Cannes Film Festival Lineup to Include New Paul Verhoeven, Oliver Stone Films

Paul Verhoeven, Oliver Stone, Sean Baker, Asghar Farhadi, Tom McCarthy and Sean Penn are among the directors who will be represented in the official selection of the 2021 Cannes Film Festival, which will take place from July 6-17 in the south of France.

Verhoeven, Baker and Farhadi will be represented in the main competition with “Benedetta,” “Red Rocket” and “A Hero,” respectively. “Spotlight” director McCarthy will screen his Matt Damon film “Stillwater” out of competition, while Stone will present the first two hours of his four-hour documentary about the John F. Kennedy assassination, “JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass.”

After the Cannes press release had been sent out and general delegate Thierry Fremaux and festival president Pierre Lescure had unveiled the lineup at a press conference on Thursday morning in Paris, Fremaux added that a 24th film had been added to the main competition: Sean Penn’s “Flag Day.” It is Penn’s first directorial effort since “The Last Face,” which premiered at the festival in 2016 to withering reviews.

The lineup contains a relatively small number of American films — which, in addition to the McCarthy, Baker and Stone films, also include Todd Haynes’ music documentary “The Velvet Underground.”

In the press conference, Fremaux said that no Netflix films were in the selection because the company refused to screen its films outside the main competition, and it refused to abide by French rules that films must be shown theatrically in France to be part of that competition.

Netflix has one film this year that would have been a natural fit for Cannes: “The Power of the Dog” by Jane Campion, the only female director to ever win the Palme d’Or, which she did for “The Piano.”

Although the continuing pandemic caused Cannes organizers to postpone this year’s festival from its usual mid-May slot to early July, the festival is determined to take place physically, with attendees required to show proof of vaccination or a recent negative COVID test. Masks will also be required in the theaters, which under French law are permitted to operate at 100% capacity.

It will be the first full-scale Cannes since May 2019, when the event ended with “Parasite” winning the Palme d’Or. Last year’s festival was canceled completely, though Cannes did release a “Cannes 2020” list of films that it would have booked if it could have. A scaled-down festival took place in October, with largely outdoor screenings of four films from the official selection and a competition section of shorts.

This year’s lineup also included a new section, Cannes Premiere, where new films will be presented out of competition in the Salle Debussy, a smaller theater adjacent to the festival’s showcase venue, the Grand Theatre Lumiere.   

The official selection

*MAIN COMPETITION*
“Ahed’s Knee,” Nadav Lapid
“Annette,” Leos Carax
“Benedetta,” Paul Verhoeven
“Bergman Island,” Mia Hansen-Love
“Drive My Car,” Ryusuke Hamaguchi
“Flag Day,” Sean Penn
“The French Dispatch,” Wes Anderson
“Haut et Fort” (“Casablanca Beats”), Nabil Ayouch
“A Hero,” Asghar Farhadi
“Hytti Nro 6” (“Compartment No. 6”), Juho Kuosmanen
“La Fracture,” Catherine Corsini
“Lingiu,” Mahamat Saleh-Haron
“Memoria,” Apichatpong Weerasethakul
“Nitram,” Justin Kurzel
“Par un Demi Clair Matin,” Bruno Dumont
“Paris, 13^th District,” Jacques Audiard
“Petrov’s Flu,” Kirill Serebrennikov
“Red Rocket,” Sean Baker
“The Restless” (“Les Intranquilles”), Joachim Lafosse
“The Story of My Wife,” Ildiko Enyedi
“Tre Piani,” Nanni Moretti
“Titane,” Julia Ducournau
“Tout S’est Bien Passe,”Francois Ozon
“Julie (en 12 Chapitres)” (“The Worst Person in the World”), Joachim Trier

*UN CERTAIN REGARD*
“After Yang,” Kogonada
“Blue Bayou,” Justin Chon
“Bonne Mere,” Hafsia Herzi
“Commitment Hasan,” Hasan Semih Kaplanoglu
“Delo” (“House Arrest”), Alexey German Jr.
“Freda,” Gessica Geneus
“The Innocents,” Eskil Vogt
“Lamb,” Valdimar Johansson
“Moneyboys,” C.B. Yi
“Noche de Fuego,” Tatiana Huezo
“Un Monde,” Laura Wandel

*SPECIAL SCREENINGS*
“Cahiers Noirs” (“Black Notebooks”), Shlomi Elkabetz
“Jane by Charlotte,” Charlotte Gainsbourgh
“JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass,” Oliver Stone
“O Marinheiro das Montanhas,” Karim Ainouz
“Black Notebooks,” Shlomi Elkabetz “H6,” Ye Ye

*OUT OF COMPETITION*
“Aline,” Valerie Lemercier
“Bac Nord,” Cedric Jimenez
“De Son Vivant,” Emmanuelle Bercot
“Emergency Declaration,” Han Jae-Rim
“Stillwater,” Tom McCarthy
“The Velvet Underground,” Todd Haynes “Stillwater,” Tom McCarthy

*MIDNIGHT SCREENINGS*
“Oranges Sanguines” (“Bloody Oranges”), Jean-Christophe Meurisse

*CANNES PREMIERE*
“Cette Musique ne Joue Pour Personne” (“Love Songs for Tough Guys”), Samuel Benchetrit
“Cow,” Andrea Arnold
“Evolution,” Kornel Mundruczo
“Hold Me Tight,” Mathieu Amalric
“In Front of Your Face,” Hong Sang-soo
“Mothering Sunday,” Eva Husson
“Tromperie” (“Deception”), Arnaud Desplechin