Life is long, but Cannes may well be longer: the two weeks spent waltzing (read: stress-sprinting) through palm trees at the 77th iteration of the prestigious film festival felt like even more of a blur than usual. Not bad, but not as good as it could have been, with a kind of historic complexity it may take a minute to wrap our heads around.

The threat of a workers’ strike loomed large over this year’s edition, with over 200 freelance workers threatening to down tools for that one fortnight of the year that this little provincial town comes alive. It didn’t end up happening (or if it did, the disruption was so minimal that this writer could not see it), and neither did the publishing of a reportedly bombshell #MeToo exposé from French media outlet Mediapart, which threatened to finally bring France up to speed with the seismic—and long overdue—revelations that have shaken up Hollywood in the last few years.

That sense of unease and uncertainty permeated the movies in this year’s selection, too. Film festivals, like many other cultural events with the lenses of the media trained on them, naturally become a magnet for political action, even as folks like Cannes festival boss Thierry Frémaux stick to a view that “politics should be on screen.” Artists, however, tend to take to the streets and the screens in order to shed light on humanity’s horrors, and somehow the filmmakers of the 2024 competition knew that feel-good, breezy cinema wasn’t on the cards this year. Be that through head-scratching swan songs or polarizing genre exercises, nothing was safe.

There was, of course, Megalopolis: Francis Ford Coppola’s passion project over 40 years in the making. It is, whichever way you slice it, gargantuan and head-spinning. My colleague George Fenwick sunk his teeth into those wildly divisive early Letterboxd reactions, but more than a week after the fact it is a little strange to feel that there’s not really more we can say. Adam Driver has a line-reading about a nightclub that sent me into a frenzy, and the interactive thing you may have read about really did happen. It seems we’re back where we were before: everyone is hyped, nobody knows what it means, but Coppola promised to be back with at least a couple more movies in Cannes soon.

Elsewhere, Coralie Fargeat’s Best Screenplay-winning sophomore feature The Substance ruffled more than a few feathers with undoubtedly the goriest, most abrasive picture not just in competition but screening at Cannes full stop this year. Undoubtedly a huge moment for star Demi Moore, but a thorny one to navigate as the very first screenings saw an unnervingly stark gender and age divide among those fortunate enough to see the film before anyone else: many, many young women hated the film—some men, too—while a lot of older, more male than female critics found a hell of a lot to love (and then there are the Letterboxd members who couldn’t settle on a star rating at all). Festival fever is real, so tread carefully.

There is simply too much to unpack there, and as always the conversation around Cannes’ big hits will continue all year. So let’s turn our attention to ten movies we’ve selected as worthy of your watchlists from the 2024 Cannes Film Festival. Vive le cinema!

Words by George Fenwick, Ella Kemp, Iana Murray, Rafa Sales Ross and Flynn Slicker.

All We Imagine As Light

Written and directed by Payal Kapadia

As India’s first film in competition in 30 years, a lot was resting on the shoulders of All We Imagine As Light, but Payal Kapadia’s sumptuous drama—which won the festival’s Grand Prix—strikes a more intimate chord. Set in the bustling nights of Mumbai, we follow nurses Prabha (Kani Kusruti), Anu (Divya Prabha) and Parvaty (Chhaya Kadam) as they navigate love, sisterhood and loneliness in a city that is at once overwhelming and isolating. Kapadia’s follow-up to her debut documentary A Night of Knowing Nothing is delicate and warm, but Jessie also notes the film’s political commentary, writing that the director “captures the sensual allure of Mumbai while never shying away at commenting on the Hindu nationalist political undercurrents and the displacing impulses of capitalism plaguing Mumbai today.”

Kapadia’s poetic visual style has been compared with the likes of Wong Kar-wai by Michael and to Todd Haynes by Ali, yet this is the work of a distinctive artist who finds romantic, rich texture in the everyday. All We Imagine As Light comes alive in the filmmaker’s eye for vivid detail, like the monsoon rain, international rice cookers, a cat peeking outside of a box and clandestine kisses. It’s a quality that Carolina finds transportive, explaining that the “best part of this movie was feeling like I was back in India for two hours and experiencing it through the eyes of an Indian woman.” IM

Viet and Nam

Written and directed by Trương Minh Quý

In one of Viet and Nam’s most striking scenes, the debut feature from Vietnam’s Trương Minh Quý finds two lovers naked and intertwined atop a bed of grit and dirt, deep in the coal mine where they both work. With its dreamlike pace and an evocation of passion as deep and ancient as the earth itself, Viet and Nam evokes both the films of Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Francis Lee’s God’s Own Country while also becoming something entirely new.

Banned in Quý’s home nation for a “negative” depiction of the country, Viet and Nam—which premiered in Cannes’s Un Certain Regard section—delicately weaves together a love story with the scars of Vietnam’s past, following two men contemplating an uncertain future as one prepares for a dangerous migration. Its censorship overlooks the grace with which Quý frames the story; as Alex writes, the drama considers Vietnam’s “past and economic present, intertwining and flowing freely, finding images and visions never seen before—from campy kink to spiritual archaeology, it is all in there.”

Its slow pace will certainly lose some viewers, but patience is rewarded. In Gogularaajan’s eyes, there’s “just enough to hypnotize. Enough spectacle to keep you entertained. Enough [questions to] keep you searching.” Or as Zinc puts it, it’s “exceedingly artistic and it evokes reflections on the brutality of war. Watching their kisses felt very delicious, tender and genuine.” GF

The Apprentice

Directed by Ali Abbasi, written by Gabriel Sherman

I know you might be asking yourself: how in the world did the Donald Trump biopic make the cut of the best films we saw at Cannes? Trust me when I say that no one was as surprised as I was by how much I enjoyed Ali Abbasi’s lively romp on the life of the former American President and now convict. Led by a pouting Sebastian Stan in a turn pruned to break the last link of the chain tying him to his Marvel image, Abbasi’s fast-paced comedy chronicles the relationship between Trump and mentor Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong), a famed prosecutor and go-getter who would come to shape the man we (unfortunately) know today. The result is a sharply written and superbly acted cautionary tale that manages to be oh-so entertaining without platforming—or endorsing—the heartless man at its center.

Cathy neatly describes The Apprentice as “a fascinating study of how monsters are made, not born”, while Hailey echoes many of my thoughts in saying they “went into this expecting another run-of-the-mill biopic but my god this film fucking rules. An incredible language subtly matched by beautiful performances, and masterfully directed. Sebastian Stan and Jeremy Strong are truly inspired.” In a year of a looming American presidential election, there might be some hesitation when it comes to this one, but with The Apprentice, Abbasi uncovers a man who will only cater to the already indoctrinated—and even they might have a tough time worshipping at his orange-hued altar. RSR

Following his Directors’ Fortnight selection The Florida Project and competition entry Red Rocket, Letterboxd member Sean Baker returned to the Croisette with the uproarious Anora and secured the coveted Palme d’Or, fulfilling a dream that the director described in his acceptance speech as his “singular goal as a filmmaker for the past 30 years.” Dreams form the foundation of his unpredictably wild film, too, even if they are as simple as aspirations of love, comfort and financial stability held by the titular dancer (Mikey Madison). Spending nights working at a gentlemen’s club, Anora—who prefers to go by Ani—picks up a lucrative Russian client (Mark Eydelshteyn) who promises a life of luxury, a too-good-to-be-true offer she just can’t resist.

Anora begins with a banging Take That needle drop and never relents from there, transforming from sexy rom-com to delirious wild goose chase, a daring tonal balance that Ajespe calls “an exhilarating mix of laugh-out-loud hilarity, frenetic energy and searing heartbreak.” Several members have compared it to Pretty Woman by way of Uncut Gems, but the film defies strict categorization, anchored by a ferocious turn by Madison.

Fani sees Anora within the context of Baker’s previous films, taking “the environments of sex workers from Starlet, the chase and conflict of Tangerine and the almost happy finale of Red Rocket among plenty of other staples from his signature style and aesthetic” to craft “his best work to date.” Ilana captures the wide-ranging joys best in her succinct review: “Most perfect movie ever… sad yet sexy yet sad yet fun.” A winning combination. IM

Julie Keeps Quiet

Directed by Leonardo Van Dijl, written by Van Dijl and Ruth Becquart

In the year of our good lord Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers, the tennis movie cannot be underestimated. While that film captured repressed desire and homoerotic physical activity with gleeful intensity, Leonardo Van Dijl’s study of the sport simmers further below the surface. It caught my attention as a fellow critic pitched it to me as a Kitty Green tennis movie, which rings true. Julie holds the same interiority of The Assistant: where Julia Garner had only her facial expressions and her clipboard, Tessa Van den Broeck as Julie has her tennis racket.

Nobody knows exactly what went down with her coach Jeremy (Laurent Caron), who was recently suspended—and everyone is asking her. It is a precise, controlled movie about the questions, about the coping mechanisms and the mundanity of such scrutiny. Paul praises the film’s “patient camera style that never manipulates or seeks to dramatize”, while Ariel calls it a“coiled, precise and patient debut.” But don’t let that suggest the pacing is accidental: nothing is taken for granted, nor left up to chance. Julie stays with you through much more than what is said—after all, shouldn’t we be focusing on what’s left on the court? EK

Black Dog

Directed by Guan Hu, written by Hu and Ge Rui

The opening of Guan Hu’s magnificent Black Dog is enough to leave you speechless. It’s a slow pan across the seemingly endless, majestic plains of the Gobi Desert, revealing a trampling herd of stray dogs all hurtling together towards a bus and its helpless passengers. At times, it feels not too distant from a classic Western, with its desolate landscapes and solitary men of few words. Ex-convict Lang (Eddie Peng) is one of those men, who returns to his hostile hometown and finds purpose in his friendship with one of the stray dogs he’s been enlisted to clear out before the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

“The thing about the ‘dog is man’s best friend’ formula is that while it is a formula, when the formula works it just works so well,” writes Calvin, as Hu sets a compassionate story about canine connection against the unforgiving backdrop of a rapidly changing China. The drama’s grand cinematography reminded some of Jia Zhangke, who coincidentally also appears as the head of the dog-wrangling squad (his latest work Caught by the Tides also played in competition).

Black Dog triumphed in Cannes as a double award winner, taking home the Un Certain Regard trophy, as well as the Palm Dog Grand Jury Prize. It’s no surprise then that a star is born in an adorable greyhound named Xin according to Ariel, who notes that “if Messi from Anatomy of a Fall is Meryl Streep, the titular dog in this is Tom Cruise.” This is a film for the very good boys. IM

Saldaña plays a professionally frustrated lawyer in Mexico recruited by a drug lord (Gascón) who wishes to disappear and transition, becoming the titular Emilia Pérez. Years later, Pérez returns to Mexico, reunites with her ex-wife (Selena Gomez) by posing as her former self’s cousin and pursues a life of philanthropy and justice. As PowWow puts it, this is a “huge swing that mostly hits”, in which “Saldaña finally gets to leave the weird blue creatures behind and Audiard channels his own Almodóvar and Sirk.”

Emilia Pérez’s trans storyline has already received criticism—primarily for the unfortunate implication that Emilia cannot live as a woman until she has undergone numerous surgeries—but its exploration of masks, identity and reinvention resonated for many, in part thanks to Gascón’s beautiful performance. For April, the genre-bender communicates “the experiences of being trans, of feeling out of body, of having to sacrifice what you have to identify with how you feel”, or as Shona writes, it questions if “there [is] an essential sense of femininity versus masculinity, and what is the relationship between freely being yourself and being a better person because of it?” Emilia Pérez asks these questions in each of its protagonists, and poses answers via musical numbers; in short, it is like nothing that has come before it. GF

Bird

Written and directed by Andrea Arnold

After an eight-year drought of Andrea Arnold narrative features following American Honey in 2016, we are finally back with the delicate and raw Bird. Making her acting debut, Nykiya Adams stars alongside Letterboxd favorites Franz Rogowski and Barry Keoghan in a drama about unlikely friendships and rocky father-daughter relationships. It’s a relatable tale, touching on subjects like getting your period, trying to hang out with your older brother and his friends, or having a good ol’ in the middle of the day. As she shrewdly blends genres, Arnold had everyone in the theater on the edge of their seats at the premiere during certain scenes—and completely sunken into them during others.

Tijhuis shares that they “did not expect to get emotional watching a shirtless fully tatted Barry Keoghan sing along to Coldplay’s ‘Yellow’ in order to make a toad produce hallucinogenic slime but here we are.” Could this be the best possible use of ‘Yellow’ ever? Along with the emotional soundtrack, there is indeed a moment that will have Saltburn fans reflecting fondly on Keoghan’s already iconic ‘Murder on the Dancefloor’ moment. 

Though Keoghan as single dad Bug leans into being more lighthearted, something he doesn’t normally get to do, Rogowski’s subtle yet powerful turn as the titular Bird is the heart of this film: “Franz Rogowski, you are the ultimate actor,” praises Thom. Rogowski’s performance, as well as his chemistry with Adams, is already seared into the hearts of Letterboxd members who have seen the film, with plenty more to come. FS