Critical of Cannes 2025: The best films of the festival found beauty in a broken world

In the first half of the Cannes Film Festival this year, films were often, naturally, downright apocalyptic. After all, the world is in terrible straits and cinema, as well as any art that we do, has always reflected this.

But unlike many festivals, Cannes does not load its calendar with most high -level titles in the first days. In this spirit, it was in the second half of the 12 -day event where some of the best most exciting films were created, making the festival one of the best in recent memory by closing on a high note.

Revolutionary films have also helped Cannes find a tone which, although frequently founded in pain, was often defined by a ribbon of prudent hope. Things were still often dark, but there was also a beauty for these films which were really moving by exploring the sustainable power of cinema, community and our common desire to dream in a nightmare world.

One of the films that summed up this was the exceptional “sentimental value” of Joachim Trier, winner of the Grand Prix. A subtle but booming film on the cinema and the relationship of a family with them, it is shamelessly a work on the complicated and connective power that art can have in our lives. More specifically, he focuses on a father and filmmaker, Gustav (Stellan Skarsgård), who is trying to reconnect with his daughter Nora (Renate Réinsve), who is an actress of the scene rather than on the screen. While trying to bring Nora to play in what could be her latest film, the fault lines of their relationship are brought back to the surface when Trier dives more deeply to explore questions about how we can connect.

The filmmaker fully explores the difficult path to reconciliation without smooth on his rough edges. In less hands, a film about how art heals all injuries could easily fall into saccharin. This is not the case for sorting, which shows how injuries remain, feeling forever in our memories like the cries resonate through the house to which the film is largely confined. This only makes the possible moments of love than the film finds much more deserved. A last look exchanged between father and daughter, both finally seeing each other, is one of the most indelible images that will last from the festival. As sorting at the film’s press conference, “tenderness is the new punk”, and this slightly silly ethics, but always delicately sincere, is saying what the best films of this festival stand out.

This also extends to one of the most dividing but important films of the festival: “Alpha”. The last of Julia Ducournau, who won the Palme d’Or “titanium” barely a few years ago, it was a reflection of her own experience of her child who grew up at the height of the AIDS crisis. This, with Ducournau, pressing less on body horror and more on the drama, ended up becoming a critical point of discord. Although it faces an initial negative wave of reactions, it is precisely the most unexpected tonal register in which it draws, which makes it all the more significant.

It is a deeply sad film, yes, but it is also a seriousness about memory and loss. Its central visual motive, which shows those that we like to break down before our eyes, just as they become monuments for themselves, have turned out to be one of the most striking images of the entire festival. There is no bypass of horror, which is underestimated but always present in each scene, but Ducournau surrounds it with sweet moments of grace which prove to be overwhelming. The loss is essential but “alpha” finds beauty in the pieces of our broken world.

Sometimes this beauty is more humble, although it is no longer impactful and essential. There is a beauty that is felt in the eyes of the characters of the humanist triumph of Jafar Panahi Palme d’Or, “it was just an accident.” It is a film that looks like the incarnation of the sentence “in each person, a universe” because it takes us into the life of a group of people still in shock from the trauma to be questioned in prison during the brutal repression of Iran against the dissidents.

When they think they have a chance to obtain justice, or at least a kind of revenge, against the man they believe to be their interrogator, they will make a dark and humorous journey trying to prove that he is indeed the torturer they believe. This is something that is deeply personal for Panahi, which was itself imprisoned by the Iranian government and once prohibited to make films (but was able to attend the festival this year in what turned out to be one of the most moving moments on the screen). As always, the filmmaker remains deeply interested in people, their pains and their kindness potential, making “it was just an accident” a portrait deeply felt about their humanity just as he carries with him a thin rage against injustice. The two go not only to peer, but show how they are people who are the most beautiful parts of the world and cinema.

There were many more films that exploited this beauty, including smaller works that could easily be neglected as “a useful ghost”, “death does not exist” and “drunk noodles” or those who obtained some of the greatest prices like “The Little Sister” (whose first head Nadia Melliti won the price of the best actress), “Resurrection” (he adorable SCI Although he was not rewarded by the jury, a last film was not only the best of the festival, but the most incisive in the way he explored this: the magnificent “mastermind” of Kelly Reichardt.

Although Reichardt has never had the love she deserves from Cannes, she has always made the most moving and most thoughtful films each time she is part of the programming. His last is not different. An deconstruction of the robbery film featuring a Josh O’Connor, never-baying, as JB, a man who develops a poorly thought out plan to steal the art of his local museum while the Vietnam War and the protests against it take place in the background, this attracts the categorical attention of Reichardt with details and reflection on people. It is another ironically funny film for the director, discovering a lot of bright humor when he saw how everything separates in a large and small way, although he also moves deeply, beautifully, thinking more he continues.

After the responsibility came to strike for the holder of O’Connor (an ironic title if there was one), he takes off at the run without any real idea of ​​what his future will look like. In a conversation, he with an old friend, perfectly played by the longtime collaborator of Reichardt, John Magaro, he was told that he could go to Canada to be part of a town. When JB he rejuvenates for this, saying with derision that he does not want to be alongside Draft Dodgers, Magaro then delivers a playful but serious replica. Say: “Draft Dodgers, Dope Fiends, Radical Feminists … .. good people.” This is the line that made a boost in my spirit of the festival. It is not only because of the funny gently, but because this humor is linked to what the Reichardt project was: finding the beauty of people.

They are ordinary people, all try to make their way in the world, and they are often deeply imperfect. However, Reichardt takes care for each of them, finding beauty in the smallest of the scenes that then become something much bigger in his hands. The evocative end of “the brain” brings the pain that crashes, but just a minute, you have trouble leaving to reach the town of good people in the North. The world will continue to be full of pain, but the best cinema works in Cannes, the best, the best that find the beauty of these people.