14/04/2025 - Alexe Poukine, Pauline Locques, Guillermo Galoe and Sven Bresser will be duking it out for the Grand Prize; Laura Wandel, Alice Drouard and Martin Jauvat will get Special Screenings

Four European filmmakers will take part in the competition of the 64th Critics’ Week, which will unspool from 14-22 May as an integral part of the 78th Cannes Film Festival. The programme for the 2025 edition, unveiled today via an online press conference (viewable on the Critics’ Week website) by General Delegate Ava Cahen, comprises 11 feature films (chosen from among 1,000 hopefuls hailing from 102 countries), including seven in competition that will be weighed up by a jury chaired by Rodrigo Sorogoyen (see the news).

Standing out among the films locking horns for the Critics’ Week Grand Prize are six fiction features and a documentary. Particularly prominent titles in the showcase are the feature debuts Nino by France’s Pauline Locques (see the news) and Reedland by Dutch helmer Sven Bresser (the very first images of which were revealed at Les Arcs’ Work in Progress last December).

Two feature-length fiction debuts by documentarians will also be partaking: Kika by Belgium’s Alexe Poukine (see the article) and Sleepless City by Spaniard Guillermo Galoe (who previously went by the name Guillermo García López – Goya Award for Best Documentary in 2017 for Delicate Balance [+see also:
trailer
film profile]), a project that was pitched at the 2022 Cinemed Meetings (see the interview with one of the French co-producers, Anne-Dominique Toussaint).

A fifth filmmaker hailing from the confines of Europe and Asia will be taking part in the competition with Imago, the feature-length documentary debut by Chechen helmer Déni Oumar Pitsaev (which took part in Cinéma du Réel’s Work-in-Progress last month).

The competition is rounded off by another feature-length fiction debut (A Useful Ghost by Thailand’s Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke) and by Left Handed Girl, the second feature, but also the first solo effort, by Taiwanese-US director Shih-Ching Tsou (who co-directed Take Out with Sean Baker; she has produced several of his films, and Baker handled the editing for this one).

The 2025 selection also takes in four features as out-of-competition Special Screenings, including Adam’s Interest by Belgium’s Laura Wandel (who rose to fame in Un Certain Regard at Cannes in 2021 with Playground [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Laura Wandel
film profile], and whose new opus boasts Léa Drucker and Anamaria Vartolomei among the cast – see the article), which will be the opening film of this edition, the feature debut Des preuves d’amour by France’s Alice Douard (see the article – starring Ella Rumpf and Monia Chokri) and Baise-en-ville by her fellow countryman Martin Jauvat (see the article – he took part in Cannes’ ACID in 2022 with his feature debut, Grand Paris). Animation will also be making a return to the Critics’ Week six years after I Lost My Body [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Jérémy Clapin
film profile] with Dandelion’s Odyssey, the feature debut by French-based Japanese helmer Momoko Sato (see the news), which will bring proceedings to a close.

Highly Eurocentric with a distinct Asian flair, the 2025 Critics’ Week will offer a competition that includes a brooding crime film about a reed cutter obsessed with the murder of a teenage girl (Reedland), a buddy movie set in Europe’s biggest slum (Sleepless City), a blend of social satire and romantic comedy built around a burlesque ghost story (A Useful Ghost), a feminist and social drama about love, bereavement and instability (Kika), an exploration of a valley where a project to build a house with a futurist design reignites conflicts and trauma (Imago), an urban melodrama about a single mother and her two daughters arriving in Taipei and wallowing in debt and other troubles (Left Handed Girl), and three days of decisive wanderings around the streets for a young man who has lost his keys (Nino).

Lastly, it’s worth noting that six of the 11 features being showcased have been directed by women and that the selection of the 13 short films will be unveiled on Thursday 17 April.

Here is the full selection:

Feature films

Competition

A Useful Ghost - Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke (Thailand/France/Singapore/Germany)
Sleepless City - Guillermo Galoe (Spain/France)
Imago - Déni Oumar Pitsaev (France/Belgium)
Kika - Alexe Poukine (Belgium/France)
Left Handed Girl - Shih-Ching Tsou (Taiwan/France/USA/UK)
Nino - Pauline Locques (France)
Reedland - Sven Bresser (Netherlands/Belgium)

Special Screenings

Adam’s Interest - Laura Wandel (Belgium/France) (opening film)
Des preuves d’amour - Alice Douard (France)
Baise-en-ville - Martin Jauvat (France)
Dandelion’s Odyssey – Momoko Sato (France/Belgium) (closing film)

(Translated from French)