CANNES 2025: WHAT'S ON OUR WATCH LIST

Notable films across various sections include works by established directors and a Thai ghost story

- STORY: KONG RITHDEE

The 78th edition of Europe's biggest film festival starts today. We take a look at some notable titles across different sections — Competition, Un Certain Regard, Directors’ Fortnight and Critics’ Week — including a Thai film.

Renoir

Directed by Chie Hayakawa

As South Korea trudges through a difficult patch, Japan has reclaimed its place as an Asian vanguard in arthouse cinema. The two last Palme d’Or winners from Asia were Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite in 2018 and Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Shoplifters in 2019. Cannes 2025 has one Japanese and one Chinese title (Bi Gan’s Resurrection) in the Competition. Meanwhile, Renoir is the new work of Chie Hayakawa, whose film Plan 75, a dystopian take on Japan’s ageing society, won the Special Mention Camera d’Or at Cannes in 2022 and had a good run when it was released in Bangkok. Hayakawa’s new film is set in 1987 and centres on an 11-year-old girl whose father is terminally ill, prompting her to seek refuge in a fantasy world.

Nouvelle Vague

Directed by Richard Linklater

It takes massive nerves for an American director to recount the fabled genesis of the Nouvelle Vague — a group of French New Wave filmmakers of the 1960s. But this is Richard Linklater — always sensible, always European-inclined — and he certainly knows what he’s walking into. Nouvelle Vague will chronicle the filming of Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless, a 1960 crime film that upended classical cinema language and launched the wave. Naturally, the film has actors playing a roster of legendary names in European film history — Godard (Guillame Marbeck), Jean Seberg (Zoey Deutch), Jean-Paul Belmondo (Aubrey Dullin), plus actors playing Robert Bresson, Eric Rohmer, Jean Cocteau, Agnes Varda, Jacques Rivette and so on. This will be one of the hottest tickets in the Competition.

The History Of Sound

Directed by Oliver Hermanus