Cannes 2018 line-up: Spike Lee, David Robert Mitchell & more

Netflix won’t be taking any talent to Cannes this year after the festival’s director announced their straight to streaming distribution model makes their films ineligible for a Competition slot, but there are plenty of fine filmmakers joining this year’s programme.

We already knew that the new film from Asghar Farhadi, Everybody Knows will open the festival on 8 May and the Iranian filmmaker will be joined by some big name auteurs in the main competition, including his fellow countryman Jafar Panahi (Three Faces), French veteran Jean-Luc Godard (Le livre d’image) and Spike Lee with his new feature BlacKkKlansman.

We’re also excited to see David Robert Mitchell get a competition slot with Under the Silver Lake, alongside new films from Italian filmmaker Matteo Garrone (Dogman), Japanese master Hirokazu Kore-eda (Shoplifters), Polish director Pawel Pawlikowski (Cold War) and Lee Chang-dong (Burning) from South Korea. Eva Husson’s Girls of the Sun, her follow up to Bang Gang, will also compete for the Palme d’Or, as will the new film from the talented Chinese filmmaker Jia Zhang-Ke (Ash is Purest White).

While the above is an impressive selection of filmmakers, there’s no doubt that the addition of films from the likes of Alfonso Cuarón, Jeremy Saulnier and Paul Greengrass – whose latest films are all made for Netflix – would have made the Competition line-up even more enticing. Speaking at the Cannes press conference, director Thierry Frémaux particularly lamented the loss of the near-mythical Orson Welles film The Other Side of the Wind, which the director began making in the 70s and Netflix have helped complete.

Frémaux hasn’t given up on screening the film at the festival, however. “Netflix is welcome to Cannes,” said Frémaux. “The doors are still open.”

The Cannes lineup announced this morning is below:

Cannes Competition: 2018
Everybody Knows, Asghar Farhadi (opening night film)
At War, Stéphane Brizé
Dogman, Matteo Garrone
The Image Book, Jean-Luc Godard
Asako I & II, Ryusuke Hamaguchi
Sorry Angel, Christophe Honoré
Girls of the Sun, Eva Husson
Ash Is Purest White, Jia Zhang-Ke
Shoplifters, Kore-Eda Hirokazu
Capernaum, Nadine Labaki
Burning, Lee Chang-dong
BlacKkKlansman, Spike Lee
Under the Silver Lake, David Robert Mitchell
Three Faces, Jafar Panahi
Cold War, Pawel Pawlikowski
Lazzaro Felice, Alice Rohrwacher
Yomeddine, A.B Shawky
Summer, Kirill Serebrennikov