Cannes 2013 Lineup Will Make You Want to Buy Tickets to France

By  · Published on April 18th, 2013

This year, The Cannes International Film Festival opens on May 15th with a bombastically modern retelling of the Roaring Twenties and closes on May 26th with a South African-set crime thriller on the heels of apartheid. Everything in between looks amazing.

The lineup boasts new Winding Refn, Chandor, Sofia Coppola, Miike, Denis, Coen Brothers and what looks like a nice symmetrical career send off for Steven Soderbergh, who’s bringing Behind the Candelabra there 24 years after winning the festival’s top prize with sex, lies and videotape. That means Soderbergh has an opportunity to join the elite group of multiple Palme d’Or winners, and the Coens and Roman Polanski have that potential as well. All others in competition have never won before.

Plus, the non-competition films look equally fantastic. Read the full field, wipe that drool away and check to see what kind of deals you can get on plane tickets to France for May.

In Competition at the Théâtre Lumière

The Great Gatsby, Baz Lurhmann (Opening Film, Not in Competition)

Un Chateau En Italie, Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi

Inside Llewyn Davis, Ethan and Joel Coen

Michael Kohlhaas, Arnaud Despallieres

Jimmy P. (Psychotherapy of a Plains Indian), Arnaud Desplechin

Heli, Amat Escalante

Le Passe (The Past), Asghar Farhadi

The Immigrant, James Gray

Grisgris, Mahamat-Saleh Haroun

Tian Zhu Ding (A Touch of Sin), Zhangke Jia

Soshite Chichi Ni Naru (Like Father, Like Son), Hirokazu Kore-Eda

La Vie d’Adele, Abdellatif Kechiche

Wara No Tate (Shield of Straw), Takashi Miike

Jeune et Jolie, Francois Ozon

Nebraska, Alexander Payne

La Venus a la Fourrure (Venus in Furs), Roman Polanski

Behind the Candelabra, Steven Soderbergh

La Grande Bellezza (The Great Beauty), Paolo Sorrentino

Borgman, Alex Van Warmerdam

Only God Forgives, Nicholas Winding Refn

Zulu, Jerome Salle (Closing Film, Not in Competition)

Un Certain Regard at the Salle Debussy

The Bling Ring, Sofia Coppola (Opening Film)

Omar, Hany Abu-Assad

Death March, Adolfo Alix Jr.

Fruitvale Station, Ryan Coogler

Les Salauds, Claire Denis

Norte, Hangganan Ng Kasaysayan (Norte, The End of History), Lav Diaz

As I Lay Dying, James Franco

Miele, Valeria Golino

L’Inconnu Du Lac, Alain Guiraudie

Bends, Flora Lau

L’Image Manquante, Rithy Panh

La Jaula De Oro, Diego Quemada-Diez

Anonymous, Mohammad Rasoulof

Sarah Prefere La Course (Sarah Would Rather Run), Chloe Robichaud

Grand Central, Rebecca Zlotowski

Out of Competition at the Théâtre Lumière

All Is Lost, J.C. Chandor

Blood Ties, Guillaume Canet

Midnight Screenings

Monsoon Shootout, Amit Kumar

Blind Detective, Johnnie To

Jerry Lewis Tribute

Max Rose, Daniel Noah

Special Screenings

Muhammad Ali’s Greatest Fight, Stephen Frears

Stop the Pounding Heart, Roberto Minervini

Week End of a Champion, Roman Polanski

Seduced and Abandoned, James Toback

Otdat Konci (Bite the Dust), Taisia Igumentseva

Gala Screening, Tribute to India

Bombay Talkies, Anurag Kashyap, Dibakar Banerjee, Zoya Akhtar, Karan Joha

As you can see, Polanski has two films playing at Cannes. So does HBO (Behind the Candelabra, Muhammed Ali’s Greatest Fight). All in all, it’s a formidable year, but even if you can’t be there in person, we’ll be on the ground keeping an eye on what movies astound and which fall flat in the sand.

And there’s nothing that says you can’t sit on your couch in a bikini or board shorts reading the site, or that you can’t hire someone to yell French obscenities at you while you do it.

It’ll be just like a vacation. See you then!

Movie stuff at VanityFair, Thrillist, IndieWire, Film School Rejects, and The Broken Projector Podcast@brokenprojector | Writing short stories at Adventitious.