2023 Cannes Film Festival Lineup Announced

Get your tux out of the mothballs and brush up on your French phrasebook: After feverish speculation about what might premiere at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival, the lineup has finally been announced.

Thierry Frémaux’s annual press conference, which you can watch below, has wrapped and we now know what will debut on the Croisette when Cannes takes place May 16-27. We already knew there’d be a spot for Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon,” that Harrison Ford and James Mangold would be bringing fedora couture with “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” (filling this year’s blockbuster spot reserved by “Top Gun: Maverick” last year), and that, controversially, the Johnny Depp-starring film “Jeanne du Barry” by Maïwenn would open the festival.

Among the titles expected at Cannes, or at least hoped for, are Wes Anderson’s “Asteroid City,” Jonathan Glazer’s “The Zone of Interest,” Kitty Green’s re-team with Julia Garner “The Royal Hotel,” Yorgos Lanthimos’s Emma Stone reunion “Poor Things,” Todd Haynes’ “May/December,” starring Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman, Hirokazu Kore-eda’s “Monster,” Richard Linklater’s “Hitman,” Alice Rohrwacher’s “La Chimera,” and Michel Gondry’s “The Book of Solutions.”

And, of course, already announced is the 30-minute gay Western from Pedro Almodóvar starring Pedro Pascal and Ethan Hawke, which the director Eric Kohn said is his answer to “Brokeback Mountain.”

Cannes 2023: Record Number of Female Filmmakers in Competition

Cannes Film Festival will once again feature more female directors in its starry competition section than ever in its 76-year history. While last year marked the first time the French festival programmed five films directed or co-directed by women in competition, 2023 marks a new uptick: it will be the first year the fest includes six films from female directors competing for the Palme d’Or.

Announced this morning, this year’s Cannes competition slate includes new films from Alice Rohrwacher (“La Chimera”), Jessica Hausner (“Club Zero”), Catherine Breillat (“Last Summer”), Justine Triet (“Anatomie d’une chute”), Ramata-Toulaye Sy (“Banel et Adama), and Kaouther Ben Hania (“Olfa’s Daughters”). With 19 films currently on the slate, that means a full 31.5 percent of them hail from female creators, a brand-new Cannes record. (Also of note: Sy is only the second Black woman to ever earn a slot in the competition lineup; the first was Mati Diop in 2019.)

The importance of Cannes can’t be understated even with a slowing acquisitions market. Last year’s Palme d’Or winner “Triangle of Sadness,” a Neon pickup, got a Best Picture nomination from the Oscars, along with two other nods (Best Director for Ruben Östlund and Östlund again for Best Original Screenplay). That was the third straight Palme d’Or winner to be distributed by Neon, following “Titane” in 2021 and “Parasite” in 2019, which of course went on to win the Academy Award for Best Picture, the first non-English language film to do so.

Cannes is also an end unto itself, the Palme d’Or conferring a level of status and built-in box-office interest that no other prize but the Oscar can.

Watch the whole press conference as it’s livestreaming here and read the full list of titles from the 2023 Cannes Film Festival lineup announcement below.

Opening Night

“Jeanne du Barry,” Maïwenn (Out of Competition)

In Competition

“Club Zero,” Jessica Hausner
“The Zone of Interest,” Jonathan Glazer
“Fallen Leaves,” Aki Kaurismaki
“Four Daughters,” Kaouther Ben Hania
“Asteroid City,” Wes Anderson
“Anatomie d’Une Chute,” Justine Triet
“Monster,” Hirokazu Kore-eda
“The Sun of the Future,” Nanni Moretti
“La Chimera,” Alice Rohrwacher
“About Dry Grasses,” Nuri Bilge Ceylan
“L’Ete Dernier,” Catherine Breillat
“The Passion of Dodin Bouffant,” Tran Anh Hung
“Rapito,” Marco Bellocchio
“May/December,” Todd Haynes
“Firebrand,” Karim Ainouz
“The Old Oak,” Ken Loach
“Banel et Adama,” Ramata-Toulaye Sy
“Perfect Days,” Wim Wenders
“Jeunesse,” Wang Bing

Un Certain Regard

“The Delinquents,” Rodrigo Moreno
“How to Have Sex,” Molly Manning Walker
“Goodbye Julia,” Mohamed Kordofani
“The Buriti Flower,” Joao Salaviza and Renée Nader Messora
“Simple Comme Sylvain,” Monia Chokri
“Kadib Abyad (The Mother of All Lies),” Asmae El Moudir
“The Settlers,” Felipe Galvez
“Omen,” Baloji Tshiani
“The Breaking Ice,” Anthony Chen
“Rosalie,” Stephanie di Giusto
“The New Boy,” Warwick Thornton
“If Only I Could Hibernate,” Zoljargal Purevdash
“Hopeless,” Kim Chang-hoon
“Terrestrial Verses,” Ali Asgari & Alireza Khatami
“Rien a Perdre,” Delphine Deloget
“Les Meutes,” Kamal Lazraq
“La Regne Animal,” Thomas Cailley

Special Screenings

“Pictures of Ghosts,” Kleber Mendonca Filho
“Anselm,” Wim Wenders
“Occupied City,” Steve McQueen
“Man in Black,” Wang Bing

Cannes Premieres

“Le Temps D’Aimer,” Katell Quillevere
“Cerrar Los Ojos,” Victor Erice
“Bonnard, Pierre et Marthe,” Martin Provost
“Kubi,” Takeshi Kitano

Midnight Screenings

“Omar la Fraise,” Elias Belkeddar
“Kennedy,” Anurag Kashyap
“Acide,” Just Philippot

Out of Competition

“Killers of the Flower Moon,” Martin Scorsese
“The Idol,” Sam Levinson
“Cobweb,” Kim Jee-woon
“Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” James Mangold

Cannes didn’t program four competition titles from women until 2011 (the year after that milestone, in 2012, no women made it into the section). Between 2016-2018, only three female filmmakers made it into competition each year; in 2019, the festival again notched four female directors in competition. (The festival was canceled in 2020, though it did announce which films would have been programmed, had the COVID pandemic not upended the world, though festival brass did not use the usual designations for those films, and there was no “competition section.”)

This year’s Cannes slate also boasts a number of other exciting titles directed by women in other sections, including Un Certain Regard titles from Molly Manning Walker, Monia Chokri, Renée Nader Messora, Asmae El Moudir, Stephanie di Giusto, and Delphine Deloget. Other sections and sidebars, including Critics’ Week (which just announced that “Happening” director Audrey Diwan will lead its jury), have yet to be announced, and more films may join today’s listings in the coming days.

The festival runs May 16-27.