Cannes Directors’ Fortnight reveals 2025 lineup

Directors’ Fortnight has unveiled the selection for its 57th edition running May 14-24 which is heavy on first-time filmmakers and established auteurs including Robin Campillo, Lee Sang-il and Christian Petzold.

Artistic director Julien Rejl revealed the lineup at a press conference in Paris on Tuesday (April 15) for the Cannes parallel section run by French directors guild the SRF.

Scroll down for the full selection

The sidebar will open with Enzo, co-directed by the late Laurent Cantet and Robin Campillo. After Cantet died last year, his longtime friend and collaborator Campillo stepped in to direct the film set and filmed in La Ciotat in the south of France. It follows a 16-year-old boy who defies his bougeois family’s expectations by starting a masonry apprenticeship where he meets a charismatic Ukrainian colleague who shakes up his world. Newcomers Eloy Pohu and Maksym Slivinskyi star opposite Elodie Bouchez and Pierfrancesco Favino. Mk2 Films handles international sales.

Rejl tells Screen the film was selected because “it is quite simply the most beautiful French film we’ve seen this year and Robin Campillo is among the greatest contemporary directors alive today.”

The closing night film is Eva Victor’s debut feature Sorry Baby about a woman dealing with trauma which premiered in Sundance and has already been sold to A24. US actor-writer-director Victor stars alongside Naomi Ackie, Lucas Hedges, John Carroll Lynch, Louis Cancelmi and Kelly McCormack. Charades and UTA Independent Film Group handle sales.

First-timers meet established auteurs

Among the 18 features in selection, eight are debuts and all except Sorry, Baby are world premieres. 

“First features were very impressive and we were thrilled to receive so many films from female directors that were daring and surprising,” Rejl says.

French debuts include Prïncia Car’s The Girls We Want about young adults working at a summer camp in Marseille and Louise Hémon’s The Girl In The Snow. Belgium’s Valery Carnoy brings Wild Foxes set in a sports-focused boarding school that explores the pressures around masculinity among young boys and stars Samuel Kircher.

Asian cinema is also represented with two first features – Yuiga Danzuka’s family-focused Brand New Landscape and Jinghao Zhou’s Chinese thriller Girl On Edge, which Rejl says “echoes Aronofsky’s Black Swan set in the world of figure skating.”

Iraqi writer-director Hasan Hadi brings his debut feature The President’s Cake set in Iraq during the 1990s under the rule of Saddam Hussein. “It is told like a sweet children’s tale, but against the backdrop of the politics of the time,” Rejl says.

Rounding out the first features is US-based Korean-Canadian writer-director Lloyd Lee Choi with Lucky Lu, an adaptation of his short film Same Old that first premiered in Cannes’ official selection about a Chinese delivery driver in New York City whose e-bike goes missing as his family is en route to visit.

Among the more established auteurs selected are Lee Sang-il who brings melodrama Kokuho, based on the successful Japanese novel.

German filmmaker Christian Petzold will be at Cannes for the first time with Miroirs No.3 which reteams the director with actress Paula Beer who plays an aspiring pianist whose life is upended when her boyfriend is killed in a car accident and she stumbles into family of strangers with ill intentions. The Match Factory handles sales and Metrograph Pictures is distributing in the US.

Genre picks

The 2025 selection also includes several genre titles including Dangerous Animals from Australian horror master Sean Byrne about a free-spirited surfer abducted by a shark-obsessed serial killer; and Julia Kowalski’s French horror Que Ma Volonté Soit Faite about a young woman wrestling with her monstruous desires, convinced that she’s under a strange hereditary curse.

Antony Cordier brings French comedy The Party’s Over!, the director’s fourth feature, that brings together Laurent Lafitte, Elodie Bouchez, Laure Calamy and Ramzy Bedia in a story centred on a clash between wealthy Parisian holiday home owners and their staff.

From Canada is Anne Émond’s bilingual romantic comedy Peak Everything about a man with depression and eco-anxiety and a sweet mother who meet on a plane.

The line-up also includes the Ukranian war-themed documentary Militantropos from directing trio Yelizaveta Smith, Alina Gorlova and Simon Mozgovyi; and Félix Dufour-Laperrière’s animation Does Does Not Exist. The latter is a politically-charged fantasy drama set in a forest and valley after a failed armed activism attack. It passed through Annecy’s work-in-progress section and is the filmmaker’s follow-up to Annecy award-winner Archipelago and Giornate degli Autori premiere Ville Neuve. Best Friend Forever handles international sales.

French actor-filmmaker Thomas Ngijol is in the Fortnight with Cameroon-set Indomptables. Rejl describes it as “the surprise French film of the year – Ngijol is a big star in France known for comedy, but this is a true police thriller that also paints a picture of life in Cameroon today.”

New this year at the sidebar is the inaugural Alpine Award sponsored by the titular sports car brand to award filmmakers “who dare to shatter conventions and blaze new trails in French and international cinema”. The inaugural award will go to The Animal Kingdom director Thomas Cailley. 

The Directors’ Fortnight selection committee received some 1,600 feature films this year.

Directors’ Fortnight 2025 line-up

Brand New Landscape, Yuiga Danzuka

Dangerous Animals, Sean Byrne

Enzo, Laurent Cantet and Robin Campillo – opening film

The Girl In The Snow, Louise Hémon

Girl On Edge, Jinghao Zhou

The Girls We Want, Prïncia Car

Indomptables, Thomas Ngijol

Kokuho, Lee Sang-il

Lucky Lu, Lloyd Lee Choi

Militantropos, Yelizaveta Smith, Alina Gorlova and Simon Mozgovyi

Miroirs N° 3, Christian Petzold

La Mort N’existe Pas, Félix Dufour-Laperrière

The Party’s Over!, Antony Cordier

Peak Everything, Anne Émond

The President’s Cake, Hasan Hadi

Que Ma Volonté Soit Faite, Julia Kowalski

Sorry, Baby, Eva Victor – closing film

Wild Foxes, Valéry Carnoy

• Cannes Critics’ Week unveils 2025 selection