for­ev­er ago). Word is that it’s ready to run, and Denis’ return to the fes­ti­val is long over­due after her sci-fi epic High Life was passed over.

Cannes favorite Bruno Dumont joins forces with Cannes favorite Léa Sey­doux for a film that was orig­i­nal­ly titled ​‘France’ – no way this doesn’t end up at the fes­ti­val. She plays a celebri­ty jour­nal­ist who finds her view of the world over­turned by a car acci­dent that mirac­u­lous­ly spares her life, but throws her into a cri­sis of integri­ty. After the peri­od whim­sy of Slack Bay and his Joan of Arc duol­o­gy, this sounds like a return to the time­ly and top­i­cal reg­is­ter of his war pic­ture Flanders.

Mixed-media mas­ter Ari Fol­man hasn’t had a new film since 2013’s live-action/an­i­ma­tion hybrid The Con­gress, but that one debuted in the Director’s Fort­night way back when, so who’s to say his much-delayed fol­low-up won’t do the same? He tack­les no mod­est under­tak­ing in adapt­ing the diary of Anne Frank, using a com­bi­na­tion of 2D char­ac­ter ani­ma­tion against phys­i­cal stop-motion back­drops to enliv­en the class­room read­ing sta­ple. For Fol­man, it’s a per­son­al project as well, the direc­tor hav­ing learned that his par­ents entered Auschwitz the same day as the Frank family.

Alain Guiraudie has cul­ti­vat­ed a pos­i­tive rela­tion­ship with Cannes over the years, grow­ing from a short film stal­wart to an Un Cer­tain Regard break­out in 2013 for his cruis­ing thriller Stranger by the Lake to a Com­pe­ti­tion con­tender in 2016 with the con­found­ing, won­drous Stay­ing Ver­ti­cal. He’s like­ly to cement his place in the main slate with this dra­ma about a young man devel­op­ing feel­ings for a more mature sex work­er amidst a ter­ror­ist attack in Cler­mont-Fer­rand. For a direc­tor so steeped in the unpre­dictable, all we can be sure of is that we’ll end up think­ing of eroti­cism in a new way by the time he’s done with us.

Apichat­pong Weerasethakul makes his first for­ay into the Eng­lish lan­guage with this trans­po­si­tion of his usu­al the­mat­ic con­cerns and tech­niques into a new set­ting. A game Til­da Swin­ton car­ries the med­i­ta­tive work of slow cin­e­ma as a sto­ic woman nagged by a boom­ing noise of uncer­tain ori­gin, ulti­mate­ly ven­tur­ing into the jun­gles of South Amer­i­ca as she inves­ti­gates what the sound could be. Those tak­en with the Thai master’s sta­t­ic long takes and gen­tle plumb­ing of the fis­sure between nat­ur­al tra­di­tion and man­made moder­ni­ty will not be dis­ap­point­ed. (The intro­duc­tion of a bona fide movie star to his cast all but assures a return to Com­pe­ti­tion, too.)

Arnaud Desplechin wrapped shoot­ing on his Philip Roth adap­ta­tion back in Decem­ber, giv­ing him plen­ty of time to make the sub­mis­sions dead­line for the fes­ti­val he opened as recent­ly as 2017. Emmanuelle Devos, Denis Poda­ly­dès and the busy Léa Sey­doux lead this mix­ture of car­nal neu­roses (a Roth stand-in con­vers­es with sev­er­al women from his past) and soci­o­log­i­cal diag­no­sis (it’s said to take place after the fall of the Berlin Wall and before the fall of the Twin Tow­ers), a Roth cock­tail if ever there was one. The author makes a har­mo­nious pair for the direc­tor who once titled a film My Sex Life… Or How I Got Into an Argu­ment, a pure dis­til­la­tion of Roth’s cre­ative ethic.

For the first time in a long time, the Coen broth­ers have split up, with Joel claim­ing sole direc­to­r­i­al cred­it on his rework­ing of the Shake­speare­an clas­sic. Den­zel Wash­ing­ton offers a fresh take on the unfor­tu­nate Scot, with Coen’s wife Frances McDor­mand step­ping in as the manip­u­la­tive schemer he calls his spouse, a pair of act­ing heavy­weights wor­thy of the Bard’s verse. Though the Coens took their recent The Bal­lad of Buster Scrug­gs to Venice, a grand return to Cannes could be in order.

Edgar Wright​’s genre-bend­ing ques­tion mark was rumored to be a shoo-in for Cannes last year at the fes­ti­val that wasn’t, so it stands to rea­son that he might stop by the Palais before the wide release in Octo­ber. Thomasin Macken­zie is a mod­ern-day girl besot­ted with retro mod fash­ion, ini­tial­ly delight­ed when she’s mys­te­ri­ous­ly trans­port­ed back to the swing­ing ​’60s and acquaint­ed with a singer she idol­izes (Anya Tay­lor-Joy). But all is not what it seems, as can be inferred by the warn­ing label of ​“psy­cho­log­i­cal horror.”

Anya Tay­lor-Joy fans could be fac­ing a ban­ner year, as the recent A‑list entrant packs her résumé with anoth­er off-beat genre project pair­ing her with a well-regard­ed direc­tor. She reunites with The Witch​’s Robert Eggers for a revenge epic set in 10^th-cen­tu­ry Ice­land, in which a prince (Alexan­der Skars­gård) embarks upon a jour­ney to get ret­ri­bu­tion for his father’s death. The stacked cast col­lects Nicole Kid­man, Willem Dafoe, Claes Bang, Ethan Hawke, and Björk – per­haps that’ll be enough star pow­er to lev­el him up from the Director’s Fort­night to Competition.

Paul Schrad­er has been an unpre­dictable quan­ti­ty as of late, and that’s not just in ref­er­ence his absolute­ly buck­wild Face­book posts. His 2014 film The Dying of the Light was agreed upon as a mis­fire, but he fol­lowed it up with a Direc­tors’ Fort­night selec­tion (Dog Eat Dog) and one of the decade’s most glow­ing­ly reviewed films (First Reformed). His new gam­bling dra­ma, led by Oscar Isaac, Tye Sheri­dan, Tiffany Had­dish, and Willem Dafoe, could con­tin­ue his hot streak as eas­i­ly as end it.

Julia Ducour­nau​’s fea­ture debut Raw made her the toast of the Inter­na­tion­al Crit­ics’ Week side­bar in 2016, land­ing the ris­ing direc­tor the cov­et­ed FIPRESCI Prize. She could be ready for the big time with her sopho­more effort, a super­nat­ur­al dra­ma still shroud­ed in secre­cy. While noth­ing may be known about the film’s plot, it is known that prin­ci­pal pho­tog­ra­phy com­menced back in Sep­tem­ber, which should be ample lead time for a July bow.

Palme d’Or win­ner Ruben Östlund has the open invi­ta­tion afford­ed to all recip­i­ents of the top prize, so it’s just a ques­tion of whether his star-stud­ded class com­e­dy will be ready in time. Pro­duc­tion fin­ished up back in Novem­ber, so odds are look­ing good for the satire that sees a lux­u­ry cruise for the super-rich go bel­ly up, send­ing the pam­pered patrons and the capa­ble crew onto a desert­ed island for a Swept Away-style rever­sal of order. The phrase ​“Woody Har­rel­son as the hard­core Marx­ist ship cap­tain” should be enough to fill the Grand Lumiere.

Not to be con­fused with Benedet­ta, Ter­ence Davies’ lat­est peri­od piece takes us through the life of wartime poet Siegfried Sas­soon, a sol­dier on the west­ern front of WWI who trans­lat­ed his trau­mas into stan­zas. A nov­el approach to the biopic form sees Peter Capal­di and Jack Low­den por­tray­ing Sas­soon at dif­fer­ent phas­es of his life, the first sign that Davies has con­quered the pit­fall-strewn genre. Geral­dine James, Gem­ma Jones, Anton Less­er, and Jere­my Irvine also appear in what’s sure to be a hand­some­ly mount­ed his­tor­i­cal piece, though Davies hasn’t his­tor­i­cal­ly tak­en his work to Cannes, so who knows.

Jacques Audi­ard also gets the Cannes life­time pass for his Palme-win­ning Dheep­an, so it’s like­ly that we’ll soon get a look at what­ev­er he was spot­ted shoot­ing around Paris back in the fall. The script (co-writ­ten by one Celine Sci­amma) adapts a col­lec­tion of short sto­ries from car­toon­ist Adri­an Tomine, though the film will expand a sin­gle nar­ra­tive involv­ing ado­les­cence and female pro­tag­o­nists to fea­ture length. That’s all we know at present, but the full pro­gram­ming announce­ment could very well change that.