Cannes Film Festival to begin rolling on May 14 with surreal French comedy The Second Act

The 77th Cannes Film Festival will open on May 14 with Quentin Dupieux’s The Second Act headlined by a star-studded cast that will include Lea Seydoux, Vincent Lindon, Louis Garrel and Raphael Quenard. The movie will play out-of-competition, and will hit theatres in France the same day.

Wittily narrated in an absurdist way, the The Second Act focusses on actors starring in a doomed film production, and arrives from one of the most popular and prolific directors in France. Dupieux made two movies in 2023 — Daaaaaalí, which played out-of-competition at Venice, and Yannick, a French box office hit that sold around the world.

The Festival in a note described Dupieux’s as a “moviemaker who embraces freedom – in tone, form and subject” and a director who “has freed himself from convention through an already extensive body of work (13 features in 17 years), establishing the absurd as a genre in its own right and shaking up all the others – of which The Second Act is a perfect case in point!”

Earlier, Dupieux presented Smoking Causes Cancer, which was part of the Festival’s Midnight Screenings. His other highlights include Rubber, Wrong, and Deerskin, which bowed at Cannes’ Directors Fortnight, a section that runs parallel to the main Festival.

The Second Act will see many French stars stepping on the famed red carpet, and some of them will be Alain Chabat, Benoît Poelvoorde, Jean Dujardin, Adèle Exarchopoulos, Léa Drucker, Benoît Magimel, Anaïs Demoustier, Vincent Lacoste, Gilles Lellouche, Édouard Baer and Pio Marmaï.

The official list of selection will be announced by the Festival chief, Thierry Fremaux, on April 11 in Paris.

Greta Gerwig of the Barbie fame will chair the main jury of the 12-day event – often termed the Queen of All.

The Festival runs from May 14 to 25.