Cannes Film Festival will not take place this year, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but the official selection has still been unveiled. While no distinct sections were revealed, Thierry Frémaux and Pierre Lescure took the stage of an empty theater to share the 50-plus films that were accepted to screen at the festival. While those Cannes world premieres will not happen in person or digitally, these films will be able to show the prestigious laurels as they head to other festivals this fall and beyond–except Venice Film Festival, who have said they will not be part of their event.
“This Selection is here, and it’s a beautiful one,” Frémaux said. “Even though movie theatres have been shut for three months – for the first time since the invention of film screening by the Lumière Brothers on December 28, 1895 – this Selection reflects that cinema is more alive than ever. It remains unique, irreplaceable. We live in a world where moving images are in constant evolution, whether we talk of the way the movies are shown or the movies themselves. Cinema makes a difference thanks to those who make it, those who give it life and those who receive it and make it glorious. “Coming soon to a theatre near you”: the formula has never been so compelling. We will see it soon: cinema is not dead, it’s not even sick.”
See the selection below.
The French Dispatch (Wes Anderson)
Ammonite (Francis Lee)
Summer of ’85 (François Ozon)
True Mothers (Naomi Kawase)
Mangrove and Lovers Rock (Steve McQueen) (Note: See more details on these films here.)
Heaven (Im Sang-soo)
Peninsula (Sang-ho Yeun)
Aya and the Witch (Goro Miyazaki)
The Real Thing (Koji Fukada)
Soul (Pete Docter)
Druk (Another Round) (Thomas Vinterberg)
Last Words (Jonathan Nossiter)
DNA (Maïwenn)
El olvido que seremos (Fernando Trueba)
Des Hommes (Lucas Belvaux)
Passion Simple (Danielle Arbid)
Good Man (Marie-Castille Mention Schaar)
The Things We Say, the Things We Do (Emmanuel Mouret)
John and the Hole (Pascual Sisto)
Limbo (Ben Sharrock)
Here We Are (Nir Bergman)
Rouge (Farid Bentoumi)
Sweat (Magnus von Horn)
Teddy (Ludovic and Zoran Boukherma)
Un médecin de nuit (Elie Wajeman)
Enfant Terrible (Oskar Roehler)
Nadia, Butterfly (Pascal Plante)
Eight and a Half (Ann Hui, Sammo Kam-Bo Hung, Ringo Lam, Patrick Tam, Johnnie To, Hark Tsui, John Woo, Woo-Ping Yuen)
Falling (Viggo Mortensen)
Pleasure (Ninja Thyberg)
Slalom (Charlène Favier)
The Truffle Hunters (Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw)
Casa de Antiguidades (João Paulo Miranda Maria)
Broken Keys (Jimmy Keyrouz)
Ibrahim (Samuel Gueismi)
La mort du cinema et de mon pere aussi (Daniel Rosenberg)
Gagarine (Fanny Liatard, Jérémy Trouilh)
16 Printemps (Suzanne Lindon)
Vaurien (Peter Dourountzis)
Garçon chiffon (Nicolas Maury)
Si Le Vent Tombe (Nora Martirosyan)
On the Way to the Billion (Dieudo Hamadi)
9 Days at Raqqa (Xavier de Lauzanne)
Cévennes (Caroline Vignal)
Josep (Aurel)
French Tench (Bruno Podalydès)
Un Triomphe (Emmanuel Courcol)
Le Discours (Laurent Tirard)
L’Origine du Monde (Laurent Lafitte)
Flee (Jonas Poher Rasmussen)