The 2022 Cannes Guessing Game

However this backstage maneuvering plays out, there should be no immediate effect on the Cannes 2022 lineup that artistic director Thierry Frémaux will announce on April 14. The staff at Screen has been “touching base with its network for a wider sweep of what has been submitted and stands a chance of a Cannes debut” and opens its survey of likely contenders with a few notes on how the war in Ukraine may impact this year’s festival.

Sergei Loznitsa, who sent out an open letter regarding his expulsion from the Ukrainian Film Academy over the weekend, has submitted The Natural History of Destruction, a documentary loosely inspired by W. G. Sebald’s 1999 book on the Allied bombing campaign in the final years of the Second World War that resulted in the deaths of 600,000 German civilians. Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk, whom Screen calls “one of Ukraine’s most promising young directors,” has sent in his debut feature. In Pamfir, a poor worker dabbles in bootlegging, drawing the ire of a gang of criminals.

Cannes has already announced that it will welcome neither Russian delegations nor “anyone linked to the Russian government” this year. That leaves Kirill Serebrennikov, who has spent most of his career facing off against Russian authorities, in the clear. His ninth feature, Tchaikovsky’s Wife, will trace the slippage into madness of Antonina Miliukova, an admirer of the composer who married him only to be blamed for his misfortunes and breakdowns.

Scanning Screen’s list and Eric Lavallée’s well-sorted survey of hopefuls for Ioncinema, and taking into consideration early predictions from Variety’s Elsa Keslassy and the Hollywood Reporter’s Alex Ritman, we can surmise that Cannes will feature a stronger American contingent compared to last year’s slim U.S. selection. Kelly Reichardt may bring Showing Up, her fourth collaboration with Michelle Williams, who plays an artist frantically putting together a major exhibition.

All the list-makers include James Gray’s Armageddon Time, a semiautobiographical coming-of-age story set in Queens just prior to the election of Ronald Reagan. Anne Hathaway, Anthony Hopkins, and Jeremy Strong lead the cast. Other American prospects include Ari Aster’s Disappointment Blvd., a horror comedy starring Joaquin Phoenix, Nathan Lane, Patti LuPone, Amy Ryan, and Parker Posey; Ira Sachs’s Passages, starring Franz Rogowski, Ben Whishaw, and Adèle Exarchopoulos as the three corners of a love triangle; and Saela Davis and Anna Rose Holmer’s God’s Creatures, the story of an Irish woman (Emily Watson) who lies to protect her son (Paul Mescal).

Canada may be represented by two of its best filmmakers. In Crimes of the Future, David Cronenberg will send Viggo Mortensen, Léa Seydoux, and Kristen Stewart into a world where “Accelerated Evolution Syndrome” is altering the biological makeup of humankind. Sarah Polley’s Women Talking, starring Frances McDormand, Ben Whishaw, Rooney Mara, Claire Foy, and Jessie Buckley, is an adaptation of Miriam Toews’s 2018 novel about Mennonite women conspiring to deal with the sexual assaults committed by the men in their Bolivian colony.

The UK’s best bets are likely Enys Men, a horror story set in the 1970s from Mark Jenkin (Bait), and The Son, Florian Zeller’s adaptation of his 2018 play. Hugh Jackman and Vanessa Kirby play a couple caring for their new baby when his ex-wife (Laura Dern) reappears with their teenage son (Zen McGrath). Last fall, Anthony Hopkins, who won an Oscar for his performance in Zeller’s debut, The Father (2020), joined the cast.

Among the contenders from Asia are Park Chan-wook’s Decision to Leave, a murder mystery starring Tang Wei and Park Hae-il; Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Broker, a Korean-language drama starring Song Kang Ho and Bae Doona; Davy Chou’s No Return, the story of a French woman’s search for her biological parents in Korea; and Koji Fukada’s Love Life, in which a happily married woman decides to care for her son’s long-lost father when he reappears, deaf and homeless.

Cannes 2022 could see the return of a few of Thierry Frémaux’s favorite filmmakers. Screen describes Cristian Mungiu’s R.M.N. as a “plea for tolerance” that “revolves around a small village in Transylvania where a fear of foreigners boils over.” In Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne’s Tori and Lokita, two young refugees who have journeyed alone from Africa team up to survive in Belgium.

Arnaud Desplechin’s Brother and Sister will star Marion Cotillard and Melvil Poupaud as estranged siblings brought together by the deaths of their parents. Other French titles in the running include Robin Campillo’s École de l’air, the story of a French boy growing up in Madagascar in the 1960s and ’70s; Rebecca Zlotowski’s Other People’s Children, in which a forty-year-old woman contemplates motherhood; and Serge Bozon’s Don Juan, a musical starring Tahar Rahim and Virginie Efira.

Luca Guadagnino directs Taylor Russell and Timothée Chalamet as two outcasts on a thousand-mile odyssey through Reagan’s America in Bones and All, David Kajganich’s adaptation of Camille DeAngelis’s 2016 novel. Guadagnino’s cast also includes Mark Rylance, Michael Stuhlbarg, André Holland, Jessica Harper, Chloë Sevigny, Francesca Scorsese, and David Gordon Green. With Scarlet, Pietro Marcello (Martin Eden) has made his first French-language feature. Louis Garrel, Noémie Lvovsky, and Yolande Moreau join newcomer Juliette Jouan in a story set between the two world wars.

Vicky Krieps stars in two films possibly heading to the festival. In German director Emily Atef’s More Than Ever, she plays a French woman who travels to Norway to rethink everything after she’s been diagnosed with a rare lung disease. The late Gaspar Ulliel gave his last performance in Atef’s sixth feature. In Marie Kreutzer’s Corsage, Krieps plays Elisabeth, Empress of Austria. It’s 1877, and having just turned forty, she’s determined to maintain her youthful beauty.

Angela Schanelec (I Was at Home, But . . .) has been working on Music, a contemporary retelling of the myth of Oedipus, for three years, and it should be ready for Cannes. Maria Schrader (Unorthodox, I’m Your Man) will recount the breaking of the Harvey Weinstein story by New York Times journalists Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey in She Said, starring Zoe Kazan and Carey Mulligan.

In Ruben Östlund’s Triangle of Sadness, a yacht piloted by a Marxist captain (Woody Harrelson) is stranded on a desert island, leaving a cleaning lady and a group of billionaire passengers to reshuffle the preexisting hierarchy. Another comedy, Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu’s Bardo (or False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths), sees Daniel Giménez Cacho (Cronos, Zama) playing a journalist who returns to Mexico to reassess his life and relationships.

With My Imaginary Country, Patricio Guzmán (The Battle of Chile, Nostalgia for the Light) documents the massive demonstrations that began in Santiago in 2019 and quickly turned violent. Argentine director Lisandro Alonso pitched Eureka in Locarno in 2020, and he may have the four-part study of the clash between colonizers and indigenous peoples in both North and South America ready to screen in May.