Cannes, Catalonia, Galicia

From today until May 24, the Cannes Film Festival is once again the world's largest showcase for cinema, bringing together cinephiles, glamour, and stars on the French coast under the auspices of a beautiful poster showing Anouk Aimée and Jean-Louis Trintignant embracing in a still from A Man and a Woman (Claude Lelouch, 1966).

After a few years with little Spanish participation, this 78th edition will once again see Spanish production shine with double representation in the official competition section: Romería , by Catalan director Carla Simón, and Sirat , by Oliver Laxe, born in Paris to Galician parents. This is the second time in the history of the festival that two Spanish films have been nominated, as in 2009 Isabel Coixet and Pedro Almodóvar were nominated for the Palme d'Or with Map of the Sounds of Tokyo and Broken Embraces , respectively. Until now, only one Spanish filmmaker has won the French festival's Grand Prix: Luis Buñuel, in 1961, for Viridiana .

Simón's third feature film, which arrives on the Croisette for the first time after winning the Golden Bear at the Berlinale with Alcarràs (2022), continues to explore her family's past, in this case that of her parents, who died of AIDS when she was a child. The director, who filmed on location in Vigo and the surrounding area, will be attending the festival in the final stretch of her second pregnancy. Meanwhile, Laxe, a regular at Cannes, where it has won awards in the festival's parallel sections, will be screening its fourth film, a road movie about marginalized people, starring Sergi López as a father searching for his daughter who disappeared at a rave in the mountains of southern Morocco.

The Spanish feature film presence at Cannes extends to the 64th Critics' Week, with Rodrigo Sorogoyen heading the jury, where Guillermo Galoe's Ciudad sin sueño (City Without a Dream), about life in the Cañada Real region, will be screened. Brais Revaldería is leading the immersive project Fillos do vento: A RAPA ( Followers of the Wind: A Rapa), while La misterious mirada del flamenco (The Mysterious Gaze of Flamenco ), the debut feature by Chilean Diego Céspedes, is a Spanish co-production.

The festival opens with the French film 'Partir un jour' and the honorary award for Robert De Niro.

It's become customary for the Cannes Film Festival to be held amid controversy. This year, it opens marked by Donald Trump's threat to impose 100% tariffs on films produced abroad. This announcement undoubtedly promises to provoke many reactions at the most important festival in the world of cinema. For now, the festival's general delegate, Thierry Frémaux, defended the presence of foreign films in the United States at the traditional press conference yesterday because they enrich and "feed American culture." He declined to discuss taxes or tariffs—"it's too early," he stated—but he did support the spread of cinema between countries. "I would tell Trump that, although the American cinema is one of the biggest in the world, cinema is cinema." "We won't let anyone make Cannes cinema unimportant, and this year, American cinema in Cannes is important and creative; that's the main thing," he stated, concluding emphatically that "cinema always finds a way to survive, to exist, to reinvent itself."

Simón and Laxe are part of an official competition section made up of 22 titles – seven of them directed by women –, among which are veterans such as the Dardenne brothers ( Young Mothers ), Richard Linklater ( Nouvelle Vague ), Wes Anderson ( The Phoenician Plot ), Dominik Moll ( Dossier 137 ), Joachim Trier ( Sentimental Value ) or the Iranian Jafar Panahi ( A Simple Accident ).

A high-flying jury chaired by Juliette Binoche, accompanied by Halle Berry, Jeremy Strong, Payal Kapadia, Hong Sangsoo, Carlos Reygadas and Alba Rohrwacher will also be considering proposals such as the gay romantic drama The History of Sound by Oliver Hermanus, starring Josh O'Connor and Paul Mescal. The British O'Connor will also organize a daring art heist under the direction of Kelly Reichardt in The Mastermind . Horror king Ari Aster orchestrates a dark comedy set during the pandemic and starring Joaquin Phoenix and Pedro Pascal in Eddington , while in Lynne Ramsay's psychological thriller Die, My Love , Jennifer Lawrence will fight to maintain her sanity.

Julia Ducournau, winner of the Palme d'Or for Titane, presents another disturbing story led by a teenager in Alpha . And Brazilian director Kleber Mendonça Filho is in the running with Agente secreto , a thriller set in 1977, during the military dictatorship.

The official competition section will feature new films by Linklater, Anderson, Aster, the Dardennes, and Panahi.

Veteran actor Robert De Niro, a vocal critic of Trump, will receive the Honorary Palme d'Or tonight at the gala where the inaugural film, Partir un jour , the debut film by French director Amélie Bonnin, will be screened. Australian actress Nicole Kidman will receive the Women in Motion award at a parallel event, in recognition of her exceptional career and commitment to women in film. This will be a few days after her ex, Tom Cruise, presents the eighth installment of Mission: Impossible at an out-of-competition gala. And Spike Lee will return with Denzel Washington for the world premiere of Highest 2 Lowest , a remake of Kurosawa's The Shallows .

Other notables walking the packed red carpet include Tom Hanks, Benicio del Toro, Benedict Cumberbatch, Emma Stone, Austin Butler, Isabelle Huppert, Jodie Foster and U2 frontman Bono, who is premiering his documentary Stories of Surrender at a special screening, where he talks behind the scenes about his family, friends and his time as an activist and rock star.