Cannes Film Festival lineup: Four things we learnt

The lineup for the 70th Cannes Film Festival is out, and, on the face of it, this ought to be a great year. Here are four things that stood out for us, as well as the complete list of selections:

No shortage of heavies

Cannes has its favourites just like any other festival. Michael Haneke could make it three for three Palme d’Ors if Happy End (a title which, given the director’s previous works, couldn’t be more ironic) wins the top prize. Keeping him company in the Competition section are festival circuit regulars Francois Ozon (L’Ame Double), Andrey Zvyagintsev (Loveless), Yorgos Lanthimos (The Killing of the Sacred Deer), Fatih Akin (In the Fade) and Arnaud Desplechin (Ismael’s Ghost) and Hong Sang-soo (The Day After).

Netflix is here – get used to it

Netflix and Cannes have had a frosty relationship in the past, in part because the streaming giant simultaneously releases films online and in theatres (when that happens at all). The selection of Bong Joon-ho’s Okja, with Jake Gyllenhaal and Tilda Swinton, and Noah Baumbach‘s The Meyerowitz Stories, with Adam Sandler, could well be a gamechanger. These are Netflix’s first films in Competition at Cannes, which might be seen as an admission by the high council of serious cinema that there’s no escaping the online platform’s ever-growing shadow.

Cannes is getting serious about TV

Next year, Cannes will host its first TV awards festival, on the lines of the film one. The year’s lineup is setting the mood with screenings of Jane Campion and Ariel Kleiman’s Top of the Lake and the much-anticipated return of Twin Peaks, directed by David Lynch.

Gender parity is some way away

There are three women directors in Competition this year: Lynne Ramsay, Sofia Coppola and Naomi Kawase. This is the same number as the 2016 festival, where Miriam Ade’s Toni Erdmann and Andrea Arnold’s American Honey were two of the best-received films. Things are slightly better in Un Certain Regard, which includes five films by women directors, but there is still a massive gender imbalance (which reflects the larger imbalance in film worldwide) at Cannes.

Cannes 2017 lineup

Opening film

Ismael’s Ghosts (Arnaud Desplechin)

Competition

The Day After (Hong Sang-soo)

Good Time (Benny Safdie and Josh Safdie)

Loveless (Andrey Zvyagintsev)

You Were Never Really Here (Lynne Ramsay)

Jupiter’s Moon (Kornél Mandruczo)

L’amant Double (François Ozon)

The Killing of a Sacred Deer (Yorgos Lanthimos)

A Gentle Creature (Sergei Loznitsa)

Radiance (Naomi Kawase)

Wonderstruck (Todd Haynes)

Happy End (Michael Haneke)

In the Fade (Fatih Akin)

Rodin (Jacques Doillon)

The Beguiled (Sofia Coppola)

Le Redoutable (Michel Hazanavicius)

Okja (Bong Joon-ho)

120 Battements Par Minute (Robin Campillo)

The Meyerowitz Stories (Noah Baumbach)

Un Certain Regard

April’s Daughter (Michel Franco)

Lucky (Sergio Castellitto)

Jeune Femme (Léonor Serraille)

Western (Valeska Grisebach)

Wind River (Taylor Sheridan)

Directions (Stephan Komandarev)

After the War (Annarita Zambrano)

Dregs (Mohammad Rasoulof)

Out (Gyorgy Kristof)

The Nature of Time (Karim Moussaoui)

Before We Vanish (Kuroswa Kiyoshi)

L’atelier (Laurent Cantet)

Beauty and the Dogs (Kaouther Ben Hania)

Barbara (Mathieu Amalric)

Closeness (Kantemir Balagov)

The Desert Bride (Cecilia Atan and Valeria Pivato)

Out of Competition

Blade of the Immortal (Takashi Miike)

How to Talk to Girls At Parties (John Cameron Mitchell)

Visages, Villages (Agnès Varda)

Special Screenings

12 Jours (Raymond Depardon)

They (Anahita Ghazinizadeh)

An Inconvenient Sequel (Ronni Cohen and Jon Shenk)

Top of the Lake: China Girl (Jane Campion and Ariel Kleiman)

Promised Land (Eugene Jarecki)

24 Frames (Abbas Kiarostami)

Napalm (Claude Lanzmann)

Come Swim (Kristen Stewart)

Demons in Paradise (Jude Ratman)

Sea Sorrow (Vanessa Redgrave)

Clair’s Camera (Hong Sang-soo)

Twin Peaks (David Lynch)

Midnight Screenings

The Villainess (Jung Byung Gil)

The Merciless (Byun Sung-Hyun)

Prayer Before Dawn (Jean Stephane Sauvaire)