Cannes 2024: Coppola, Lucas & Arnold – Everything you need to know before the line-up announcement

The Cannes Film Festival will announce its full line-up tomorrow (11 April), and after a stunning 2023 edition which included acclaimed films from Jonathan Glazer, Martin Scorsese, Justine Triet, Todd Haynes, Aki Kaurismaki and Wim Wenders, this year’s 77th edition already looks mighty promising.

We’ll find out tomorrow what treats await Greta Gerwig, this year’s Jury President, and to what extent the festival will be affected by last year’s writers and actors strikes - and whether the roster will feature fewer American names.

However, from what we know already, no Sweatsville Idaho.

Here’s everything we know about this year’s Cannes festival so far.

Opening Film

Prolific French absurdist Quentin Dupieux (Rubber, Deerskin, Mandibles) is set to open this year’s festival with his new film Le Deuxième Acte (The Second Act), on 14 May.

Premiering out of competition, the official synopsis for the comedy is as follows: “Florence wants to introduce David, the man she’s madly in love with, to her father Guillaume. But David isn’t attracted to Florence and wants to throw her into the arms of his friend Willy. The four characters meet in a restaurant in the middle of nowhere.”

The film stars Léa Seydoux, Vincent Lindon, Louis Garrel, and Raphaël Quenard. As is the tradition with many opening night films, it will debut in French theaters on the same day.

We can’t wait to see what madcap shenanigans Dupieux has in store for us.

Coppola’s back

Here’s the big one...

Francis Ford Coppola’s epic Megalopolis will officially premiere in competition.

Megalopolis is the Godfather trilogy and Apocalypse Now director’s first film since 2011’s Twixt, and boasts an all-star cast, including Adam Driver, Aubrey Plaza, Giancarlo Esposito, Nathalie Emmanuel, Jon Voight, Laurence Fishburne, Shia LaBeouf, Talia Shire, Jason Schwartzman, Dustin Hoffman, and James Remar.

Coppola wrote the screenplay in the 1980s and has invested more than $120 million of his own money into his passion project.

Plot details remain vague, with Coppola often calling it an indescribable enigma. The official logline reads: “The fate of Rome haunts a modern world unable to solve its own social problems in this epic story of political ambition, genius and conflicted love.”

Make of that what you will.

“I’ve known Francis since the centenary of cinema in 1995, and when I had my first year at Cannes, he came to present Apocalypse Now Redux,” Cannes director Thierry Frémaux told Variety. “Megalopolis is a project that he wanted to achieve for so long and he did it independently, in his own way, as an artist.”

The Competition inclusion means the 85-year-old director will be eligible for the Palme d'Or 45 years after he won it for Apocalypse Now. Coppola split the Palme that year with Volker Schlöndorff's Die Blechtrommel, but he won Cannes' top prize outright 50 years ago, for The Conversation.

Out of Competition titles

George Miller’s follow-up to the Oscar-winning Mad Max: Fury Road, starring Anya Taylor-Joy, will have its world premiere out of competition at Cannes this year.

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is a prequel exploring the origins of Furiosa, a character previously played by Charlize Theron. The prequel stars Anya Taylor-Joy in the role, with Chris Hemsworth and Tom Burke also starring.

“The idea of this prequel has been with me for over a decade,” said Miller in a statement. “I couldn’t be more thrilled to return to the Festival de Cannes – along with Anya, Chris and Tom – to share Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. There is no better place than La Croisette to experience this film with audiences on the world stage.”

Mad Max: Fury Road also premiered at the festival in 2015 and went on to win six Oscars and make $380 million worldwide.

Several trailers have been released for Furiosa, and it somehow looks a bit less deliciously grimy than Fury Road... Still, it’s bound to be one of the hottest titles on the Croisette this year.

Elsewhere, Kevin Costner’s Western epic Horizon – An American Saga is also set to debut out of competition.

Costner directed the project, which he also stars in with Sienna Miller, Sam Worthington and Jena Malone. Horizon will also be released in theaters in two parts, with the first installment bowing on 28 June and the second on 16 August.

The saga is described in the festival’s press release as a “monumental project about the cost, in terms of war and violence, of the construction and expansion of the United States of America.”

Quite the programme...

“I’d like to thank the Festival de Cannes for including my film ‘Horizon, an American Saga’ in this year’s selection,” Costner said in a statement. “It’s been 20 years since I’ve had the pleasure of being on the Croisette. I’ve been waiting for the right time to return and I’m proud to say that this time has come. ‘Horizon, an American Saga’ is a story that began 35 years ago, and I can’t think of a better place than Cannes to reveal to the world the result of such a wonderful adventure. The French have always supported films and believed deeply in filmmaking. Just as I believe deeply in my film…”

George Lucas honoured

After Harrison Ford last year, the 2024 Honorary Palme d’Or will go to George Lucas, the iconic filmmaker behind the Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises.

Lucas will be honoured at the closing ceremony on 25 May.

Other recent recipients include Michael Douglas, Tom Cruise, Forest Whitaker and Jodie Foster.

In announcing the Honorary Palme d’Or award, Cannes praised Lucas for building “a Hollywood empire through the nine episodes of the saga — four of which he directed himself,” and for his “unflagging passion for technology” which has made him “one of the pioneers of the visual effects industry.”

“The Festival de Cannes has always held a special place in my heart,” Lucas said in a statement. “I was surprised and elated when my first film, ‘THX-1138,’ was selected to be shown in a new program for first time directors called the Directors’ Fortnight. Since then, I have returned to the festival on many occasions in a variety of capacities as a writer, director and producer. I am truly honored by this special recognition which means a great deal to me.”

Andrea Arnold in the spotlight

British filmmaker Andrea Arnold (Fish Tank, American Honey, Cow) is set to receive the Golden Coach Award at this year’s Directors Fortnight, which runs alongside the Cannes Film Festival.

The ceremony will take place on May 15 during the opening ceremony for Directors’ Fortnight.

The honorary award, handed out by the governing body of the Cannes sidebar the Society of French Directors and launched in 2002, is handed out to filmmakers boasting “innovative qualities, courage and independent-mindedness of his or her work.”

Past honorees include Kelly Reichardt, Frederick Wiseman, John Carpenter and Martin Scorsese.

Rumours and hopes

Before we get the full line-up tomorrow, there are a few rumours circulating that we hope materialise...

Our predictions for Competition include Yorgos Lanthimos’ Emma Stone-starring Kinds of Kindness – his new film (already!) after the triumph of Poor Things last year; David Cronenberg’s The Shrouds, starring Diane Kruger, Vincent Cassel and Guy Pierce, about a grieving widower (Cassel) who builds a device to help people connect with the dead; Partenhope, Paolo Sorrentino’s follow up to 2021’s The Hand of God; Luca Guadagino’s Queer; Roberto Minervini’s The Damned; and Andrea Arnold’s Bird, starring Barry Keoghan and Franz Rogowski. Arnold will already be in Cannes for the aforementioned Golden Coach Award, so it would seem like a perfect fit...

Then there’s Audrey Diwan’s Emmanuelle, which is apparently still in the editing stages and might not be ready for Cannes... But we really hope it is. Diwan won the Golden Lion in Venice in 2021 for her film Happening, and her remake of the famous French erotic drama – based on the novel by Emmanuelle Arsan – is one of the most hotly anticipated (so to speak) titles of 2024. It stars Noémie Merlant, Naomi Watts and Will Sharpe.

If it doesn’t show up in Cannes, you can bet Venice will welcome it with open arms.

As for those hoping to see Lucrecia Martel’s Chocobar or Pablo Larrain’s Maria, starring Angelina Jolie, brace for disappointment, as they are all rumoured to be heading to Venice in September.

The 77th Cannes Film Festival is set to begin on 14 May until 25 May. The official selection is announced tomorrow. Stay tuned to Euronews Culture for our full coverage.