Philip Oltermann European culture editor 

Donald Trump biopic and new films by Yorgos Lanthimos and Andrea Arnold to premiere at Cannes

Francis Ford Coppola’s long-awaited passion project Megalopolis and Jacques Audiard’s musical set in the world of Mexican drug cartels will also be in competition
  
  

Sebastian Stan as Donald Trump in The Apprentice.
Sebastian Stan as Donald Trump in The Apprentice. Photograph: Apprentic Productions Ontairo inc. Profile Productions 2 APS Tailored Films ltd 2023.

Donald Trump, impersonated by Marvel actor Sebastian Stan, will make an unlikely star attraction on the Côte d’Azur in May, as a new film about the US presidential candidate’s real-estate career is set to premiere at Cannes in May.

The lineup for the 77th edition of the film festival, unveiled at a press conference in Paris on Thursday by general delegate Thierry Frémaux and president Iris Knobloch, will also see Yorgos Lanthimos and Emma Stone continue their prize-winning creative partnership, and British film-maker Andrea Arnold team up with Saltburn star Barry Keoghan for her first fiction feature film in eight years.

Running in the competition are also new films by David Cronenberg, Taxi Driver scriptwriter Paul Schrader, Cannes veteran Jacques Audiard and Francis Ford Coppola’s previously announced passion project Megalopolis.

While the main programme does not quite match last year’s vintage selection for star-studdedness, it hinted at several intriguing – and often political – storylines.

In The Apprentice, Sweden-based Iranian-Danish director Ali Abbasi will examine Trump’s career as a real estate businessman in New York in the 1970s and 80s. Romanian-American actor Sebastian Stan, best known as Bucky Barnes in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, will impersonate the orange-faced US presidential candidate, while Jeremy Strong plays Roy Cohn, the attorney who represented Trump in the 1970s.

Running outside the competition, meanwhile, Canadian arthouse favourite Guy Maddin’s new film Rumours will see Cate Blanchett play an Ursula von der Leyen-esque politician at a fictional G7 meeting.

Running in the competition, Greek director Lanthimos’s anthology film Kinds of Kindness, which again features Willem Dafoe, comes just two months after his last film Poor Things’ glory at the Oscars, and less than a year after scooping the Golden Lion at the Venice film festival.

Dartford-born Arnold (Red Road, Fish Tank, Cow) will not only receive the Golden Coach award at the festival but also show her new feature, Bird, her first since 2016’s American Honey. Frémaux described it as a coming-of-age story about a young girl trying to escape from the narrow confines of the neighbourhood she grew up in.

Ben Whishaw plays Russian poet and political dissident Eduard Limonov in director Khiril Sebrennikov’s Limonov: The Ballad, an adaptation of the feted novel by French writer Emmanuel Carrère.

Paolo Sorrentino, the Italian director of The Hand of God and The Young Pope, returns to Cannes with Parthenope, another film set in his native Napoli, while 2015 Palme d’Or winner Jacques Audiard will premiere Emilia Perez, a musical set in the world of Mexican drug cartels.

The festival’s jury will be chaired by Barbie director Greta Gerwig, the first female film-maker in the role since Jane Campion in 2014.

Films already announced include George Miller’s Mad Max prequel Furiosa, Kevin Costner’s multi-episode Western Horizon: An American Saga and Coppola’s long-awaited Megalopolis. Supposedly inspired by the Roman empire, the film has been four decades in the making and was reported to have been funded with $120m of the Godfather director’s own money.

The opening film will be absurdist comedy The Second Act starring Léa Seydoux and directed by French director Quentin Dupieux, once upon a time better known under his musical alias Mr Oizo. As tradition has it, the opening film will debut in French cinemas the same day.

Star Wars creator George Lucas will receive an honorary Palme d’Or at the closing ceremony on 25 May.

A spectacularly strong lineup for the festival in 2023 saw Justine Triet’s Anatomy of a Fall claim the Palme d’Or and Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest awarded the Grand Prix. The two films became juggernauts of the awards season, with Glazer’s stylised Holocaust drama winning two Oscars in March.

Cannes 2024 official selection: the full list

Competition

The Apprentice, dir: Ali Abbasi

Motel Destino, dir: Karim Aïnouz

Bird, dir: Andrea Arnold

Emilia Perez, dir: Jacques Audiard

Anora, dir: Sean Baker

Megalopolis, dir: Francis Ford Coppola

The Shrounds, dir: David Cronenberg

The Substance, dir: Coralie Fargeat

Grand Tour, dir: Miguel Gomes

Marcello Mio, dir: Christophe Honoré

Feng Liu Yi Dai, dir: Jia Zhang-Ke

All We Imagine as Light, dir: Payal Kapadia

Kinds of Kindness, dir: Yorgos Lanthimos

L’Amour Ouf, dir: Gilles Lellouche

Diamant Brut, dir: Agathe Riedinger

Oh Canada, dir: Paul Schrader

Limonov – The Ballad, dir: Kirill Serebrennikov

Parthenope, dir: Paolo Sorrentino

The Girl with the Needle, dir: Magnus von Horn

Un Certain Regard

Norah, dir: Tawfik Alzaidi

The Shameless, dir: Konstantin Bojanov

Le Royaume, dir: Julien Colonna

Vingt Dieux, dir: Louise Courvoisier

Le Procès du Chien (Who Let the Dog Bite?), dir: Laetitia Dosch

Gou Zhen (Black Dog), dir: Guan Hu

The Village Next to Paradise, dir: Mo Harawe

September Says, dir: Arian Labed

L’Histoire de Souleymane, dir: Boris Lojkine

The Damned, dir: Roberto Minervini

On Becoming a Guinea Fowl, dir: Rungano Nyoni

Boku No Ohisama (My Sunshine), dir: Hiroshi Okuyama

Santosh, dir: Sandhya Suri

Viet and Nam, dir: Truong Minh Quy

Armand, dir: Halfdan Ullmann Tøndel

Out of Competition

She’s Got no Name, dir: Chan Peter Ho-Sun

Horizon, An American Saga, dir: Kevin Costner

Rumours, dir: Evan Johnson, Galen Johnson and Guy Maddin

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, dir: George Miller

Midnight Screenings

Twilight of the Warrior Walled In, dir: Soi Cheang

The Surfer, dir: Lorcan Finnegan

Les Femmes Au Balcon, dir: Noémie Merlant

I, The Executioner, dir: Ryoo Seung-Wan

Cannes Premiere

Everybody Loves Touda, dir: Nabil Ayouch

C’est Pas Moi, dir: Leos Carax

En Fanfare (The Matching Bang), dir: Emmanuel Courcol

Miséricorde, dir: Alain Guiraudie

Le Roman de Him, dir: Arnaud Larrieu and Jean-Marie Larrieu

Rendez-vous avec Pol Pot, dir: Rithy Panh

Special Screenings

Le Fil, dir: Daniel Auteil

Ernest Cole, Lost and Found, dir: Raoul Peck

The Invasion, dir: Sergei Loznitsa

Appendre, dir: Claire Simon

La Belle de Gaza, dir: Yolande Zauberman

 

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