Donald Trump, impersonated by Marvel actor Sebastian Stan, will make an unlikely star attraction on the Côte d’Azur in May, as a new film about the US presidential candidate’s real-estate career is set to premiere at Cannes in May.
The lineup for the 77th edition of the film festival, unveiled at a press conference in Paris on Thursday by general delegate Thierry Frémaux and president Iris Knobloch, will also see Yorgos Lanthimos and Emma Stone continue their prize-winning creative partnership, and British film-maker Andrea Arnold team up with Saltburn star Barry Keoghan for her first feature film in eight years.
Running in the competition are also new films by David Cronenberg, Taxi Driver scriptwriter Paul Schrader, Cannes veteran Jacques Audiard and Francis Ford Coppola’s previously announced passion project Megalopolis.
While the main programme does not quite match last year’s vintage selection for star-studdedness, it hinted at several intriguing – and often political – storylines.
In The Apprentice, Sweden-based Iranian-Danish director Ali Abbasi will examine Trump’s career as a real estate businessman in New York in the 1970s and 80s. Romanian-American actor Sebastian Stan, best known as Bucky Barnes in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, will impersonate the orange-faced US presidential candidate, while Jeremy Strong plays Roy Cohn, the attorney who represented Trump in the 1970s.
Running outside the competition, meanwhile, Canadian arthouse favourite Guy Maddin’s new film Rumours will see Cate Blanchett play an Ursula von der Leyen-esque politician at a fictional G7 meeting.
Running in the competition, Greek director Lanthimos’s anthology film Kinds of Kindness, which again features Willem Dafoe, comes just two months after his last film Poor Things’ glory at the Oscars, and less than a year after scooping the Golden Lion at the Venice film festival.
Dartford-born Arnold (Red Road, Fish Tank, Cow) will not only receive the Golden Coach award at the festival but also show her new feature, Bird, her first since 2016’s American Honey. Frémaux described it as a coming-of-age story about a young girl trying to escape from the narrow confines of the neighbourhood she grew up in.
Ben Whishaw plays Russian poet and political dissident Eduard Limonov in director Khiril Sebrennikov’s Limonov: The Ballad of Eddie, an adaptation of the feted novel by French writer Emmanuel Carrère.
Paolo Sorrentino, the Italian director of The Hand of God and The Young Pope, returns to Cannes with Parthenope, another film set in his native Napoli, while 2015 Palme d’Or winner Jacques Audiard will premiere Emilia Perez, a musical set in the world of Mexican drug cartels.
The festival’s jury will be chaired by Barbie director Greta Gerwig, the first female film-maker in the role since Jane Campion in 2014.
Films already announced include George Miller’s Mad Max prequel Furiosa, Kevin Costner’s multi-episode Western Horizon: An American Saga and Coppola’s long-awaited Megalopolis. Supposedly inspired by the Roman empire, the film has been four decades in the making and was reported to have been funded with $120m of the Godfather director’s own money.
The opening film will be absurdist comedy The Second Act starring Léa Seydoux and directed by French director Quentin Dupieux, once upon a time better known under his musical alias Mr Oizo. As tradition has it, the opening film will debut in French cinemas the same day.
Star Wars creator George Lucas will receive an honorary Palme d’Or at the closing ceremony on 25 May.
A spectacularly strong lineup for the festival in 2023 saw Justine Triet’s Anatomy of a Fall claim the Palme d’Or and Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest awarded the Grand Prix. The two films became juggernauts of the awards season, with Glazer’s stylised Holocaust drama winning two Oscars in March.
Cannes 2024 official selection: the full list
Competition
The Apprentice, dir: Ali Abbasi
Motel Destino, dir: Karim Aïnouz
Bird, dir: Andrea Arnold
Emilia Perez, dir: Jacques Audiard
Anora, dir: Sean Baker
Megalopolis, dir: Francis Ford Coppola
The Shrounds, dir: David Cronenberg
The Substance, dir: Coralie Fargeat
Grand Tour, dir: Miguel Gomes
Marcello Mio, dir: Christophe Honoré
Feng Liu Yi Dai, dir: Jia Zhang-Ke
All We Imagine as Light, dir: Payal Kapadia
Kinds of Kindness, dir: Yorgos Lanthimos
L’Amour Ouf, dir: Gilles Lellouche
Diamant Brut, dir: Agathe Riedinger
Oh Canada, dir: Paul Schrader
Limonov – The Ballad, dir: Kirill Serebrennikov
Parthenope, dir: Paolo Sorrentino
The Girl with the Needle, dir: Magnus von Horn
Un Certain Regard
Norah, dir: Tawfik Alzaidi
The Shameless, dir: Konstantin Bojanov
Le Royaume, dir: Julien Colonna
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Vingt Dieux, dir: Louise Courvoisier
Le Procès du Chien (Who Let the Dog Bite?), dir: Laetitia Dosch
Gou Zhen (Black Dog), dir: Guan Hu
The Village Next to Paradise, dir: Mo Harawe
September Says, dir: Arian Labed
L’Histoire de Souleymane, dir: Boris Lojkine
The Damned, dir: Roberto Minervini
On Becoming a Guinea Fowl, dir: Rungano Nyoni
Boku No Ohisama (My Sunshine), dir: Hiroshi Okuyama
Santosh, dir: Sandhya Suri
Viet and Nam, dir: Truong Minh Quy
Armand, dir: Halfdan Ullmann Tøndel
Out of Competition
She’s Got no Name, dir: Chan Peter Ho-Sun
Horizon, An American Saga, dir: Kevin Costner
Rumours, dir: Evan Johnson, Galen Johnson and Guy Maddin
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, dir: George Miller
Midnight Screenings
Twilight of the Warrior Walled In, dir: Soi Cheang
The Surfer, dir: Lorcan Finnegan
Les Femmes Au Balcon, dir: Noémie Merlant
I, The Executioner, dir: Ryoo Seung-Wan
Cannes Premiere
Everybody Loves Touda, dir: Nabil Ayouch
C’est Pas Moi, dir: Leos Carax
En Fanfare (The Matching Bang), dir: Emmanuel Courcol
Miséricorde, dir: Alain Guiraudie
Le Roman de Him, dir: Arnaud Larrieu and Jean-Marie Larrieu
Rendez-vous avec Pol Pot, dir: Rithy Panh
Special Screenings
Le Fil, dir: Daniel Auteil
Ernest Cole, Lost and Found, dir: Raoul Peck
The Invasion, dir: Sergei Loznitsa
Appendre, dir: Claire Simon
La Belle de Gaza, dir: Yolande Zauberman