This week marks the kick-off of the 79th edition of the Cannes Film Festival, and this year, JoBlo is going to be there! This marks my first trip to perhaps the grandest, most celebrated festival in the world, and I couldn’t be happier. While there has been plenty of talk of Hollywood films skipping the fest, there are still a lot of really interesting titles playing — here are five I’m especially excited to see (the gods of festival ticketing permitting).
Easily the highest-profile title playing the fest this year, Adam Driver, Miles Teller, and Scarlett Johansson star in this crime drama about two brothers who get tied up with the Russian Mafia. It’s written and directed by one of my favorite directors, James Gray, who’s never made a bad film in my book (his last one — Armageddon Time — was wildly underrated, and The Lost City of Z is a masterpiece). If this one takes off, it could generate some awards buzz, especially with this being Driver and Johansson’s first movie together since Marriage Story.
Na Hong-jin is a director whose career I’ve been following ever since I caught his thriller, The Chaser, at the Fantasia Film Festival way back in 2008. His last movie, The Wailing, was widely considered a horror masterpiece, and he’s back with his most ambitious movie ever. Not much is known about the premise other than it’s a science-fiction thriller. The Wailing’s Hwang Jung-min plays the lead in a cast that — intriguingly — contains a few big Western actors, including Michael Fassbender, Taylor Russell, and Alicia Vikander.
This is director Jane Schoenbrun’s follow-up to her acclaimed I Saw the TV Glow, which was a huge art-house horror hit a couple of years ago. In this one, a filmmaker is hired to direct the latest installment of a long-running slasher series called Camp Miasma, and becomes obsessed with tracking down the reclusive actress who once played the Final Girl in the original, iconic film. Hannah Einbinder stars alongside the great Gillian Anderson, as well as SNL’s Sarah Sherman and Sorry, Baby mastermind Eva Victor.
Nicolas Winding Refn is back at Cannes with his first feature in a decade (since The Neon Demon). Sophie Thatcher and Charles Melton star in this futuristic film about a young woman’s search for her missing father. Knowing Refn, this will be wildly provocative and divisive — but hey, that’s why we love him.
One of the movies everyone here is most excited to see is Cristian Mungiu’s latest, which features a huge cast including Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve, and is supposed to be a dark drama about a family in turmoil. Stan has always been underrated, and Reinsve is one of the best actresses in the game, so this could be a potential Best Foreign Film Oscar contender.
What are you most excited to see? Let us know in the comments!