Featured at Cannes

Over the next few months, look out for these films in English that were chosen for the official competition at the Cannes film festival.

As well as being the subject of a retrospective exhibition at the Cinémathèque in Paris, Wes Anderson was back on the Croisette with his latest feature, The Phoenician Scheme. This is Anderson in his Europhile style like The French Dispatch (also selected for Cannes) or The Grand Budapest Hotel. Set in the 1950s, it stars Benicio del Toro as a rich and unsavoury businessman who has survived several assassination attempts. Ignoring his nine sons, he names his estranged daughter Liesl (who is a novice nun) his sole heir and sets off across the fictional land of Phoenicia to examine an infrastructure project. Liesl (played by Mia Threapleton) has an ulterior motive: to investigate the murder of her mother ten years before.

The Phoenician Scheme
On general release 28 May 2025.

Eddington, directed by Ari Aster, has the form of a Western but is set in 2020, when the main danger for small New Mexico town is COVID, not marauding bands of outlaws or Native Americans. The confrontation is not between a sheriff and an outlaw, but the sheriff, Joe Cross (Joaquin Phoenix), and the town's mayor, Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal). As befits a COVID-era film, fake news and conspiracy theories are rife in the town. The teaser trailer plunges the audience straight into that atmosphere.

Eddington
On general release 16 July 2025.

The History of Sound

The History of Sound is set in WWI America but is directed by a South African, Oliver Hermanus (Living), stars a British and an Irish actor who are both absolutely everywhere right now. It tells the story of Lionel and David, music students in 1917 Boston, who bond over collecting regional folk songs. Paul Mescal previously played in the very heterosexual love story Normal People before going onto the the haunting gay story All of Us Strangers and playing the lead in Gladiator II.

Josh O'Connor has tended to play RP English until now, as Prince Charles in The Crown, in The Durrells and as Lee Miller's son in Lee. But he's on an American roll as he also stars in a second film in the competition, The Mastermind, the latest film by Cannes veteran director Kelly Reichardt (First Cow, Showing Up) also starring Alana Haim (Licorice Pizza). O'Connor plays JP Mooney, an unemployed carpenter in 1970s Massachusetts, who turns to art theft, with disastrous consequences.