Notable competition films and directors include five female directors, such as Austrian director Marie Kreutzer with the French-flagged drama 'Gentle Monster' starring Léa Seydoux and Catherine Deneuve. Pedro Almodóvar is returning with the relationship drama 'Bitter Christmas' about a woman left by her lover during Christmas, while Hirokazu Kore-eda is competing with the humanist sci-fi drama 'Sheep in the Box' exploring the relationship between humans and artificial intelligence. Cristian Mungiu is presenting his first English-language film set in Norway, 'Fjord', a moral thriller partly produced in Sweden, starring Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve as a Romanian-Norwegian couple. Andrey Zvyagintsev is returning with 'Minotaur', a brutal allegory about the moral decay and complicity of the Russian upper middle class in the Ukraine war, and Pawel Pawlikowski is back in Cannes with 'Fatherland', depicting Thomas Mann's life in post-war Germany, starring Sandra Hüller. Asghar Farhadi is in competition with his movie 'Parallel Tales', set in France and inspired by Krzysztof Kieslowski's 'Dekalog: Six – A Short Film About Love', starring Isabelle Huppert and Catherine Deneuve, and László Nemes' new film 'Moulin' centers on French resistance hero Jean Moulin, played by Gilles Lellouche.
Thematic trends and festival policies show the political theme is prominent in this year's competition section with contributions reflecting today's geopolitical tensions, wars, polarization, and societal divides. The Cannes selection this year skews away from Hollywood towards a renewed dominance of world-cinema auteurs and heavy hitters. There are no British directors announced yet for the competition, and the festival, under director Thierry Frémaux, has stuck to its refusal to admit streamer-only movies. A distinct preponderance of male directors over female directors exists in the selection, though it has yet to be finalized, and the Middle East, Israel, Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran do not appear to be directly addressed in this year's competition films. The traumatized history of wartime France appears to be a recurrent theme in competition.
Steven Soderbergh's documentary 'John Lennon: The Last Interview' reportedly uses AI to reconstruct and reimagine the encounter for visuals. It remains unknown how the AI usage will be received by audiences and critics at Cannes, and whether any films will directly address current geopolitical conflicts like the war in Ukraine beyond allegorical treatments. The final gender balance among directors is also uncertain once the Cannes selection is fully finalized, and it is unclear if there will be any British directors or films announced for the competition before the festival begins.