2025 Cannes Film Festival: Bi Gan, Lynne Ramsay, Nadav Lapid, Lucrecia Martel…Who Will Claim the Final Comp Spots?

The clock is ticking—it’s the eleventh hour. The Délégué général Thierry Frémaux is deep in the final throes of curating this year’s Competition lineup and he is currently weighing in on the last few masterstrokes for the Class of ’25. Rushed in at the wire, a handful of freshly picture-locked films are being evaluated and with only two or three slots left for the Palme d’Or comp, there are are maybe a dozen of antsy filmmakers hoping they get the invite. We might hear of the new titles tomorrow or perhaps early next week and we can only assume that Jim Jarmusch (Father, Mother, Sister, Brother) and Arnaud Desplechin (Une affaire – starring Nadia Tereszkiewicz, Charlotte Rampling and Hippolyte Girardot) might still options on the bingo card but were of the opinion that they were kept on ice incase something more noteworthy trickled in. Could the new Bi Gan, Lynne Ramsay, Nadav Lapid or the long-gestating Lucrecia Martel be the cards? Let’s take the deeper plunge of the titles that could grab the final few comp spots, or even …. move sideways into the Un Certain Regard or Cannes Premiere sections.

With only three selections from France to date in Julia Ducournau, Dominik Moll and Hafsia Herzi (we can perhaps lump in Linklater and Panahi in there as well), Desplechin and Quentin Dupieux‘s L’accident de piano (cast comprised of Adèle Exarchopoulos,  Sandrine Kiberlain and Karim Leklou) would be the top options for inclusion. On paper, two female filmmakers that we thought might shoe-ins include Ildikó Enyedi for Silent Friend and what would be the fest’s only docu in Chocobar by Lucrecia Martel. Radio silence so far.

Wildly understood to be films that were still in the editing room we have Ramsay’s Die, My Love, Gan’s Resurrection and Lapid’s Yes! — all three might have been screened and will definitely consider Venice is not berthed here. And finally, what about Hlynur Pálmason‘s fourth feature film in The Love That Remains and Markus Schleinzer‘s third feature Rose? Both feel like the legit add-ons you want in competition but perhaps they are the films that have been secured but are awaiting to know if they fall into the Grand Théâtre Lumière or The Debussy Theatre blocks. We’ll soon find out.