Credit: AR Content, Why Not Productions, Goodfellas
“Butterfly Jam”
Kantemir Balagov opens Directors’ Fortnight with “Butterfly Jam,” his English-language debut and first feature since “Beanpole.” Barry Keoghan, Riley Keough, Harry Melling, Monica Bellucci, and newcomer Talha Akdogan star in a drama set within a Circassian immigrant community in New Jersey. The story follows 15-year-old Pyteh, an aspiring wrestler helping out at his family’s restaurant, when one of his father’s schemes explodes and forces him to confront the man his father really is. Balagov’s first two features were emotionally bruising, formally controlled, and deeply attuned to damaged intimacy. Moving that sensibility into an American immigrant story with this cast makes “Butterfly Jam” one of the sidebar’s biggest events.
Cannes Section: Directors’ Fortnight.
“The Diary Of A Chambermaid”
Radu Jude finally comes to Cannes with “The Diary Of A Chambermaid,” a distant, contemporary riff on Octave Mirbeau’s novel rather than a straightforward adaptation. Ana Dumitrașcu stars as a young Romanian woman working for a French family in Bordeaux while her own daughter remains back home, with Vincent Macaigne and Mélanie Thierry also in the cast. Jude has been on a relentless streak, turning modern hypocrisy, national memory, digital vulgarity, and historical violence into unruly, funny, abrasive cinema. This premise gives him a clean class-and-labor framework, plus the Western/Eastern European tension he has reportedly wanted to explore. Expect elegance only if he plans to attack it.
Cannes Section: Directors’ Fortnight.
“I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning”
Clio Barnard returns with “I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning,” adapted from Keiran Goddard’s novel by Enda Walsh. The film follows five friends who grew up together in a working-class Birmingham neighborhood, once imagining lives that never materialized: Anthony Boyle, Joe Cole, Jay Lycurgo, Daryl McCormack, and Lola Petticrew star. Barnard’s best films, including “The Arbor” and “The Selfish Giant,” have been rooted in class, place, memory, and the emotional weight of environments that do not let people go easily. This sounds like another ensemble portrait of thwarted possibility, but with Walsh’s theatrical instincts potentially adding a sharper, more bruising rhythm.
Cannes Section: Directors’ Fortnight.
“Gentle Monster”
Marie Kreutzer returns to Cannes competition with “Gentle Monster,” her follow-up to “Corsage.” Léa Seydoux, Jella Haase, Laurence Rupp, and Catherine Deneuve star, giving the film one of the more immediately recognizable European ensembles in the lineup. Kreutzer’s last film turned Empress Elisabeth of Austria into a sharply modern study of image, constraint, and performance, and “Gentle Monster” arrives with the added curiosity of seeing her work with Seydoux and Deneuve in the same cast.
Cannes Section: In Competition.
“Dora”
South Korean filmmaker July Jung returns to Cannes sidebars with “Dora,” after “A Girl at My Door” premiered in Un Certain Regard, and “Next Sohee” closed Critics’ Week. Her new film stars former K-pop idol Kim Do-yeon in the title role, alongside Sakura Ando, and has been described as a free contemporary adaptation of Freud’s famous Dora case study. Jung’s work has often looked at institutions, abuse, young women under pressure, and the systems that turn vulnerability into evidence against the vulnerable. Bringing that sensibility to a psychologically loaded case-study framework sounds like a major step. If “Dora” is as unsettling as the premise suggests, it could be one of Directors’ Fortnight’s real discoveries.
Cannes Section: Directors’ Fortnight.
“A Woman’s Life”
Charline Bourgeois-Tacquet follows “Anaïs in Love” with “A Woman’s Life,” starring Léa Drucker as an overworked surgeon. That premise may sound deceptively plain, but Bourgeois-Tacquet’s debut was sharp about restlessness, desire, and the way a woman’s appetite can scramble everyone else’s expectations. Drucker is one of the great French actors at playing exhaustion without losing intelligence or force, and the medical setting gives the film a built-in collision between professional mastery and private depletion. The Cannes competition is full of weighty historical and political subjects this year. A contemporary character study about work, care, and a woman pushed past capacity could cut through precisely because its pressures are quieter.
Cannes Section: In Competition.
Honorable Mentions:
“Nagi Notes” (Competition — Kōji Fukada’s rural Nagi drama about art, memory, and two women confronting the past); “Another Day” (Competition — Jeanne Herry’s French drama starring Adèle Exarchopoulos, Sara Giraudeau, and Rudgy Pajany); “The Birthday Party” (Competition — Léa Mysius adapts Laurent Mauvignier’s novel, with Hafsia Herzi, Benoît Magimel, Bastien Bouillon, and Monica Bellucci); “Notre Salut” (Competition — Emmanuel Marre’s 1940s-set WWII/Vichy France drama starring Swann Arlaud); “Crescendo” (Out of Competition — Agnès Jaoui’s opera-world comedy-drama with Daniel Auteuil and Eye Haïdara, centered on an assault allegation during a production of “The Marriage of Figaro”); “Club Kid” (Un Certain Regard — Jordan Firstman’s feature directorial debut, starring Firstman, Cara Delevingne, Diego Calva, Reggie Absolom, Kirby Howell-Baptiste, and Colleen Camp); “Colony” (Midnight Screenings — Yeon Sang-ho’s South Korean outbreak thriller starring Gianna Jun, Koo Kyo-hwan, Ji Chang-wook, Shin Hyun-been, Kim Shin-rock, and Go Soo); “Visitation” (Cannes Premiere — Volker Schlöndorff adapts Jenny Erpenbeck’s novel, with Lars Eidinger, Martina Gedeck, Susanne Wolff, and Ulrich Matthes); and “Avedon” (Special Screening — Ron Howard’s documentary about legendary photographer Richard Avedon).
Additionally, there’s “Propeller One-Way Night Coach” (Cannes Premiere — John Travolta’s directorial debut, adapted from his own children’s book, with Clark Shotwell, Kelly Eviston-Quinnett, Ella Bleu Travolta, and Olga Hoffmann); “Double Freedom” (Directors’ Fortnight — Lisandro Alonso returns to the world of “La Libertad” 25 years later, again following woodcutter Misael Saavedra); “Clarissa” (Directors’ Fortnight — Arie Esiri and Chuko Esiri reimagine Virginia Woolf’s “Mrs. Dalloway” in Lagos, with Sophie Okonedo, David Oyelowo, Ayo Edebiri, and Nikki Amuka-Bird); and “Once Upon A Time In Harlem” (Directors’ Fortnight — William Greaves and David Greaves’ documentary built around a 1972 Harlem Renaissance gathering hosted at Duke Ellington’s home).
Rodrigo Perez is the founder and editor-in-chief of The Playlist, which he launched in 2008. He has worked in entertainment journalism since 2000, including at MTV, and has written for SPIN, IndieWire, Pitchfork, Complex, Magnet, and various music, film, and entertainment publications over the past two decades.
