Megalopolis

One of the biggest draws at Festival de Cannes 2024 is undoubtedly auteur Francis Ford Coppola’s long-gestating sci-fi epic Megalopolis. Generally considered a film almost impossible to make, Megalopolis — whose striking teaser featuring Adam Driver as a man who can ‘control’ time has piqued interest — has been steered by the Godfather maker to a berth at the Main Competition section at Cannes where it will compete for the prestigious Palme d’Or.

Coppola’s passion project — he has invested $120 million of his own money — has been bubbling under for more than 40 years but its theme of a reimagined America facing a crisis after a devastating disaster is now more relevant than ever, fashioned as it is as a “cautionary tale about where the country is headed”. The cast — Driver, Giancarlo Esposito, Nathalie Emmanuel, Aubrey Plaza, Shia LaBeouf, Jon Voight, Jason Schwartzman, Talia Shire, Grace VanderWaal, Laurence Fishburne, Kathryn Hunter and Dustin Hoffman — is as good as it gets.

The Apprentice

The Cannes Film Festival website describes the film as “a dive into the underbelly of the American empire”. Celebrated Iranian-Danish director Ali Abbasi’s fourth film is an intriguing look at former US president Donald Trump’s relationship with his erstwhile mentor, the Machiavellian lawyer and political fixer Roy Cohn, a man who lost a $100m lawsuit on Trump’s behalf in the 1970s.

The Apprentice

Abbasi is known for his explosive ideas and The Apprentice — named after the reality TV show that judged the business skills of a group of contestants and which Trump hosted across 14 seasons — seems the latest winner from the Holy Spider maker who is already a Cannes awardee, having won the Un Certain Regard honour at the festival for his film Border. The Apprentice has Sebastian Stan playing Trump, though it is Succession man Jeremy Strong as Cohn we have our eyes on.

The Shrouds

Body-horror veteran David Cronenberg returns to the Croisette with a new film rumoured to be one of his most personal so far. From whatever little information has been made available in the public domain, The Shrouds, that will have its world premiere at the Main Competition at Cannes, is said to have been written after the death of Cronenberg’s second wife, film editor Carolyn Zeifman, in 2017.

The Shrouds

The basic premise concerns a grieving widower (played by Vincent Cassel), also an innovative businessman, who invents a new device to help people connect with the dead inside a burial shroud. The film boasts a strong cast that includes Diane Kruger and Guy Pearce and was originally set as a Netflix series, with Cronenberg writing two episodes before the streamer cancelled plans.

Bird

Bird

British director Andrea Arnold takes a fourth crack at the Palme d’Or with what may be her buzziest film yet. Bird is a Kent-set drama starring Saltburn’s Barry Keoghan and Franz Rogowski, seen in films like Passages and Great Freedom. Keoghan reportedly passed up a role in Ridley Scott’s Gladiator sequel to star in the movie, which will screen as a rough cut at Cannes. Besides the Palme, Bird — whose plot details remain sketchy — will also compete for the Queer Palm, an independently sponsored prize for selected LGBTQ-relevant films entered into the Cannes Film Festival.

Parthenope

Paolo Sorrentino’s Naples-set project is filmed in a mix of black-and-white and colour and is described as an Italian-French film. It follows the life and times of a beautiful young woman (Celeste Dalla Porta) named after a Greek siren who drowned and washed ashore in Italy, lending Naples its early name. Gary Oldman co-stars in this fantasy epic that Sorrentino, who hails from Naples, describes as being about a woman named Parthenope “who bears the name of her city but is neither siren nor myth”. The film is said to be a visual feast, shot as it is by cinematographer Daria D’Antonio, who previously filmed the director’s seminal film, The Hand of God.

Parthenope

The Substance

The Substance is the second feature from Coralie Fargeat, whose debut Revenge was a take-no-prisoners rape-revenge drama in the bloody mould of the New French Extremity films of the 2000s. Her latest film follows the same route. The Substance is an English-language body horror film starring Demi Moore, Margaret Qualley and Ray Liotta in his final role before his death in 2022.

The film’s elusive premise describes it as being about a revolutionary new product designed to make a “younger, more beautiful, more perfect you”. Many are looking at The Substance as a strong contender for the Palme d’Or. If it wins, it will trigger an upset similar to the one that Titane — the body-horror psychological drama written and directed by Julia Ducournau — caused three years ago at Cannes.

Kinds of Kindness

With four Oscars in their kitty earlier this year, the Poor Things duo of director Yorgos Lanthimos and actress Emma Stone reteam with Kinds of Kindness, a three-hour anthology film, which boasts an eclectic ensemble cast, including Willem Dafoe, Margaret Qualley, Jesse Plemons, Hong Chau and Hunter Schafer. Letting go of the steampunk aesthetics of Poor Things for a contemporary-set American drama, Kinds of Kindness is said to be a “triptych fable”, consisting of three distinct but loosely connected stories, with every actor playing three different characters.

The first segment, The Death of R.M.F., follows a man who seeks to take charge of his own destiny after breaking away from his powerful boss. The second, R.M.F. is Flying, depicts a man plagued by suspicions that his spouse, who has recently returned after being reported missing, is an imposter. The final segment, R.M.F. Eats a Sandwich, revolves around a woman’s quest to find an enigmatic cult leader who is believed to be a destined spiritual guide. Typical Lanthimos stuff!

Oh, Canada, Kinds of Kindness, The Substance

Oh, Canada

Director Paul Schrader’s new study of old-age angst is adapted from the late Russell Banks’s novel, Foregone. The film follows the last days of a writer, Leonard Fife (Richard Gere), who fled the US for Canada to dodge the Vietnam war draft. Jacob Elordi and Uma Thurman make up the cast. Schrader has directed 24 films, many of them centring on solitary men at war with the world and themselves, with Oh, Canada being the latest in that sub-genre.

Caught By The Tides

Filmmaker Jia Zhangke describes Caught By The Tides as a “concentration of 20 years of experience”. The film brings the Chinese director back to Cannes for a sixth shot at the Palme D’Or. Caught By The Tides — as literally described by Zhangke — was shot over a 20-year period and stars his wife, Zhao Tao, as a woman caught in an on-off affair who follows her lover to a faraway province. Making use of his signature blend of fiction and documentary filmmaking techniques, Zhangke even sought the aid of AI in bringing his vision to life.

Anora, Caught By The Tides

Anora

In Anora, Sean Baker returns to his favourite ‘pastime’ of observing the lives of people living on the fringes of society. In his second film to compete for the Palme d’Or after 2021’s Red Rocket, the American filmmaker fashions an “adventure rom-com” about a New York City sex worker, played by Mikey Madison, who marries the son of a Russian oligarch. Her fairytale marriage is threatened when the man’s parents travel to New York to force an annulment.

INDIAN HOPEFULS All We Imagine As Light

The first Indian film in 30 years to compete for the Palme d’Or, Payal Kapadia’s film follows two women navigating life and love in Mumbai. A trip to a beach town “becomes a space for their dreams to manifest”. All We Imagine As Light will premiere on May 23 at the festival.

All We Imagine As Light, Santosh

Sister Midnight

Karan Kandhari’s British production will be premiered in the Directors’ Fortnight section, with Radhika Apte starring as a newly married woman in a Mumbai slum. The film is described as “a fantastical punk comedy, a feminist revenge film and a revamped vampire movie rolled into one”.

Santosh

Sandhya Suri’s feature film, premiering in the Un Certain Regard section, follows a widowed woman (Shahana Goswami) who gets her husband’s job of being a police constable in rural north India and is drawn into the investigation of a rape and murder of a low-caste girl.

Sunflowers Were the First Ones to Know

FTII student Chidanand Naik’s short film about an elderly woman stealing a village rooster and her family being exiled in return as per prophecy, competes in the La Cinef section, which highlights entries from film schools.