The Cannes Critics’ Week, the pageant sidebar specializing in administrators’ first and second options, unveiled its 2025 lineup on Monday.
Competitors highlights embody Left-Handed Lady, the solo directorial debut of Taiwanese filmmaker Shih-Ching Tsou, identified for her long-standing collaboration with Anora director Sean Baker (Tsou co-directed 2004’s Take Out and was a producer on Baker’s Tangerine, The Florida Mission, and Pink Rocket). Baker co-wrote and edited the Taipei-set city melodrama, which facilities on a single mom and her two daughters navigating life on the margins of the Taiwanese capital.
Additionally debuting in Critics’ Week is Thai director Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke with A Helpful Ghost, a surrealist tackle motherhood during which a girl reincarnates as a vacuum cleaner. Thai actress Mai Davika Hoorne leads the forged.
European options in competitors embody Pauline Loquès’ Nino, starring fast-rising Quebecois actor Théodore Pellerin (Lurker) as a younger man adrift within the metropolis after shedding his condominium keys; Sleepless Metropolis from Spanish director Guillermo Galoe, which follows two shut associates going through separation when one is pressured to maneuver away; and Kika from Belgian filmmaker Alexe Poukine, starring Manon Clavel as a social employee confronting an unplanned being pregnant shortly after her companion’s demise.
Chechen filmmaker Deni Oumar Pitsaev will current Imago, an autobiographical documentary chronicling his try and assemble a modernist house on conventional land in a Georgian valley close to the Chechnya border. From the Netherlands, Sven Bresser’s debut function Reedland follows a reed cutter whose discovery of a teenage woman’s physique triggers a haunting obsession.
Belgian director Laura Wandel will open the sixty fourth Cannes Critics’ Week, out of competitors in a particular screening, together with her little one custody drama Adam’s Curiosity. Closing the part, additionally out of competitors, is Dandelion’s Odyssey, the primary animated options from Japanese director Momoko Seto, which follows the journey of 4 dandelions which survive a nuclear explosion and search a spot to take root. French options Baise en Ville, from director Martin Jauvat, billed as a “strolling highway–film” about an unemployed younger man, performed by Jauvat, who ambles across the metropolis searching for a job to pay for driving classes and Alice Douard’s debut function Love Letters, a dramatic comedy about two married ladies awaiting their first little one — may even display screen out of competitors.
Spanish director Rodrigo Sorogoyen (The Beasts) heads up the jury for the sixty fourth version of Critics’ Week, joined by Oscar-winning British actor Daniel Kaluuya (Get Out, Judas and the Black Messiah), Moroccan journalist Jihane Bougrine, French-Canadian cinematographer Josée Deshaies (Passages, The Beast), and Indonesian producer Yulia Evina Bhara (Tiger Stripes, Autobiography).
Critics’ Week (La Semaine de la Critique), runs Might 14-22, alongside the primary Cannes Movie Competition. The part, organized by the French movie critics’ union, is famed as a spot to search out up-and-coming expertise. Lots of the largest names in worldwide art-house cinema acquired their begin within the sidebar.
Two-time Palme d’Or winner Ken Loach introduced his function debut Kes to Critics’ Week in 1970. Justine Triet, winner of the Palme d’Or with Anatomy of a Fall in 2023, made her pageant premiere at Critics’ Week together with her second function, Victoria in 2013.Julia Ducournau debuted within the part together with her first movie, Uncooked, in 2016. Ducournau’s follow-up, Titane, gained the Palme d’Or in 2021 and her third movie, Alpha will premiere within the pageant’s important competitors this yr.
Try the Critics’ Week lineup under.
COMPETITION
Imago, Dir. Déni Oumar Pitsaev
Kika, Dir. Alexe Poukine
Left-Handed Lady, Dir. Shih-Ching Tsou
Nino, Dir. Pauline Loquès
Reedland, Dir. Sven Bresser
Sleepless Metropolis, Dir. Guillermo Galoe
A Helpful Ghost, Dir. Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke
SPECIAL SCREENINGS
Adam’s Curiosity, Dir. Laura Wandel OPENING FILM
Baise en ville, Dir. Martin Jauvat
Love Letters, Dir. Alice Douard
Dandelion’s Odyssey, Dir. Momoko Seto CLOSING FILM