The Cannes Film Festival on Thursday announced its schedule for its 75th edition. The world’s most prestigious annual cinematic gathering, held in the South of France, will bring together some heavyweight auteurs in competition and some huge stars out — notably Tom Cruise, who had already been revealed to be bringing the hugely anticipated sequel Top Gun: Maverick to Cannes.
Closer to home, Ali Abbasi’s Holy Spider will play in competition. The film, which was shot in Jordan, may cause consternation, with a plot that follows a man who is determined to follow his own religious quest — to "cleanse" the holy Iranian city of Mashhad of immorality and corruption. Abbassi previously made Border, the strange, beguiling fairy tale that first appeared in Cannes in 2018 in the Un Certain Regard section. Iranian cinema will also feature in competition with Leila's Brothers, directed by Saeed Roustayi, who previously made 2016’s Life and a Day.
During the press conference, the festival’s artistic director, Thierry Fremaux, said that the line-up is yet to be complete. “There are many, many good films coming out of Maghreb-North Africa,” he said.
The line-ups for Critics’ Week and Directors’ Fortnight sidebars are set to be unveiled next week. Among those expected to be part of the Critics’ Week selection is Le Barrage from Lebanon’s Ali Cherri, a Beirut-born artist who became the Artist in Residence at London’s National Gallery in 2021. A political fable set around the Sudanese revolution, the film follows a worker who secretly builds a mysterious mud construction by the Nile.
Cannes has returned to its traditional May slot — after last year’s event took place in July, moved there to escape the worst of the Covid-19 pandemic — and organisers are keen to emphasise that it is back to its best. “All the red carpets that we will have, they will be fantastic,” remarked Fremaux, and it’s hard to disagree, with films starring the likes of Woody Harrelson, Kristen Stewart, Anne Hathaway, Idris Elba and Tilda Swinton all set to be showcased.
More importantly, the official selection looks like a robust line-up. “155 different countries submitted films — not far away from the UN,” noted Fremaux in his address to the world’s media. Unsurprisingly, the festival will open with a French director, Michel Hazanavicius, who previously launched his Oscar-winning film The Artist in Cannes. His zombie comedy Z (also known as Final Cut), a remake of the 2017 Japanese film One Cut of the Dead, and starring Romain Duris and Berenice Bejo, will kick proceedings off on Tuesday, May 17.
Among the competition entries that will by vying for prizes are four former winners of Cannes’ coveted Palme d’Or. Japan’s Hirokazu Koreeda will return, four years after winning for Shoplifters, with Broker, a Korean-set story about boxes that are left out for people to leave their unwanted babies in.
Two-time Palme d’Or-winners, the Dardenne brothers, are also back with Tori and Lokita, depicting the friendship between a young boy and girl who arrive in Belgium from Africa. Ruben Ostlund, whose second film The Square won in 2017, returns with the satirical comedy Triangle of Sadness, with Harrelson co-starring. Romania’s Cristian Mungiu, whose harrowing abortion tale 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days took Cannes’ top award in 2007, brings RMN to the festival.
Other key directors announced include South Korea’s Park Chan-wook, who previously launched the visceral 2003 revenge drama Oldboy in Cannes. His new movie, Decision to Leave, tells the story of a detective who falls for a mysterious widow. Claire Denis, hot off her Best Director win in Berlin for Both Sides of the Blade, will also compete with The Stars at Noon, a romantic thriller set in Nicaragua in 1984 and starring Margaret Qualley and Joe Alwyn.
North American cinema is also well represented in the selection. James Gray’s coming-of-age tale Armageddon Time, starring Hathaway and Anthony Hopkins, will compete alongside Kelly Reichardt’s Showing Up, which stars her regular go-to actress Michelle Williams. Certainly, the suggestion is the latter will be in keeping with her miniature-scale films. “Can we call it a small film?” mused Fremaux. “No. It’s a way of saying she is inventing the cinema of de-growth.”
There had been rumours trending on social media of a secret David Lynch film — his first feature since 2006’s Inland Empire — until he flat-out denied it to Entertainment Weekly. But there is the return of another David. Crimes of the Future marks David Cronenberg’s first movie since 2014’s Maps to the Stars, which also played in the Cannes competition. Given most felt the Canadian-born Cronenberg had effectively retired from film-making — instead taking up novel-writing — it’s a huge delight to see him back. The film features Kristen Stewart and Viggo Mortensen, who plays an avant-garde artist who uses his own organs for his work.
Keeping its mandate to recognise film-makers across the world, the festival has also selected Saim Sadiq’s Joyland. Playing in the Un Certain Regard strand, it’s the first film from Pakistan to ever make the official selection. Sadiq’s movie will line up against a diverse selection including films from Costa Rica (Domingo and the Mist, by Ariel Escalante Meza) and Cambodia (All the People I’ll Never Be, by Davy Chou).
Playing out of competition, there were some surprise reveals including Ethan Coen’s first film without his brother Joel, the documentary portrait Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind.
Director Brett Morgen, who previously made the Kurt Cobain documentary Montage of Heck, is also back with another musical icon story: Moonage Daydream. Focusing on the legendary David Bowie, it will feature a wealth of archive footage, much of which has never been seen before.
As for Hollywood studio projects, already announced was Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis, a biopic of Elvis Presley, starring Austin Butler as the king of rock ’n’ roll and Tom Hanks as his Svengali-like manager Colonel Tom Parker.
Also confirmed was a movie by another Australian filmmaker that had been long-rumoured to play at the festival: George Miller’s fantasy-romance Three Thousand Years of Longing, which stars Idris Elba and Tilda Swinton. Miller previously opened Cannes in 2015 with his last film, the much-loved Mad Max: Fury Road. This year’s road to Cannes, however, looks to be just as fabulously furious.
The Cannes Film Festival runs from Tuesday, May 17 to Saturday, May 28
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Dust and sand storms compared
Sand storm
- Particle size: Larger, heavier sand grains
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- Travel distance: Limited
- Source: Open desert areas with strong winds
Dust storm
- Particle size: Much finer, lightweight particles
- Visibility: Hazy skies but less intense
- Duration: Can linger for days
- Travel distance: Long-range, up to thousands of kilometres
- Source: Can be carried from distant regions
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'How To Build A Boat'
Jonathan Gornall, Simon & Schuster
How to wear a kandura
Dos
- Wear the right fabric for the right season and occasion
- Always ask for the dress code if you don’t know
- Wear a white kandura, white ghutra / shemagh (headwear) and black shoes for work
- Wear 100 per cent cotton under the kandura as most fabrics are polyester
Don’ts
- Wear hamdania for work, always wear a ghutra and agal
- Buy a kandura only based on how it feels; ask questions about the fabric and understand what you are buying
Global Fungi Facts
• Scientists estimate there could be as many as 3 million fungal species globally
• Only about 160,000 have been officially described leaving around 90% undiscovered
• Fungi account for roughly 90% of Earth's unknown biodiversity
• Forest fungi help tackle climate change, absorbing up to 36% of global fossil fuel emissions annually and storing around 5 billion tonnes of carbon in the planet's topsoil
What is blockchain?
Blockchain is a form of distributed ledger technology, a digital system in which data is recorded across multiple places at the same time. Unlike traditional databases, DLTs have no central administrator or centralised data storage. They are transparent because the data is visible and, because they are automatically replicated and impossible to be tampered with, they are secure.
The main difference between blockchain and other forms of DLT is the way data is stored as ‘blocks’ – new transactions are added to the existing ‘chain’ of past transactions, hence the name ‘blockchain’. It is impossible to delete or modify information on the chain due to the replication of blocks across various locations.
Blockchain is mostly associated with cryptocurrency Bitcoin. Due to the inability to tamper with transactions, advocates say this makes the currency more secure and safer than traditional systems. It is maintained by a network of people referred to as ‘miners’, who receive rewards for solving complex mathematical equations that enable transactions to go through.
However, one of the major problems that has come to light has been the presence of illicit material buried in the Bitcoin blockchain, linking it to the dark web.
Other blockchain platforms can offer things like smart contracts, which are automatically implemented when specific conditions from all interested parties are reached, cutting the time involved and the risk of mistakes. Another use could be storing medical records, as patients can be confident their information cannot be changed. The technology can also be used in supply chains, voting and has the potential to used for storing property records.
U19 WORLD CUP, WEST INDIES
UAE group fixtures (all in St Kitts)
- Saturday 15 January: UAE beat Canada by 49 runs
- Thursday 20 January: v England
- Saturday 22 January: v Bangladesh
UAE squad:
Alishan Sharafu (captain), Shival Bawa, Jash Giyanani, Sailles
Jaishankar, Nilansh Keswani, Aayan Khan, Punya Mehra, Ali Naseer, Ronak Panoly,
Dhruv Parashar, Vinayak Raghavan, Soorya Sathish, Aryansh Sharma, Adithya
Shetty, Kai Smith
Sole survivors
- Cecelia Crocker was on board Northwest Airlines Flight 255 in 1987 when it crashed in Detroit, killing 154 people, including her parents and brother. The plane had hit a light pole on take off
- George Lamson Jr, from Minnesota, was on a Galaxy Airlines flight that crashed in Reno in 1985, killing 68 people. His entire seat was launched out of the plane
- Bahia Bakari, then 12, survived when a Yemenia Airways flight crashed near the Comoros in 2009, killing 152. She was found clinging to wreckage after floating in the ocean for 13 hours.
- Jim Polehinke was the co-pilot and sole survivor of a 2006 Comair flight that crashed in Lexington, Kentucky, killing 49.
The specs: 2018 Maserati Levante S
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Engine: 3.0-litre V6
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Read more from Aya Iskandarani
Greatest of All Time
Starring: Vijay, Sneha, Prashanth, Prabhu Deva, Mohan
Lexus LX700h specs
Engine: 3.4-litre twin-turbo V6 plus supplementary electric motor
Power: 464hp at 5,200rpm
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Fuel consumption: 11.7L/100km
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Benefits of first-time home buyers' scheme
- Priority access to new homes from participating developers
- Discounts on sales price of off-plan units
- Flexible payment plans from developers
- Mortgages with better interest rates, faster approval times and reduced fees
- DLD registration fee can be paid through banks or credit cards at zero interest rates
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Sri Lanka squad for tri-nation series
Angelo Mathews (c), Upul Tharanga, Danushka Gunathilaka, Kusal Mendis, Dinesh Chandimal, Kusal Janith Perera, Thisara Perera, Asela Gunaratne, Niroshan Dickwella, Suranga Lakmal, Nuwan Pradeep, Dushmantha Chameera, Shehan Madushanka, Akila Dananjaya, Lakshan Sandakan and Wanidu Hasaranga
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Read more from Johann Chacko
Gothia Cup 2025
4,872 matches
1,942 teams
116 pitches
76 nations
26 UAE teams
15 Lebanese teams
2 Kuwaiti teams
Ponti
Sharlene Teo, Pan Macmillan
The specs
- Engine: 3.9-litre twin-turbo V8
- Power: 640hp
- Torque: 760nm
- On sale: 2026
- Price: Not announced yet
Our legal consultant
Name: Dr Hassan Mohsen Elhais
Position: legal consultant with Al Rowaad Advocates and Legal Consultants.
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Killing of Qassem Suleimani
The bio
Favourite book: The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
Favourite travel destination: Maldives and south of France
Favourite pastime: Family and friends, meditation, discovering new cuisines
Favourite Movie: Joker (2019). I didn’t like it while I was watching it but then afterwards I loved it. I loved the psychology behind it.
Favourite Author: My father for sure
Favourite Artist: Damien Hurst
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
Key facilities
- Olympic-size swimming pool with a split bulkhead for multi-use configurations, including water polo and 50m/25m training lanes
- Premier League-standard football pitch
- 400m Olympic running track
- NBA-spec basketball court with auditorium
- 600-seat auditorium
- Spaces for historical and cultural exploration
- An elevated football field that doubles as a helipad
- Specialist robotics and science laboratories
- AR and VR-enabled learning centres
- Disruption Lab and Research Centre for developing entrepreneurial skills
