Movies directed by Francis Ford Coppola, David Cronenberg and Yorgos Lanthimos will compete for the Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, the event’s organizers announced in a news conference on Thursday.
New films by Jacques Audiard, Paul Schrader and Andrea Arnold will also appear in competition at this year’s event, the festival’s 77th edition, which opens May 14 and runs through May 25.
The most eagerly anticipated film on the lineup is likely to be Coppola’s “Megalopolis” — the director’s first movie in over 10 years.
During Thursday’s news conference, Thierry Frémaux, Cannes’s artistic director, revealed little about that movie’s plot, but Coppola, the director of “The Godfather” trilogy and “Apocalypse Now,” has been talking about his desire to make it for decades. In 2001, Coppola told the The New York Times that “Megalopolis” was “about the future” and “a guy who wants to build a utopian society in the middle of Manhattan.”
Coppola, 85, has already won the Palme d’Or twice: in 1974 for “The Conversation,” and, in 1979, for “Apocalypse Now” (a prize that was shared with Volker Schlöndorff’s “The Tin Drum”).
The Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos will present “Kinds of Kindness,” starring Emma Stone and Willem Dafoe, who also worked together on Lanthimos’s most recent release, “Poor Things.” David Cronenberg, the Canadian horror movie director, will premiere “The Shrouds,” about a widower who builds a machine to connect with the dead.
Among the other movies competing for the Palme d’Or are Audiard’s “Emilia Perez,” a musical crime comedy set in the world of Mexican drug cartels and starring Selena Gomez; Ali Abbasi’s “The Apprentice,” about Donald J. Trump’s early business career; and Andrea Arnold’s “Bird,” about a 12-year-old girl living in poverty in England.
The Russian director Kirill Serebrennikov will show “Limonov: The Ballad,” about a Russian poet living in New York, and Paolo Sorrentino, the Italian director, will be represented with “Parthenope,” which Frémaux said was about a beautiful woman who hopes to be known for something other than her looks.
Schrader, best known as the screenwriter behind “Taxi Driver,” will present “Oh Canada,” starring Uma Thurman and Richard Gere. Frémaux said the movie was a comedy about older people looking back on their lives and mistakes. Coralie Fargeat, best known as the director of “The Revenge,” will present a body horror — a gruesome horror movie subgenre — called “The Substance,” starring Demi Moore.
Before Thursday’s news conference, some movie critics had said they expected this year’s lineup to lack big movies from American studios because of the ongoing effects of last year’s Hollywood strikes. Frémaux said in the news conference that the 2024 selection “was not easy” because of the strikes, but that American cinema would “absolutely be present” at this year’s festival. Three of the 19 movies in competition are by American directors.
The details of a few high-profile movies appearing out of competition were already known long before Thursday’s news conference. Those include George Miller’s “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga,” the latest installment in the action series; and Kevin Costner’s “Horizon: an American Saga,” set on the Western frontier during the American Civil War.
All of the entries will be scrutinized by a jury led by Greta Gerwig, the director and screenwriter behind “Barbie,” and it will announce the Palme d’Or winner at a ceremony on May 25.
At the festival’s closing ceremony, George Lucas, the director of the “Star Wars” and “Indiana Jones” movies, will also receive an Honorary Palme d’Or for his contribution to cinema.
