Cannes Announces 2020 Official Lineup: ‘French Dispatch,’ ‘Ammonite,’ New McQueen and Ghibli

There's no festival this year, but 56 movies will be given the official Cannes 2020 label.

By: Zack Sharf

The show is going on for the 2020 Cannes Film Festival, even though by now in a normal year we would have known which film would succeed Bong Joon Ho’s “Parasite” as the new Palme d’Or winner. The original 2020 festival was scheduled to run May 12-23 but was canceled in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. Cannes is living on this year as festival president Pierre Lescure and general delegate Thierry Frémaux are announcing the 56 films that made the cut for the 2020 Official Selection. Selected films will be branded with an official Cannes 2020 label that they can take to additional festivals later this year and use when they open in theaters.

The Official Selection at Cannes usually includes the following sections: Competition, Un Certain Regard, Out of Competition, Special Screenings, and Midnight Screenings. The Palme d’Or contenders premiere in the Competition category. Last year’s Cannes Competition section featured a strong selection of titles, from winner “Parasite” to Pedro Almodovar’s “Pain and Glory” and Celine Sciamma’s “Portrait of a Lady on Fire.” The 2019 festival was the first edition since the initial Cannes that the Palme d’Or winner went on to win the Academy Award for Best Picture — that film was 1955’s “Marty.”

According to Fremaux, a record 2,067 features were up for consideration for the 2020 Cannes Film Festival, up from last year’s 1,845 films. Included in the 56 films that will receive the Cannes 2020 label are 15 feature debuts (26.7 percent of the selection) and 16 films directed by women, two more than in 2019. There were 532 films directed by women submitted for consideration this year, down from 575 in 2019.

As always, films that are given the Cannes 2020 label will be invited to screen at festivals such as Locarno, Telluride, Toronto, Deauville, San Sebastian, Pusan, Angoulême, Morelia, New York, Lyon, Rome, Rio, Tokyo, Mumbai or Mar del Plata, and Sundance. A key change is that Cannes has struck a deal with San Sebastian director Jose-Luis Rebordinos to allow films from the Official Selection to compete at the San Sebastian Film Festival. While it originally appeared the same might be true for the Venice Film Festival, that’s no longer certain.

The lineup includes new films from Wes Anderson, François Ozon, Naomi Kawase, Pete Docter, and Francis Lee. The line-up would have brought mega star power to Cannes, including the likes of Timothee Chalamet, Saoirse Ronan, Viggo Mortensen, Mads Mikkelsen, Tilda Swinton, Kate Winslet, and more. The selection also includes “Aya and the Witch,” the first CG-animated feature film from Studio Ghibli, and “Peninsula,” filmmaker Sang-ho Yeon’s sequel to his Cannes midnight sensation “Train to Busan.” Another exciting inclusion are two episodes from Steve McQueen’s television series “Small Axe.”

The 2020 Cannes Official Selection is listed below, courtesy of the festival’s official website.

3 DOCUMENTARIES

ON THE ROUTE FOR THE BILLION ( The Billion Road ) by Dieudo Hamadi (Democratic Republic of the Congo) – 1h30

THE TRUFFLE HUNTERS by Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw (USA) – 1h24

9 DAYS AT RAQQA by Xavier de Lauzanne (France) – 1h30

THE FAITHFUL

THE FRENCH DISPATCH by Wes Anderson (USA) – 1h43

SUMMER 85 by François Ozon (France) – 1h40

ASA GA KURU (True Mothers) by Naomi Kawase (Japan) – 2h20

LOVERS ROCK by Steve McQueen (England) – 1h08

MANGROVE by Steve McQueen (England) – 2h04

DRUK (Another Round) by Thomas Vinterberg (Denmark) – 1h55

Maïwenn’s DNA (DNA) (Algeria / France) – 1h30

LAST WORDS by Jonathan Nossiter (USA) – 2h06

HEAVEN: TO THE LAND OF HAPPINESS by IM Sang-Soo (Korea) – 1h40

EL OLVIDO QUE SEREMOS (Forgotten we’ll be) by Fernando Trueba (Spain) – 2h16

PENINSULA by YEON Sang-Ho (Korea) – 1h54

IN THE DUSK (At dusk) by Sharunas BARTAS (Lithuania) – 2h06

DES HOMMES (Home Front) by Lucas BELVAUX (Belgium) – 1h40

THE REAL THING by Kôji Fukada (Japan) – 3h48

NEW VENUES

PASSION SIMPLE by Danielle Arbid – (Lebanon) – 1h36

A GOOD MAN by Marie Castille Mention-Schaar (France) – 1h47

THE THINGS YOU SAY, THE THINGS YOU DO by Emmanuel Mouret (France) – 2h

SOUAD by Ayten Amin (Egypt) 1h30

LIMBO by Ben Sharrock (England) – 1h53

ROUGE (Red Soil) by Farid Bentoumi (France) – 1h26

SWEAT by Magnus Von Horn (Sweden) – 1h40

TEDDY by Ludovic and Zoran Boukherma (France) – 1h28

FEBRUARY (February) by Kamen Kalev (Bulgaria) – 2h05

AMMONITE by Francis Lee (England) – 2h

A NIGHT DOCTOR by Elie Wajeman (France) – 1h40

ENFANT TERRIBLE by Oskar Roehler (Germany) – 2h14

NADIA, BUTTERFLY by Pascal Plante (Canada) – 1h46

HERE WE ARE by Nir Bergman (Israel) – 1h34

A SKETCHES FILM

SEPTET: THE STORY OF HONG KONG by Ann Hui, Johnnie TO, Tsui Hark, Sammo Hung, Yuen Woo-Ping and Patrick Tam (Hong Kong) – 1h53

THE FIRST MOVIES

FALLING by Viggo Mortensen (USA) – 1h52

PLEASURE by Ninja Thyberg (Sweden) – 1h45

SLALOM by Charlène Favier (France) – 1h32

CASA DE ANTIGUIDADES (Memory House) by Joao Paulo Miranda Maria (Brazil) – 1h27

BROKEN KEYS (False note) by Jimmy Keyrouz (Lebanon) – 1h30

IBRAHIM by Samir Guesmi (France) – 1h20

BEGINNING (In the beginning) by Déa Kulumbegashvili (Georgia) – 2h10

GAGARINE by Fanny Liatard and Jérémy Trouilh (France) – 1h35

16 SPRING by Suzanne Lindon (France) – 1h13

VAURIEN by Peter Dourountzis (France) – 1h35

GARÇON CHIFFON by Nicolas Maury (France) – 1h48

SI LE VENT TOMBE ( Should the Wind Fall ) by Nora Martirosyan (Armenia) – 1h40

JOHN AND THE HOLE by Pascual Sisto (USA) – 1h38

INTO THE WIND ( Running with the Wind ) Shujun WEI (China) – 2:36

THE DEATH OF CINEMA AND MY FATHER TOO ( The film Death and my father too ) Dani Rosenberg (Israel) – 1:40

5 COMEDIES

ANTOINETTE IN THE CÉVÈNNES by Caroline Vignal (France) – 1h35

LES DEUX ALFRED by Bruno Podalydès (France) – 1h30

UN TRIOMPHE ( The big hit ) by Emmanuel Courcol (France) – 1h40

THE ORIGIN OF THE WORLD by Laurent Lafitte ( France) – 1st film

THE SPEECH by Laurent Tirard (France) – 1h27

4 ANIMATED MOVIES

AYA TO MAJO (Earwig and the Witch) by Gorô Miyazaki (Japan) – 1h22

FLEE by Jonas Poher Rasmussen (Denmark) – 1h30

JOSEP by Aurel (France) – 1h20 – 1st film

SOUL by Pete Docter (USA) – 1h30