I t was a strange Cannes Film Festival this year. Usually by the festival’s halfway mark, there are plenty of films earmarked as future classics – titles whose premieres lead to a spring in journalists’ steps as they leave the screening rooms and ones whose journey towards awards success might just have been kickstarted. In their place this year seemed to be films of varying quality, whose quality nobody could agree on.
But sure enough, the brilliant films started flowing in as freely as the booze being poured at the many parties peppered along the croisette – and with them, a sense of haughty unease was replaced by excited relief. Enthusiastic word-of-mouth soon started eclipsing what had initially been the festival’s divisive conversation starters: Francis Ford Coppola’s $130m experiment Megalopolis , Jacques Audiard’s crime musical comedy genre mash-up Emilia Pérez , and the first part of Kevin Costner’s Western five-part franchise, Horizon: An American Saga . Our personal count this year was 22 films screened across the In Competition and Directors’ Fortnight strands, and below are the eight films that stood out as highlights.
It’s worth noting that The Independent was unable to see Palme d’Or The Seed of the Sacred Fig , which was shot covertly in Iran by director Mohammad Rasoulof. The winner is announced today (25 May). All We Imagine as Light “Some people call this the city of dreams, but I don’t – I think it’s the city of illusions,”.