10 films premiering at Cannes Film Festival 2024 that we cannot wait to watch

Every year, the Cannes Film Festival sets the ball rolling in picking some of the best films of the year. The 77th edition of one of the most prestigious festival boasts an array of exciting new titles from filmmakers all over the world. We pick a few films- in no particular order- that are on our must-watch radar.

All We Imagine as Light

An Indian feature film in competition after three decades? Count us excited for All We Imagine as Light by director Payal Kapadia the most. This Indo- French production follows Prabha (Kani Kusruti), a nurse, who receives an unexpected gift from her long estranged husband. Her younger friend and roommate, Anu (Divya Prabha) is in search of a quiet spot with her lover. The two women take a road trip to a beach town where they find space for their dreams and desires to flow. This is also Kapadia’s first feature debut, with her previous work: the documentary A Night of Knowing Nothing had clinched the Golden Eye award at Cannes a few years ago.

Kinds of Kindness

Yorgos Lanthimos seems to have embraced his Dogtooth-era fascination with weirdly funny and non-conformist roots with his latest competition feature. Kinds of Kindness arrives with amusing trivia. It was made during the post-production of Poor Things, and reunites him with stars Emma Stone, Willem Dafoe and Margaret Qualley. At 165 minutes, this is also a triptych of separate stories rolled into one. If the wild early reviews are any indication, this one is definitely a ride.

Megalopolis

Francis Ford Coppola marks his return to the French Riveira after decades with his magnum opus Megalopolis. It is definitely some kind of a cinema event. That he self-produced Megalopolis with an entire portion of his wine fortune sells a story of a celebrated director finally taking a swing of creative abandon to tell a story the way he wants to. Starring Adam Driver, Aubrey Plaza, Giancarlo Esposito, Nathalie Emmanuel, and Laurence Fishburne, the film has already divided critics after its premiere.

Santosh

Apart from All We Imagine as Light, also making a case for India at Cannes this year is Sandhya Suri-directed drama Santosh which screens at the Un Certain Regard section. The film follows a widowed woman (Shahana Goswami) who is given the job of her dead husband: a cop.

The Apprentice

Is the world ready for a film on a young Donald Trump? Cannes sure is. Sebastian Stan plays the former President in Ali Abbasi’s The Apprentice, which tells the journey of his early days, where Trump was mentored by a lawyer named Roy Cohn (played by Succession’s Kendall Roy, Jeremy Strong). Abbasi has even gone on to say that The Apprentice isn’t a satire. There is also the casting of Borat Subsequent Moviefilm star Maria Bakalova, who essays Ivana Trump.

The Balconettes

The closest that Portrait of a Lady on Fire fans can think of a reunion of sorts. Noémie Merlant wrote the script of her sophomore feature The Balconettes in collaboration with Céline Sciamma. This dark comedy follows the story of three women, played by Merlant, Sanda Codreneau, and Soheila Yacoub, as they start to obsess over their neighbors’ lives during a massive heat wave.

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

George Miller’s much-awaited prequel to Mad Max: Fury Road made its first stop at Cannes earlier this week. The early reviews are euphoric, and the action spectacle received a rapturous response at the premiere, culminating into a 7-minute long standing ovation. Furiosa has The Queen’s Gambit actor Anya Taylor-Joy take over the role played by Charlize Theron in Mad Max: Fury Road, whereas Chris Hemsworth steps in as a demented warlord. Furiosa releases in India on May 23.

Scénarios and Exposé du film annonce du film Scénario

The final film by Jean-Luc Godard was completed a day before the master of the French New Wave died by assisted suicide at 91 in his home in Rolle, Switzerland. The 18-minute film, Scénarios, will be shown at Cannes alongside Exposé du film annonce du film Scénario, a 34-minute film which goes behind the scenes to document how the film was made in the first place.

Bird

Will director Andrea Arnold snatch another Jury Prize for her Competition entry Bird? The British auteur has been a permanent at the festival, and has snagged the Jury Prize three times before: for Red Road, Fish Tank, and American Honey. Bird sees the director tell the story of a 12 year-old girl named Bailey, and the bond she shares with her father (played by Saltburn star Barry Keoghan) and a stranger named Bird (German actor Franz Rogowski). The early reviews have been universally positive, picking it as an early contender for the Palme d’Or.

Oh, Canada

Paul Schrader’s is back in Cannes with Oh, Canada, which is deemed to be his most autobographical project yet. Based on the novel Foregone by Russell Banks, this Competition entry stars Richard Gere as the writer Leonard Fife and his journey to Canada. Jacob Elordi plays the younger version of him, and the supporting cast include Michael Imperioli, Kristine Froseth, and Uma Thurman.