All the French films at the 75th Cannes Film Festival

11 MAY 2022

This Official Selection at this year's Cannes Film Festival presents a stunning portrait of contemporary French cinema, with notably four French directors competiting for the Palme d'Or.
And, as is the case each year, France, as a land of welcome for cinema and the birthplace of many international co-productions, will be represented by around 80 works spread across the various festival sections.

In the Official Selection, in Competition, three female directors and one male director will be carrying the banner for France: Claire Denis (whose film Stars at Noon is a minority Franco-American production), Arnaud Desplechin, Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi (who returns to the Competition nine years after her film The Summer House), and Léonor Serraille (who is presenting her second feature after Montparnasse Bienvenüe) and will discover the other titles vying for the coveted awards. Around a dozen French coproductions (including one majority-French production by Albert Serra) complete this very sizeable French presence in the Competition.

Out of Competition, eagerly-awaited directors make their comeback on the Croisette this year: Michel Hazanavicius, Louis Garrel, Nicolas Bedos, and Cédric Jimenez. Meanwhile, Cannes Premieres will give audiences the chance the discover the latest offerings from Serge Bozon, Emmanuel Mouret, Dominik Moll, and Rachid Bouchareb, not to mention the HBO series by Olivier Assayas, Irma Vep, with a return to the character from the film of the same title.

A string of French debut films will be showcased in the Un Certain Regard section (All to Play For, The Worst Ones), as well as the new opus by Mathieu Vadepied, Father & Soldier, which will be screened as opening film.

The animation Little Nicholas - Happy as Can Be will be presented in a Special Screening, as will a number of French documentaries, including Salam, with its screening dedicated to Diam's, and which she co-directed with Houda Benyamina and Anne Cissé.

For the Directors' Fortnight, the French selection is abundant this year, with the vast majority of titles Solely French productions or majority-French coproductions. We can note the presence of a large number of highly anticipated female directors—both in France and in the international arena—such as Mia Hansen-Løve, Alice Winocour, and Léa Mysius, as well as the male directors Thomas Salvador, Philippe Faucon, Nicolas Pariser, in addition to debut films by Charlotte Le Bon (a Franco-Canadian coproduction majority-produced by France) and by the writer Annie Ernaux.

It is also a coproduction majority-produced by France that will open the Director's Fortnight: Scarlet, by the Italian filmmaker Pietro Marcello.

Critics' Week will give movie-goers the opportunity to discover the debut film by Simon Rieth (Summer Scars), and, out of competition, the new film by Clément Cogitore, as well as the first feature by Céline Devaux, who moves away from animation to embrace real images in her film Everybody Loves Jeanne.

True to its commitment to cinema off the beaten track, the ACID - Cannes section will present five French films, including the latest film by Damien Manivel.

And finally, we can point out the presence in the Cannes Classics section, in addition to the presentation of a restored print of The Mother and the Whore, a selection of four French documentaries about artists from the world of cinema: Gérard Philipe, le dernier hiver du Cid by Patrick Jeudy, Patrick Dewaere mon héros by Alexandre Moix, Romy, femme libre by Lucie Caries, and Jane Campion, la femme cinéma by Julie Bertuccelli.