Cannes Film Festival 2025

In 2021, Joachim Trier brought us the moving The Worst Person in the World, a chronicle shot in the Norwegian capital for which lead actress Renate Reinsve won the Best Actress prize at Cannes. He returns in 2025 with Sentimental Value, a more choral film whose central character is a family house. The same actress stars as a young stage talent, as Stellan Skargärd, who plays his father, an oldtime filmmaker trying to put together a financial package for his last movie. Festival veterans will maybe think about Clint Eastwood’s White Hunter, Black Heart (Cannes 1990), whose character and structure is not so far away. Kasper Tuxen, DFF, talks with us about this caustic and tender film about cinema... and those who make it. The film won the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival 2025. (FR)

With Die My Love, British filmmaker Lynne Ramsay (Ratcatcher, We Need to Talk About Kevin) embarks on a visually daring film about a couple and their breakup after motherhood. Surprisingly set in a Grimm fairy tale-like artistic style and mixed in loud rock ‘n’ roll tracks, this love story is both funny and unfiltered. Seamus Mc Garvey ASC, BSC, IBC, talks to us about this horror love story and those mysterious day for night scenes. Die My Love was in the Official Competition at Cannes Film Festival. (FR)

Having worked with Antony Cordier since his debut with Douche froide (Cold Shower), selected in 2005 at the Directors’ Fortnight, director of photography Nicolas Gaurin, AFC, returns with Classe moyenne (The Party’s Over!), creating images as cold and confrontational as the characters in this dark comedy. In this closed setting, where it is difficult to tell who is the most malicious or ignorant in their relationships with others, especially when social class differences are at the heart of the relationships, we eagerly follow these seven strong-willed actors—and Laurent Laffite is a master chef! With The Party’s Over!, Antony Cordier returns to the Directors’ Fortnight twenty years later for the 2025 edition of the Cannes Film Festival. (BB)

For La Venue de l’avenir (Colours of Time), his 15^th feature film, Cédric Klapisch, one of France’s most beloved filmmakers with seven films that have attracted over a million viewers, has assembled a star-studded cast. He tells the story – a bit of a fairy tale – of a family that brilliantly flits from one era to another to address topics close to the filmmaker’s heart: transmission and legacy.
Cinematographer Alexis Kavyrchine, who has already worked with Cédric Klapisch on several of his films, including Ce qui nous lie (Back to Burgundy) and En corps (Rise), has created a subtle visual style for his latest film, capturing both the contemporary era and the late 19^th century. La Venue de l’avenir is being screened Out of competition at the 78^th Cannes Film Festival. (BB)

With The Love That Remains (Ástin sem eftir er), Icelandic filmmaker and contemporary artist Hlynur Palmason offers a very personal story, shot over a few years in Iceland. His own children play the leading roles, and most of the locations were found in the surroundings of his home. The same powerful visuals fuels the films, just as his precedent shows (Godland, Into the White). But in a lighter narrative context, sometimes dreamy, where fantasy and third-degree Icelandic humour reigns. He lensed himself this bittersweet family with his own 35mm Arricam. The Love That Remains was selected this year in the Cannes Première section. (FR)

With Eagles of the Republic, Swedish filmmaker Tarik Saleh changes register and offers a CinemaScope format story with two different narrative tones. First, a kind of comedy-drama featuring a film superstar George El Nabawi (Fares Fares, his favourite actor) and his personal problems, then a much darker political thriller with a rather unexpected twist. Pierre Aim, AFC - who had already photographed his two previous films - reunites with him on this project shot over 40 days in Istanbul to cheat the city of Cairo. (FR)

Pauline Doméjean, who graduated from La Fémis Image department in 2020, photographed Guil Sela’s short film No Skate!, which was presented at the 64^th Critics’ Week and screened in the Special Short Film Program. The director of photography talks about her work on this comedy with a political context on the margins of history.

Romería is the third film by Catalan director Carla Simón. Her previous film, Nos soleils (Alcarràz), won the Golden Bear in Berlin in 2022. With Romería, the director revisits the family theme already explored in her previous feature films, but this time to evoke the relationship between her biological parents, whom she never knew. Cinematographer Hélène Louvart, AFC, is responsible for the images in this very personal and important film for Carla Simón. Beyond Hélène Louvart’s support on both the narrative and artistic aspects, their collaboration was based on a friendship that had developed over several years Romería is in Official competition at the 78^th Cannes Film Festival. (BB)

Australian director of photography Dion Beebe has been chosen to receive the 2025 Excellens Pierre Angénieux prize. After working with director Jane Campion in 1999 on Holy Smoke, his career took off in Hollywood when he lensed Chicago with Rob Marshall (the film adaptation of the broadway musical). This was shortly followed by Michael Mann’s Collateral, in 2004 and a number of very big productions such as Rob Marshall’s Memoirs of a Geisha, 2005 or Doug Liman’s Edge of Tomorrow (2014). He talks to us about his profession, what the digital revolution has meant for him, and about Angénieux zooms... of course! (FR)

Eunsoo Cho is a young South Korean director of photography. She’s the 2025 winner of the Angenieux Encouragement Award in Cannes. The Seoul native studied at the Korean University of Arts before moving to the USA to complete her training in Los Angeles at the prestigious USC. Thereshe really began to work on a number of various projects (music videos, short films, and soon feature films), accumulating almost nine years of experience on the set. Notably with her fellow student Christopher Makoto Yogi, for whom she shot two independent feature films.
Having returned to her native country in 2012, she now divides her time between TV dramas, music videos and documentaries. Her most recent work includes Sue Kim’s documentary The Last of the Sea Women (2024), about the women divers on the South Korean island of Jeju who have been diving for centuries to the bottom of the ocean, without oxygen, to harvest seafood and make a living from it. (FR)

A clear homage to Italian neo-realism and its most emblematic film, Vittorio De Sica’s Bicycle Thief (1948), Lucky Lu is a dark city story about bicycle deliverymen. Using New York’s Chinese community as a context, Canadian-Korean director Lloyd Lee Choi was lucky enough to book Chang Chen, (Happy Together, by Wong Kar-wai, The Assassin, by Hou Hsiao-sien) as a lead role. Norm Li, CSC, lenses this implacable story of self lie and honnor, transforming the streets of Chinatown into a symphony of scaffolding and shades of cyan. The film has been selected for the Directors’ Fortnight. (FR)

Sophie Letourneur will open ACID 2025 (Association du Cinéma Indépendant pour sa Diffusion), one of the youngest parallel sections of the Cannes Film Festival. For L’Aventura, as in her previous film Voyages en Italie, the director shares the screen with Philippe Katerine. This sweet and sometimes rough comedy, in the vein of a family road trip, is filmed by Jonathan Ricquebourg, AFC, who previously worked with Sophie Letourneur on Voyage en Italie. Immersing herself in reality, the director creates a narrative that blurs the lines between fact and fiction, giving the film a very personal and intimate tone. Jonathan Ricquebourg shares his experience of a shoot that worked "ike a theater troupe". (BB)

The production company Why Not, a staunch supporter of arthouse films and discoverer of many French directors (Arnaud Desplechin, Xavier Beauvois, Jacques Audiard, Bruno Podalydès, among others), has initiated the creation of cost-effective films (€1 million) with the constraint of only four weeks of shooting but with the advantage of not having to wait for funding. In this context, was produced Indomptables, the film by Thomas Ngijol, shot by director of photography Patrick Blossier, AFC, who was asked by the producers to join the crew in Cameroon. With his experience as a cinematographer since 1985, Blossier took on the challenge of accompanying the director to Yaoundé and shooting Indomptables, which was selected for the 2025 Cannes Film Festival’s Directors’ Fortnight. (BB)

After Aquarius and Bacurau, Brazilian director Kleber Mendonça Filho is back in Cannes Palme d’Or competition with O Agente Secreto, a period film that borrows heavily from the B-movie codes of the 70s. CinemaScope, zoom and split screens are used in this story of killing contract lensed by Evgenia Alexandrova, AFC... Let’s take a look with her at the making of it in Recife, the Brazilian cinegoer and film-maker’s town. (FR)

This film was my first collaboration with Scarlett Johansson, who was directing her first feature film. We met and had very informative discussions about the script, her intentions, how she envisioned filming, and above all, how to organize the shoot. The actors needed to feel a certain freedom, so we had to avoid a set that was too technically demanding. The lead actress, June Squibb, was 94 years old, so it was up to us to adapt to her, rather than the other way around, as much as possible...

In Alice Douard’s Des preuves d’amour, presented at Critics’ Week, Ella Rumpf plays a young woman whose wife is pregnant with their future child. A woman and future mother, but not pregnant, in 2014, just after the law authorizing same-sex marriage was passed, she tries to collect "proof of love", testimonials from her loved ones that will allow her to legally adopt her child. While facing the doubts and concerns of any future parent, she must also overcome judgment and reconnect with her mother, played by Noémie Lvovsky, whose testimony will be crucial. To accompany this intimate and original subject matter with all the accuracy, sensitivity, and originality it requires, director of photography Jacques Girault tells us about his visual choices, from preparation to shooting. (MC)

A film about cinema and its mystery, Nouvelle Vague (New Wave), by Richard Linklater (Boyhood), is a journey through time that literally teleports us to Paris in 1959. An extremely well-documented fiction, and a meticulous recreation of the making of A bout de souffle, one of the most influential films of modern cinema. As this film runs for the 2025 Palme d’Or, David Chambille explains how the American director asked him to film "the reverse angle to what Godard and Coutard were aiming at the time"... (FR)

Embodying the Enlightenment and early female emancipation, the resolute and not God-fearing Aimée (Galatea Belluggi) sets up her books and planisphere in a stable turned into school, in the hollow of an Alpine valley circled by slopes and the shade of fir trees. Coldly received by a handful of local families, only the youngest of whom speak French, the young teacher is confronted with darkness, both literal and metaphorical, but also with the burning experience of a sensuality that is both an extension of Rationality and the bearer of a curse. Filmed over eight winter weeks by Marine Atlan in a 1.33 aspect ratio favoring both portraits and peaks, this cruel Maupassant-style tale follows Aimée’s physical and mental evolution as close as possible to the skins and to flames, with all the rigor and clarity of a film that has found its language.
(HdR)