Sandra Hüller Léa Seydoux Charli XCX Paul Dano Masahiro Motoki Dave Bautista Laurent Hou/Hans Lucas/AFP/Getty Images; Dominik Magdziak/Getty Images; Vittorio Zunino Celotto/Getty Images; Stephane Cardinale - Corbis/Corbis/Getty Images; Marilla Sicilia/Archivio Marilla Sicilia/Mondadori Portfolio/Getty Images; Mike Coppola/Getty Images First, the reality check. Some of the year’s most anticipated titles are almost certainly skipping the Croisette. Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day, Pixar’s Toy Story 5 and Lucasfilm’s The Mandalorian & Grogu look destined for more traditional blockbuster rollouts rather than a Cannes bow.
No shock either that Christopher Nolan’s mythic epic The Odyssey is sitting this one out — the filmmaker hasn’t played the festival circuit since Memento premiered at Venice Film Festival in 2000. And while Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s Digger, starring Tom Cruise and Sandra Hüller, is one of the most talked-about films in the pipeline, its October release date points squarely toward Venice rather than the Côte d’Azur.
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Then there’s The Entertainment System Is Down from two-time Palme d’Or winner Ruben Östlund. The Swedish auteur is indeed heading back to Cannes — just not this year. The film is still deep in post, meaning any hopes of a historic Palme three-peat will likely have to wait until 2027. Its a similar story with Terrence Malick’s biblical epic The Way of the Wind. Shot back in 2019 it is reportedly still in post-production limbo and not expected to be ready in time.
The upside: Cannes 2026 could still deliver a formidable auteur lineup, with new films from the likes of Pedro Almodóvar, Asghar Farhadi, Paweł Pawlikowski and Lukas Dhont all widely expected to be ready in time for the 79th Cannes Film Festival (May 12–23).
Below is a look at the projects most likely to make the Croisette cut — from returning Palme winners and Cannes regulars to a few wildcard premieres that could shake up the lineup.
Paweł Pawlikowski’s 1949
Paweł Pawlikowski, who took Cannes’ best director prize for the ravishing Cold War in 2018, returns with 1949, a project inspired by Colm Tóibín’s acclaimed 2021 novel The Magician — a fictionalized account of a chapter in the life of Thomas Mann. Hanns Zischler stars as Mann and Sandra Hüller as the great novelist’s daughter, Erika Mann, along with supporting parts for August Diehl (Inglourious Basterds) and Pawlikowski’s regular muse Joanna Kulig. Set in the early Cold War, the story is said to follow the exiled novelist as he travels from West Germany to Weimar in the East with his daughter. The film is shot in black and white by Łukasz Żal, the same DP behind Cold War and other recent visual stunners like Zone of Interest and Hamnet.
Sompot Chidgasornpongse’s 9 Temples to Heaven
Palme d’Or winner Apichatpong Weerasethakul produces the feature debut of his longtime assistant director Sompot Chidgasornpongse, who has worked alongside the Thai master since Tropical Malady in 2004. Weerasethakul’s Kick the Machine Films is co-producing with Singapore’s E&W Films and France’s Petit Chaos — the same outfit behind Payal Kapadia’s 2024 Cannes Grand Prix winner All We Imagine as Light. The story follows a man who takes his sprawling family on a frantic one-day pilgrimage to nine Buddhist temples after hearing a prophecy that his elderly mother may not have long to live. The grueling journey unearths simmering family tensions against the backdrop of contemporary Thailand’s uneasy relationship with traditional faith. The attendant buzz and pedigree suggest an Un Certain Regard birth or sidebar placement for this one.
Lars von Trier won the Palme d’Or in 2000 for Dancer in the Dark. Everett Lars von Trier’s After
If the rumors and reports are true and Danish enfant terrible Lars von Trier is on track to finish his 15th, likely final, feature, it seems inconceivable that it won’t screen in Cannes. After would be von Trier’s first feature since The House That Jack Built, a controversial Cannes competition entry in 2018. Von Trier’s health — he announced his Parkinson’s diagnosis in 2022 — has dictated a much slower pace but the director of Breaking the Waves, Dogville and Dancer in the Dark reportedly finished shooting After last summer and could be ready to deliver the movie in time for Cannes. Little is known about the new project, except that it is an exploration of “death and life after death” per Von Trier’s long-time producer Peter Aalbæk Jensen.
Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s All of a Sudden
Ryusuke Hamaguchi‘s first French-language feature — and his follow-up to the beguiling Venice Silver Lion winner Evil Does Not Exist — is a co-production between France, Japan, Germany and Belgium that was shot in Paris and Kyoto. Virginie Efira stars as a nursing home director who defies her team by adopting a humane care technique called Humanitude; her life is transformed when she meets a terminally ill Japanese playwright, played by Tao Okamoto. The story is said to be loosely inspired by a published correspondence between a philosopher with terminal cancer and a medical anthropologist. Neon snapped up North American rights in a reported seven-figure deal at Berlin’s EFM. Hamaguchi won Cannes’ screenplay award for Drive My Car on his way to taking home the best international film Oscar in 2022. If that weren’t enough, the fact that his latest auteurist effort was filmed in French makes his return to the Croisette all but a sure thing.
Nathan Zellner & David Zellner’s Alpha Gang
After their dialogue-free Bigfoot family comedy Sasquatch Sunset alternately delighted and bewildered Sundance audiences in 2024 with its formal confidence and deadpan tone, David and Nathan Zellner have scaled up considerably with Alpha Gang, a sci-fi comedy packing an eccentrically starry ensemble cast. Cate Blanchett stars as Alpha One, the indomitable leader of an alien invasion force that arrives on Earth disguised as a 1950s leather-clad biker gang — only to have their ruthless mission derailed when they begin experiencing human emotions. Chris Pine, Léa Seydoux, Dave Bautista, Lily-Rose Depp, Adria Arjona and Kelvin Harrison Jr. round out the gang. With its Croisette-friendly mix of arthouse credibility and star power, Alpha Gang looks well-placed for an out-of-competition or midnight screening slot. MK2 Films is handling international sales.
Takashi Miike Rick Kern/Getty Images Takashi Miike’s Bad Lieutenant: Tokyo or Untitled Charli XCX Horror Project
The insanely prolific Takashi Miike — 100-plus features and counting — could deliver not one but two Cannes-ready titles this year. Bad Lieutenant: Tokyo, acquired by Neon, stars Shun Oguri and Lily James in Miike’s characteristically unhinged take on the Abel Ferrara/Werner Herzog franchise, transplanting the corrupt-cop saga to the neon-soaked Tokyo underworld. Produced by Jeremy Thomas, the film has already wrapped. But the buzzier midnight play could be Miike’s untitled Kyoto-set slasher starring Charli XCX, Milly Alcock and Norman Reedus, which recently wrapped shooting in Japan. The film follows three friends whose Kyoto reunion turns nightmarish when Charli’s character becomes possessed by a violent spirit — a premise born from an original idea co-developed by the pop star and the Japanese genre legend. Given Miike’s well-earned Cannes history — Hara-Kiri and Shield of Straw both competed — a midnight slot for one or the other would seem a solid bet.
Léa Mysius’ The Birthday Party
Mysius’ feature debut, Ava (2017) premiered in Critics’ Week and 2022’s The Five Devils in Directors’ Fortnight, preparing the ground for another Cannes bow for The Birthday Party, with a sidebar screening slot likely. This adaptation of the novel by Laurent Mauvignier follows a family — husband Bergogne (Bastien Bouillon), wife Nora (Hafsia Herzi), and daughter Ida (Twaba El Gharchy) — beset by strangers who descend on their village during Nora’s 40th birthday.
Pedro Almodóvar’s Bitter Christmas
Pedro Almodóvar’s last feature — his English-language debut The Room Next Door (2024)— won the Venice Film Festival. His return to Spanish-language cinema is a prime contender for a Cannes competition slot, and opportunity to win the Palme d’Or that has eluded him in six previous attempts. Described as a “tragicomedy about gender,” the film wrapped production last summer and will hit Spanish cinemas on March 20, with a broader roll-out (in Italy, Mexico, Brazil, etc.) set for late May. The timing suggests a Cannes bow is a done deal. Sony Pictures Classics has scooped up North American right, continuing SPC’s long run with Almodóvar.
Werner Herzog’s Bucking Fastard
Kate and Rooney Mara play twin sisters who dig a tunnel through a mountain in search of a mythical land where “true love is possible” in this new piece of existential weirdness from everyone’s favorite German madman. Herzog’s relationship with Cannes stretches back decades, from his 1971 documentary Fata Morgana, which screened in Directors’ Fortnight, through 1982 competition entry Fitzcarraldo, which won him best director, to Family Romance, a 2019 special screening. If Bucking Fastard is finished, expect it to land someone in the official festival line-up.
From left: Rooney and Kate Mara in Bucking Fastard. Courtesy of Lena Herzog Florian Zeller’s Bunker
Florian Zeller’s Oscar-winning debut feature The Father (2016) premiered at Sundance and his 2022 follow-up The Son bowed in Venice but the third time could be the Cannes charm for the French writer/director. Javier Bardem and Penélope Cruz play a couple whose lives start to unravel when Bardem, a star architect, takes on a commission to build a bunker for a reclusive billionaire. Stephen Graham, Paul Dano, and Patrick Schwarzenegger co-star in the psychological thriller, shot in Madrid and London in late 2025.
Kantemir Balagov’s Butterfly Jam
Kantemir Balagov’s English-language debut marks a bold pivot for the Russian auteur, who left his homeland following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, pledging never to return so long as Putin remains in power. The film follows a Circassian circus troupe in New Jersey and centers on a young wrestler (Talha Akdogan) torn between his father’s restaurant and the troupe’s high-wire acts. The film’s all-star cast, including Riley Keough, Barry Keoghan, Harry Melling, and Monica Bellucci, and Balagov’s Cannes bonefides — his 2019 breakthrough Beanpole won Un Certain Regard’s Best Director prize — makes Butterfly Jam an odds on favorite for competition this year.
Corneliu Porumboiu’s The Costume (Working Title)
After a few films in sidebar sections, Romanian New Wave director Porumboiu broke into Cannes competition with The Whistlers in 2019. Little is known about his new feature, not even the title — it has been previously referred to as The Costume — but if it is finished in time for Cannes, it’s a safe bet it will unspool on the Croisette somewhere in the official lineup.
Lukas Dhont’s Coward
After delivering back-to-back Cannes darlings with Girl (2018) and Close (2022) — the former won the Camera d’Or, the latter the Grand Prix — it would be a major shock if Lukas Dhont doesn’t return to competition with is third feature. Coward is a big swing for the Belgian director. His first period piece, the film follows a Belgian soldier grappling with cowardice and heroism in the trenches of WWI.
Antonin Baudry’s De Gaulle Diptych
Antonin Baudry’s two-part biopic, adapted from Julian Jackson’s acclaimed biography, traces the French leader’s rise from army officer to resistance icon to president, with Simon Abkarian (Casino Royale) starring as De Gaulle. It’s just the sort of French epic Cannes loves to drop into a non-competition slot. The timing is also ideal, with Pathé set to bow both films back-to-back in France this summer, with part one, De Gaulle: Tilting Iron, going out June 10 and part two, De Gaulle: The Sovereign Edge on July 3.
Radu Jude’s The Diary of a Chambermaid
Radu Jude is not one of the Romanian auteurs favored by Cannes. The Potemkinists (2022) premiered in Directors’ Fortnight, but Berlin and Locarno have been his go-to festivals in the past. There is an outside chance, however, that his latest, a French-set reimagining of Octave Mirbeau’s 1900 novel, could be the exception. Ana Dumitrescu stars as a young Romanian woman who moves to France to work for a bourgeois family and joins an amateur theater troupe adapting Mirbeau’s novel for the stage.
July Jung’s Dora
South Korean writer-director July Jung made her feature debut with A Girl at My Door in Un Certain Regard in 2014 and closed Critics’ Week with Next Sohee in 2022 — both produced by master filmmaker Lee Chang-dong. Her third feature, Dora, is said to center on a young woman carrying physical and emotional scars who encounters another woman in a seaside village, setting the stage for a slow, transformative healing process. The film boasts a compelling casting combo: Japanese star Sakura Ando, best known for her leading role in Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Palme d’Or winner Shoplifters, makes her Korean-language debut opposite K-pop star-turned-actress Kim Do-yeon. A solid Un Certain Regard contender.
Valeska Grisebach’s The Dreamed Adventure
Valeska Grisebach’s The Dreamed Adventure is set in the border region between Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey, and follows a women who enters into a dubious deal to help an old friend. The film’s borderland setting and themes of desire and risk echo Grisebach’s Western, which premiered in Un Certain Regard in 2017 and The Dreamed Adventure is strong candidate for the same section, or even for a Competition slot if Cannes wants to elevate the profile of this celebrated, but frustratingly unprolific Berlin School auteur.
Cristian Mungiu’s Fjord
Mungiu’s Cannes track record, with four films in competition, including his Palme d’Or-winning debut 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (2007) makes Fjord a default Competition contender. Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve star as a Romanian-Norwegian couple who move to her remote hometown, only to find themselves suspected of disturbing behavior towards their children and the center of a witch hunt. Neon has pre-bought North American rights, a good sign for a Cannes debut.
Quentin Dupieux’s Full Phil
Cannes’ favorite French prankster, who opened the festival in 2024 with The Second Act and had a Midnight Screening success with Smoking Causes Coughing in 2022, is looking at a return to the Croisette with his new feature, an English-language pivot starring Woody Harrelson as a wealthy industrialist trying to reconnect with his estranged daughter (Kristen Stewart), whose father-daughter trip to Paris spirals into absurdist chaos. Described by Dupieux as “Emily in Paris in Hell,” it would be a fun edition to Cannes competition, but an out-of-comp or sidebar slot looks more likely.
‘Full Phil’ Chi-Fou-Mi-Productions Marie Kreutzer’s Gentle Monster
Kreutzer’s Corsage, starring Vicky Krieps as a 40-something Austrian Empress, was a sleeper hit out of Cannes 2022, winning best performance honors at Un Certain Regard. The director’s pitch for her follow-up won the ArteKino International Prize at Cannes’ Marché du Film last year. The story follows two women: Léa Seydoux plays Lucy, who sacrifices her own career opportunities to support her husband after his burnout, moving with him and their young son to the countryside. Jella Hasse plays Elsa, a police investigator whose private life is taken up caring for her father, who is suffering from dementia. Described as a drama about “trust and deception, love and violence,” Gentle Monster shot in Austria and Germany last fall. If the film doesn’t make the Competition cut, a Un Certain Regard slot looks certain.
Nicolas Winding Refn Vittorio Zunino Celotto/Getty Images Nicolas Winding Refn’s Her Private Hell
A return to Cannes for Danish provocateur NWR, a decade after The Neon Demon graced the Croisette, looks likely, following confirmation that Refn’s new Tokyo-set thriller has finished production. Little else is known about the film, except that Sophie Thatcher, Charles Melton, Kristine Froseth and Havana Rose Liu star and Neon has pre-bought domestic rights. But Cannes loves Refn (he won best director for Drive in 2011) and the smart money has Her Private Hell as a Midnight Screening or Competition contender.
Na Hong-jin’s Hope
Na Hong-jin stunned Cannes in 2016 with his visceral supernatural thriller The Wailing. His long-awaited follow-up reportedly carries the biggest budget ever committed to a Korean feature — north of $35 million — and pairs Korean stars Hwang Jung-min, Zo In-sung and Squid Game‘s Jung Ho-yeon with Hollywood couple Michael Fassbender and Alicia Vikander. Set in a remote harbor village near the DMZ, the sci-fi thriller kicks off with reports of a mysterious discovery that plunges the town into a desperate fight for survival. Na has talked publicly about expanding Hope into a multi-film franchise. PlusM Entertainment is handling Korean distribution and has yet to set a local release date, leaving festival-goers guessing whether it will land at Cannes or hold for a fall festival launch.
Nanni Moretti Nanni Moretti’s It Will Happen Tonight
Nanni Moretti has his fans and Thierry Frémaux appears to be one of them. Every one of the Italian auteur’s features since Caro diario (1993) has premiered on the Croisette — including The Son’s Room, which won the Palme d’Or in 2001. It Will Happen Tonight is a romantic drama loosely inspired by Israeli writer Eshkol Nevo’s short story collection Hungry Heart. Louis Garrel stars alongside Jasmine Trinca — who made her screen debut in The Son’s Room and returns to Moretti’s world for the first time since The Caiman (2006). The Italy-France-Spain co-production was shooting through the autumn and should be well positioned for the seemingly inevitable competition slot.
Joel Coen‘s Jack of Spades
Joel Coen’s second solo directorial effort — following 2021’s The Tragedy of Macbeth — would mark his first time at Cannes without brother Ethan, with whom he won the Palme d’Or for Barton Fink in 1991 and shared the Grand Prix for Inside Llewyn Davis in 2013. Jack of Spades is described as a gothic mystery set in 1880s Scotland, written by Coen and starring the seemingly omnipresent Josh O’Connor, fresh off The Mastermind and The History of Sound, both of which screened at Cannes last year. Frances McDormand, Lesley Manville and Damian Lewis co-star. Cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel, who shot Macbeth so beautifully, returns behind the camera. Coen wrapped filming in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Culross in the fall of 2025, suggesting a cut could well be ready in time for Cannes.
Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Kokurojo: The Samurai and the Prisoner
After more than four decades and upwards of 50 features, Kiyoshi Kurosawa has made his first samurai feature. Kokurojo is a feudal mystery drama set during a 16th-century castle siege, adapted from Honobu Yonezawa’s novel that made Japanese literary history by sweeping all four of the country’s major mystery awards. Masahiro Motoki — the Oscar-winning star of Departures — plays a lord who rebels against warlord Oda Nobunaga and barricades himself inside Arioka Castle, only to face a string of unsolved murders within its walls. To crack the case, he turns to a prisoner in the dungeon: the brilliant military strategist Kanbei Kuroda, played by Masaki Suda. Produced by Shochiku studio, with Charades handling sales, the film reportedly boasts the biggest budget of Kurosawa’s long and deeply influential career. It has been set for a June 19 Japanese release, suggesting a Cannes bow just weeks prior.
Yeon Sang-ho Lost Paradise
Yeon Sang-ho caused a sensation at Cannes’ in 2016 with his midnight section entry Train to Busan, which went on to earn nearly $100 million worldwide. His latest cerebral thriller continues his pivot toward micro-budget filmmaking. Paradise Lost, produced for a reported $340,000 — a sliver of the typical Korean commercial film budget — is a suspenseful drama about a mother whose son vanished in a mysterious camping bus disappearance nine years ago. When the boy returns as a grown adult, dark secrets surface around the blurred boundary between virtual and real worlds. Kim Hyun-joo, a frequent Yeon collaborator from his Netflix series Hellbound, leads alongside Bae Hyun-sung. Korean heavyweight CJ ENM, backer of last year’s Venice breakouts No Other Choice and Bugonia, is handling domestic distribution and has positioned the film as its key European festival contender for 2026. A sidebar or Directors’ Fortnight slot could be a natural fit for this stripped-down chiller.
Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Minotaur
A new film from Russian auteur Andrey Zvyagintsev, coming nearly a decade after 2017’s Loveless — winner of the Cannes Jury Prize — would seem a natural for the 2026 competition. Zvyagintsev wrapped production on his sixth feature in December. Described as a political fable that combines elements of a crime thriller with epic tragedy, the plot of Minotaur sees a Russian corporate executives preparing to carry out mass layoffs, who discovers his wife is having an affair. MK2 Films and CG Cinema are producing, which should help the film’s Cannes prospects.
Koji Fukada Nagi Notes
Keen-eyed Japanese auteur Koji Fukada returns with Nagi Notes, his latest collaboration with French sales powerhouse MK2 Films — their fifth together, following Love on Trial, which premiered at Cannes last year, and 2016’s Harmonium, winner of Un Certain Regard’s Jury Prize. Nine years in the making, the film is set in the rural town of Nagi in Okayama Prefecture and follows Yoriko (Takako Matsu, in her first collaboration with the director), a sculptor carrying an unhealed loss, whose quiet routines are disrupted when her friend Yuri (Shizuka Ishibashi), an architect based between Tokyo and Taiwan, arrives to model for her work. Kenichi Matsuyama co-stars as a widowed childhood friend.
Albert Serra’s Out of This World
Albert Serra’s English-language debut stars Riley Keough as part of an American delegation which travels to Russia in the midst of the Ukrainian war to try to find a solution to an economic dispute linked to U.S. sanctions. Serra’s Cannes history — his 2022 feature Pacifiction was in Competition; Liberté (2019) won the special jury prize in Un Certain Regard; The Death of Louis XIV was a 2016 Special Screening; and Honor of the Knights (2006) premiered in Directors’ Fortnight — positions Out of This World film for a high-profile slot, especially after the success of Serra’s 2024 docudrama Afternoon of Solitude (2024), which bypassed Cannes to premiere at San Sebastian, and promptly won the Golden Shell for best film.
James Gray’s Paper Tiger
James Gray has hit the Croisette as consistently as any other contemporary American filmmaker. Five of his features have competed for the Palme d’Or — a run encompassing The Yards, We Own the Night, Two Lovers, The Immigrant and Armageddon Time. Paper Tiger marks Gray’s much-welcomed return to the crime-thriller milieu of his early career, following two brothers whose pursuit of the American Dream leads them into the brutal orbit of the Russian mafia. Adam Driver stars alongside Scarlett Johansson and Miles Teller, who stepped in after Anne Hathaway and Jeremy Strong exited due to scheduling conflicts. Shot on location in New Jersey last summer, the film is currently wrapping post-production. Producer Rodrigo Teixeira, on his third collaboration with Gray, has been building buzz in interviews by calling it the director’s finest work to date.
Asghar Farhadi Andreas Rentz_Getty Images-GettyImages Asghar Farhadi’s Parallel Tales
For his first feature since A Hero — Cannes Grand Prix winner in 2021 — the two-time Oscar-winning Iranian director has assembled a stellar French cast, including Isabelle Huppert, Virginie Efira, Vincent Cassel, Catherine Deneuve and Pierre Niney, for a story centered around the November 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris. Farhadi’s name, the film’s star-power and the political charge of the subject matter make Parallel Tales a frontrunner for competition.
Bruno Dumont’s Red Rocks
As a Cannes perennial — Dumont’s has had four films in competition over the years, as well as a couple of Un Certain Regard titles and a Directors’ Fortnight premiere — it looks certain the latest from the French auteur is bound for the Croisette, with a competition slot a possibility. The new feature is described as a Romeo and Juliet-style star-crossed love story set on the French Riviera where rival gangs — locals vs. summer tourists — clash in a deadly game of cliff jumping.
Hirokazu Kore-eda Klára Šimonová/Getty Images Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Sheep in the Box
Palme d’Or winner Hirokazu Kore-eda returns with his most conceptually adventurous film since Air Doll (2009). Sheep in the Box — its title drawn from The Little Prince — is set in the near future, where a bereaved couple welcomes a state-of-the-art humanoid into their home as a surrogate for their dead son. Kore-eda has said the project was sparked by his discovery of the “resurrection business” emerging in China and his interest in how technological advancements might collide with our deepest human values. Haruka Ayase, who starred in Kore-eda’s Our Little Sister, leads alongside popular comedian Daigo in his first feature role. Neon acquired North American rights last fall, and a May 29 Japanese theatrical release via Toho lines up perfectly with a Cannes launch. Kore-eda is also currently in post-production on Look Back, a coming-of-age drama adapted from the best-selling manga from Chainsaw Man creator Tatsuki Fujimoto. That film is expected to hit screens later in 2026, teeing up a potential Venice launch.
Arthur Harari’s The Unknown
Harari’s Cannes debut, Onoda (2021), opened Un Certain Regard and his follow-up, co-written, like his Oscar-winning Anatomy of a Fall script, with partner Justine Triet, could follow suit, or even jump into a competition slot. Léa Seydoux stars in the feature, adapted from Harari’s own graphic novel, about a man who, after a passionate one-night stand, wakes up transformed into the body of the woman he seduced. Neon, which has successfully picked the last six Palme d’Or winners, pre-bought The Unknown for North America, suggesting it thinks this one’s a shoo-in.
Mike Leigh Mike Leigh’s Untitled Next Feature
As per custom, details about Mike Leigh‘s latest feature are almost nonexistent — no title, no plot summary, just some casting intel. The Palme d’Or winner (Secrets & Lies,1996) and perennial Cannes auteur wrapped shooting in London near the start of the year, reuniting with four of his regular collaborators: Marion Bailey (Mr. Turner), Paul Jesson (All or Nothing), Kate O’Flynn (Happy-Go-Lucky) and Alice Bailey Johnson (Hard Truths). Working through his signature process of extended rehearsal and improvisation, the 83-year-old filmmaker has developed the project with his usual coterie of behind-the-camera regulars, too, including cinematographer Lucy Bristow and casting director Nina Gold. Cornerstone is handling international sales. If completed in time, the project is likely a lock for Cannes competition.
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