On the surface, it seemed as if the films premiering at the Cannes Film Festival this year were receiving mixed responses at best, but if you dig beneath the initial reactions, there is plenty to love, with many films garnering acclaim even among the divided responses on the ground. With 22 films in compeтιтion on the 2025 Cannes lineup, and dozens more playing in the various sidebars, cinema’s biggest event of the year laid the foundation for many major releases to come.
It also gave us an early look at who could be in contention this awards season and for the 2026 Oscars next March. Though that’s not always the case, in recent years, films that have debuted at Cannes have proven to have enormous staying power, going from the Croisette all the way to Hollywood’s biggest night.
Before all of that, though, a group of (mostly) amazing films premiered. From breathtakingly tender dramas to high-octane action and shockingly explosive thrillers, Cannes once again proved it is the home of a vast array of groundbreaking cinematic achievements. Now, we rank every movie we saw at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, from the opening night film to some of the biggest premieres and the best hidden gems.
23
Leave One Day
A Poppy French Musical
The French musical, which was the opening night film of this year’s edition, features poppy songs and a touching if familiar story ripe for emotion, even if it never truly digs deep. Leave One Day follows a famous chef, known for appearances on Top Chef, about to open her first restaurant when she must return to the village she grew up in to take care of her father. There, she reunites with an old flame that brings to the surface long-dormant feelings.
While fun, the film itself doesn’t expand on the musical genre in a way that feels fully satisfying, instead opting to play its lowkey story and musical numbers straight. It features a solid lead performance from Juliette Armanet and a few of the songs are quite catchy, but it fails to leave much of an impression beyond that.
Read our review of Leave One Day.
22
Sons of the Neon Night
A Crime Epic That Loses The Plot
This ambitious action crime movie is director Juno Mak’s second feature – it’s a visually stunning film set in a dystopic, lawless version of Hong Kong where violence runs rampant. On a cinematic level, there’s much to love. Mak’s version of Hong Kong feels otherworldly, as if it exists outside of time. Blood and bullets rain down on the city in some exhilarating action sequences.
Unfortunately, all of this is undercut by choppy pacing and an almost incomprehensible plot that follows two brothers wrestling for control of their ᴅᴇᴀᴅ father’s pharmaceutical empire. Caught in the middle is an expansive cast of dirty cops and street-level gangsters, but with such a sweeping view of this conflict, Sons of the Neon night loses its handle on the proceedings.
Read our review of Sons of the Neon Night.
21
The Phoenician Scheme
Wes Anderson’s Latest Is Underwhelming
In typical Wes Anderson fashion, The Phoenician Scheme includes an ensemble of stars, his trademark humor, and a stunning visual palette. There’s also a standout central performance from relative newcomer Mia Threapleton, who plays Liesl, the daughter of a business tycoon (Benicio del Toro) constantly under threat of ᴀssᴀssination. Anderson seemed to reach a new emotional high with Asteroid City, so expectations were similarly lofty for this next film.
Unfortunately, The Phoenician Scheme is more style than substance, its sprawling story leaving little room for the relationship between del Toro and Threapleton’s characters to really soar. The film’s plot proves unwieldy and distracting and, though Anderson has previously shown he can balance his showy style with affecting storytelling, The Phoenician Scheme finds the director caught between his instincts.
Read our review of The Phoenician Scheme.
20
Nouvelle Vague
Richard Linklater, of Dazed and Confused and Hit Man fame, crafts a love letter to the French New Wave with his latest film, which tracks the conception and making of Jean-Luc Godard’s iconic film Breathless. In what is essentially a hangout movie, Linklater captures all the snark, love for cinema, and avant-garde techniques emblematic of one of cinema’s most influential movements.
Linklater recasts the cast, crew, and various other New Wave figures for Nouvelle Vague, with the main trio of the film – Guillame Marbeck (Jean-Luc Godard), Zoey Deutch (Jean Seaberg), and Aubry Dullin (Jean-Paul Belmondo) – uncanny in their recreations of these figures. It’s an endlessly charming film, with Marbeck in particular quite the match for Godard. We never see him without his trademark sunglᴀsses, even in the midst of the most chaotic days on set. At its most effective, Nouvelle Vague captures what it must’ve been like to be on set during the filming of Breathless and though it feels abbreviated in its look at such a long-lasting movement, it’s still an enchanting film.
Read our review of Nouvelle Vague.
19
Amrum
Faith Akin’s Amrum is an effective World War II drama following a young boy on an isolated German island searching for bread and honey for his recently pregnant mother. It’s a simple plot, but Akin uses that as a vehicle to look at how fascism has infected a community and what happens when, in the waning days of the war, the reality so many hoped for or wished against is coming to be. As a coming-of-age story, Amrum doesn’t get where it needs to go, but as a stunning portrait of life at the end of wartime, it’s a bracingly effective piece of art.
Read our review of Amrum.
18
Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning
Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning has some of the franchise’s most death-defying sequences, from a breathtaking underwater submarine scene to Tom Cruise’s much-publicized biplane stunt. The film, however, struggles to bring everything (and everyone) together, with a rough first act that simultaneously wraps up loose ends from ᴅᴇᴀᴅ Reckoning while trying to up the ante in Ethan Hunt’s fight against The Enтιтy.
The Final Reckoning goes big, from an endless array of cameos from stars like Hannah Waddingham and Trammell Tillman to sweeping callbacks to past films. Whether it’s really the conclusion to Cruise’s three-decade run as Ethan Hunt remains to be seen. In a lot of ways, The Final Reckoning doesn’t feel final, but it’s still a cinematic feat of epic proportions. It just can’t reach the highs of previous entries, try as it might.
Read our review of Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning
17
Eddington
Ari Aster made the first movie about COVID that tackles how the pandemic really changed society, but in doing so, the writer-director loses all nuance, instead going straight for the jugular. Eddington is often funny, but its politics are muddled at best and surprisingly conservative at worst. Even with the film’s all-star cast, which includes Joaquin Phoenix, Pedro Pascal, Emma Stone, and Austin Butler, Eddington is one of Aster’s weaker efforts.
Read our review of Eddington.
16
Dangerous Animals
A serial killer shark movie should be fun and that’s exactly what Dangerous Animals is. There’s no deeper message here – the movie reaches for one, something about man versus nature that never really comes together – but it doesn’t need this to be effective. When you have Jai Courtney playing a deranged, shark-obsessed maniac who films his uber-H๏τ victims getting eaten alive by the ocean’s scariest creatures, you don’t need much else.
15
Case 137
Dominik Moll’s Case 137 is a stellar police procedural set in France during the Yellow Vest protests. Following Lea Drucker’s internal investigator Stéphanie as she looks into an instance of police brutality, the film is a тιԍнтly-wound thriller about accountability that feels all-too timely. Drucker gives a stunning central performance and, though the film doesn’t go beyond its genre-trappings, Moll crafts an effectively immersive look at a time of unrest in France.
Read our review of Case 137.
14
Eagles of the Republic
Fares Fares (The Wheel of Time) gives a fittingly hilarious performance as George Fahmy, Egypt’s answer to George Clooney, who is caught up in a government conspiracy when he is asked to star in a propaganda film based on the life of the Egyptian president. At once a satire of filmmaking and a paranoid political thriller, Eagles of the Republic has room for both humor and darkness, taking a hard left-turn in its final act to become a parable about complicity and silence in the face of oppression.
