During the first six days of the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, the festival and its filmmakers continued to assert the same point: “shit, the world is a mess.” And yet, in an example of gloriously mixed messages, it also took some massive opportunities to add: “But are the films not fun?”
So far, Cannes ’25 has created the cultural boost of the best type. The festival presented a series of films that have plunged into the darkness that surrounds us these days, from Gaza to Ukraine to the administration of Donald Trump, but it also embraced the escape of Hollywood cinema and the artistic pioneer of the new French wave. This year’s canes contains all these things – and even in an uncertain year with the heart of the Palme d’Or Race which has not yet been revealed, the messages leaving the palaces are all the better to be so contradictory.
First do you want the good news? Start with Tom Cruise, the last movie star, who exploded the festival on Wednesday evening with “Mission: Impossible – the last calculation”, the kind of blockbuster which turns out to be irresistible as a change in rhythm of Cannes. (After that and the first “Top Gun: Maverick” a few years ago, Cannes needs a cruise that Cruise does not need rods? Probably, although it is a fairly symbiotic relationship.)
But Hollywood Hits will always be a small sidebar at the festival. Saturday evening, therefore brought something more delicious: a giant of American independent cinema, Richard Linklater, paying tribute to the icon of French cinema Jean -Luc Godard with a film on the production of his pioneer work of 1960, “Breathless” – in French and also in the style of the life of the 1960s “new wave or” new wave “, the title of his film.
In the hands of a more pompous director, it could have been a disaster recipe. But Linklater and his crew approached Godard with a reverence combined with a feeling of pleasure. This reckless vanity has become the biggest celebration of the week of the week and the perfect evening on Saturday evening at the festival designed to rejoice in the cinema.
Godard was one of the directors who in 1968 managed to close the festival in light of the student strikes that swept the country this spring. In other words, he was a director who thought that what was going on in the outside world should influence what’s going on on the Croisette. And while no one was getting worsened to stop the festival to protest against Gaza or Ukraine or the proposed prices of Donald Trump on non -American films, this year’s film crop proclaiming loudly, in many different ways, that the world is in very poor condition.
Among the eight films of the main competition that have been screened so far, “Eddington” by Ari Aster, about a small southwest town that loses its head towards the theories of the conspiracy and the sofa on the Internet, identifies the locking of the 19s point while the United States has become completely and irreparably divided. With Pedro Pascal as local mayor and Joaquin Phoenix as a sheriff who takes a bad path of anarchy and vigilant violence, the film paints a portrait of societal dysfunction with an almost apocalyptic intensity.
The “Sirat” of Oliver Laxe takes place during an event that could well be the Second World War – or it could be the real road to hell. A group of revelers on edge of civilization in a rave of the burning man’s type desert found itself taken in the teeth of political violence and the nameless revolution. They learn that there is no way to avoid chaos and personal tragedy that bleeds from our current state of global political disarray.
“Die, My Love” by Lynne Ramsay is officially a domestic drama, but it makes maternity outright apocalyptic. And even the films that take place in the past were there for a reason: “Sound of Falling” despair of the treatment of women during a century, “two prosecutors” detail a Kafkaesque level of Russian corruption in 1937, but it certainly hears at 2025, and “Amrum” could be a dramatic of the mass and a moment of the death of Woral II. Wing is increasing in this country again.
And this list does not even include the documentary by Raoul Peck “Orwell: 2 + 2 = 5”, which suggests that the roadmap towards totalitarianism represented in “1984” by George Orwell is used in the world today, including by the Trump administration.
There are nicer and nicer films in Cannes this year, and happier: studies of characters passing through adulthood like “Girl Gaucher” and “Renoir”, on the young girls of Taipei and Tokyo, respectively, or the introspective but exuberant performance play “Bono: Reduition stories” or the boys that were launched by the platform ”. pubescent insecurities.
This last film is a hoe, but it also corresponds to the tenor at the this year festival. The general tone of this year’s offers is dark, just as the general tone would be dark if the festival -goers left the rooms, returned to their rooms and lit television information.
However, there is room for other trends at this year festival. For example, there are actors who have become directors who know what they are doing. Harris Dickinson (“Triangle of Tadness”) made his debut as director with “Urchin”, a difficult study of urban characters with a touch of metaphysics, and won some of the best criticisms of the festival. Kristen Stewart also made his debut as a director with “the water chronology” and showed real insurance behind the camera. And Scarlett Johansson will present his film “Eleanor The Great” on Tuesday, but Advance Buzz is strong.
Another trend: the Boxy 1.33 Boxing ratio, which appears almost square on the screen and has already been seen at the “New Wave” festival, “Die, My Love” and “Two Prosecutors”.
And there is a latest trend that extends for years: the obstinate refusal of Cannes to do what most festivals do and load the greatest titles in its first days. The festival has gone since Tuesday evening, but the films that have not yet thrown into the main competition twice include the winners of Palme d’Or, “Young Meres” by Dardenne Brothers, “Alpha” by Jafar Panahi, “Resurrection” by Jafar Panahi, “Resurrection” by Jafar Panahi, “Resurrection”, “The History of Sound”, ” “Resurrection”, “Resurrection”. The “sentimental value” of Joachim Trier and out of the competition, “Honey Don’t” by Ethan Coen and the highest highest of Spike Lee.
It is therefore prudent to assume that what we have seen so far will not tell the story of this year Cannes. It is not unusual: at this stage last year, four of the seven awarded films in the main competition had not yet deprived, with the winner of Palme “Anora” who does not surface before the second Tuesday.
However, if the complete history of Cannes ’25 has not been told, the festival has told an important story so far. It is a simple story, even if it is also contradictory: enjoy the films and pay attention to the world around us.
