On April 14 at 11:00am, on the Champs-Élysée in Paris, Cannes Film Festival artistic director, Thierry Frémaux, accompanied by outgoing festival president Pierre Lescure, announced the Official Selections for the 2022 event. The esteemed event will take place in person from May 17-28.
The festival’s Opening Night film will be The Artist director Michel Hazanvicius’s new zombie apocalypse feature, Z, starring Romain Duris and Bérénice Bejo. The film was originally scheduled to screen at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival, but the filmmakers pulled out when the festival became a virtual event, following the January surge of the Omicron variant. Holding out for an in-person premiere at another event, Hazanvicius hit the lottery with this prime placement at Cannes. Other high-profile world premieres announced include Joseph Kosinski’s Top Gun sequel, Top Gun: Maverick, Baz Lurmann’s highly-anticipated biopic Elvis, George Miller’s new Mad Max: Fury Road, and Three Thousand Years of Solitude, starring Idris Elba and Tilda Swinton.
Of the 49 films announced so far, as always French films were widely represented. French contenders in competition include Brother and Sister (Frère et Soeur), directed by Arnaud Desplechin and starring Marion Cotillard, Forever Young (Les Amandiers) directed by Valeria Bruni Tedeschi and starring Louis Garrel and Nadia Tereszkiewicz, and Stars at Noon by the revered director and Cannes regular, Claire Denis. While her film 35 Shots of Rum premiered in Un Certain Regard in 2008 and Let the Sunshine In was the 2017 Directors’ Fortnight opening film, Denis hasn’t had a film in competition since Chocolat in 1988, a film about colonial France in Cameroon. Set against the backdrop of the Nicaraguan Revolution, Stars at Noon stars Margaret Qualley and Robert Pattison. In Un Certain Régard, French entries include Rodeo by Lola Quivoron and The Worst (Les Pires) by Lise Akora and Romane Gueret.
French films out of competition include Mascarade by director Nicolas Bedos and November by Cédric Jimenez. Midnight Screenings include Fumer fait tousser by Quentin Dupieux. Irma Vep, a new HBO series based on director Olivier Assayas’s 1996 film, will be included in Cannes Premieres, along with Nos Frangins by Rachid Bouchareb.
After pledging to increase representation of films by women directors, Cannes has fallen short of its gender-parity pledge with the advocacy organization, 50/50×2020. This year’s lineup includes just three films directors by women. In addition to Bruni Tedeschi and Denis, beloved American director Kelly Reichart’s Showing Up will also compete for the Palme d’Or, Cannes’ top prize. Last year, French director Julia Ducournau took the honor for her film, the racy, divisive, Titane.
The Fortnight and Critics’ Week lineups are expected to be announced this week.
Entire Cannes 2022 line-up announced so far:
COMPETITION
“Armageddon Time,” James Gray (U.S.)
“Boy From Heaven,” Tarik Saleh (Sweden)
“Broker,” Kore-eda Hirokazu (Japan)
“Brother and Sister” OR “Frère et Sœur,” Arnaud Desplechin (France)
“Close,” Lucas Dhont (Belgium)
“Crimes of the Future,” David Cronenberg (Canada)
“Decision to Leave” OR “Haeojil Gyeolsim,” Park Chan-Wook (S. Korea)
“Eo” OR “Hi-Han,” Jerzy Skolimowski (Poland)
“Forever Young” OR “Les Amandiers,” Valeria Bruni Tedeschi (France)
“Holy Spider,” Ali Abbasi (Iran)
“Leila’s Brothers,” Saeed Roustaee (Iran)
“Nostalgia,” Mario Martone (Italy)
“RMN,” Cristian Mungiu (Romania)
“Showing Up,” Kelly Reichardt (U.S.)
“Stars at Noon,” Claire Denis (France)
“Tchaïkovski’s Wife,” Kirill Serebrennikov (Russia)
“Tori and Lokita,” Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne (Belgium)
“Triangle of Sadness,” Ruben Östlund (Sweden)
UN CERTAIN REGARD
“All the People I’ll Never Be” OR “Retour à Séoul,” Davy Chou (Cambodia)
“Beast,” Riley Keough and Gina Gammell (U.S.)
“Burning Days,” Emin Alper (Turkey)
“Butterfly Vision,” Maksim Nakonechnyi (Ukraine)
“Corsage,” Marie Kruetzer (Austria)
“Domingo and the Mist,” Ariel Escalante Meza (Costa Rica)
“Godland,” Hlynur Pálmason (Iceland)
“Joyland,” Saim Sadiq (Pakistan)
“Metronom,” Alexandru Belc (Romania)
“Plan 75,” Hayakawa Chie (Japan)
“Rodeo,” Lola Quivoron (France)
“Sick of Myself,” Kristoffer Borgli (Norway)
“The Silent Twins,” Agnieszka Smocynska (Poland)
“The Stranger,” Thomas M. Wright (Australia)
“The Worst” OR “Les Pires,” Lise Akora and Romane Gueret (France)
OUT OF COMPETITION
“Elvis,” Baz Luhrmann (U.S.-Australia)
“Final Cut” OR “Z (Comme Z),” Michel Hazanvicius (France) — OPENER
“Mascarade,” Nicolas Bedos (France)
“November,” Cédric Jimenez (France)
“Three Thousand Years of Longing,” George Miller (Australia)
“Top Gun: Maverick,” Joseph Kosinski (U.S.)
MIDNIGHT SCREENINGS
“Fumer fait tousser,” Quentin Dupieux (France)
“Hunt,” Lee Jung-Jae (S. Korea)
“Moonage Daydream,” Brett Morgen (U.S.)
SPECIAL SCREENINGS
“All That Breathes,” Shaunak Sen (India)
“The Natural History of Destruction,” Sergei Loznitsa (Ukraine)
“Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind,” Ethan Coen (U.S.)
CANNES PREMIERE
“Dodo,” Panos H. Koutras (Greece)
“Irma Vep,” Olivier Assayas (France)
“Nightfall,” Marco Bellocchio (Italy)
“Nos Frangins,” Rachid Bouchareb (France)
Andrea Meyer has written creative treatments for commercial directors, a sex and the movies column for IFC, and a horror movie script for MGM. Her first novel, Room for Love (St. Martin’s Press) is a romantic comedy based on an article she wrote for the New York Post, for which she pretended to look for a roommate as a ploy to meet men. A long-time film and entertainment journalist and former indieWIRE editor, Andrea has interviewed more actors and directors than she can remember. Her articles and essays have appeared in such publications as Elle, Glamour, Variety, Interview and the Boston Globe.
