The Cannes Critics’ Week, the festival sidebar focusing on directors’ first and second features, unveiled its 2025 lineup on Monday.
Competition highlights include Left-Handed Girl, the solo directorial debut of Taiwanese filmmaker Shih-Ching Tsou, known for her long-standing collaboration with Anora director Sean Baker (Tsou co-directed 2004’s Take Out and was a producer on Baker’s Tangerine, The Florida Project, and Red Rocket). Baker co-wrote and edited the Taipei-set urban melodrama, which centers on a single mother and her two daughters navigating life on the margins of the Taiwanese capital.
Also debuting in Critics’ Week is Thai director Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke with A Useful Ghost, a surrealist take on motherhood in which a woman reincarnates as a vacuum cleaner. Thai actress Mai Davika Hoorne leads the cast.
European features in competition include Pauline Loquès’ Nino, starring fast-rising Quebecois actor Théodore Pellerin (Lurker) as a young man adrift in the city after losing his apartment keys; Sleepless City from Spanish director Guillermo Galoe, which follows two close friends facing separation when one is forced to move away; and Kika from Belgian filmmaker Alexe Poukine, starring Manon Clavel as a social worker confronting an unplanned pregnancy shortly after her partner’s death.
Chechen filmmaker Deni Oumar Pitsaev will present Imago, an autobiographical documentary chronicling his attempt to construct a modernist home on traditional land in a Georgian valley near the Chechnya border. From the Netherlands, Sven Bresser’s debut feature Reedland follows a reed cutter whose discovery of a teenage girl’s body triggers a haunting obsession.
Belgian director Laura Wandel will open the 64th Cannes Critics’ Week, out of competition in a special screening, with her child custody drama Adam’s Interest. Closing the section, also out of competition, is Dandelion’s Odyssey, the first animated features from Japanese director Momoko Seto, which follows the journey of four dandelions which survive a nuclear explosion and seek a place to take root. French features Baise en Ville, from director Martin Jauvat, billed as a “walking road–movie” about an unemployed young man, played by Jauvat, who ambles around the city looking for a job to pay for driving lessons and Alice Douard’s debut feature Love Letters, a dramatic comedy about two married women awaiting their first child — will also screen out of competition.
Spanish director Rodrigo Sorogoyen (The Beasts) heads up the jury for the 64th edition of Critics’ Week, joined by Oscar-winning British actor Daniel Kaluuya (Get Out, Judas and the Black Messiah), Moroccan journalist Jihane Bougrine, French-Canadian cinematographer Josée Deshaies (Passages, The Beast), and Indonesian producer Yulia Evina Bhara (Tiger Stripes, Autobiography).
Critics’ Week (La Semaine de la Critique), runs May 14-22, alongside the main Cannes Film Festival. The section, organized by the French film critics’ union, is famed as a spot to find up-and-coming talent. Many of the biggest names in international art-house cinema got their start in the sidebar.
Two-time Palme d’Or winner Ken Loach brought his feature debut Kes to Critics’ Week in 1970. Justine Triet, winner of the Palme d’Or with Anatomy of a Fall in 2023, made her festival premiere at Critics’ Week with her second feature, Victoria in 2013.Julia Ducournau debuted in the section with her first film, Raw, in 2016. Ducournau’s follow-up, Titane, won the Palme d’Or in 2021 and her third film, Alpha will premiere in the festival’s main competition this year.
Check out the Critics’ Week lineup below.
COMPETITION
Imago, Dir. Déni Oumar Pitsaev
Kika, Dir. Alexe Poukine
Left-Handed Girl, Dir. Shih-Ching Tsou
Nino, Dir. Pauline Loquès
Reedland, Dir. Sven Bresser
Sleepless City, Dir. Guillermo Galoe
A Useful Ghost, Dir. Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke
SPECIAL SCREENINGS
Adam’s Interest, Dir. Laura Wandel OPENING FILM
Baise en ville, Dir. Martin Jauvat
Love Letters, Dir. Alice Douard
Dandelion’s Odyssey, Dir. Momoko Seto CLOSING FILM
