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The Sarajevo Film Festival has unveiled the films that will play in its Open Air Program, which include Joachim Trier’s Cannes Grand Prix winner “Sentimental Value,” Michel Franco’s Berlin competitor “Dreams,” Nadia Fall’s Sundance competition title “Brides,” Dominik Moll’s Cannes competitor “Case 137,” and Miguel Ángel Jiménez’s Locarno title “The Birthday Party.”

Some of the screenings will be attended by stars or directors of the films, who will be in Sarajevo to receive the Honorary Heart of Sarajevo, including Willem Dafoe with “The Birthday Party,” Stellan Skarsgård with “Sentimental Value,” Franco with “Dreams,” and Paolo Sorrentino with “The Great Beauty.”

The program is divided into two sections: Open Air is for festival favorites and cinematic classics, and Open Air Premiere will showcase films from the former Yugoslav region.

Open Air Program

The Pavilion – Opening Film

Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, North Macedonia, Serbia, Montenegro, 2025, 100 min.

Director: Dino Mustafić

Cast: Rade Šerbedžija,...

The 31st edition of the Sarajevo Film Festival has unveiled the lineup for its Open Air Program, consisting of two sections, Open Air and Open Air Premiere.

The program set for the Coca-Cola Open Air Cinema will be “showcasing some of the most important arthouse films of the year, as well as cinematic classics,” organizers said. “Some of the films in this program will be presented by acclaimed directors, actors, and screenwriters, [2025] recipients of the Honorary Heart of Sarajevo, including Paolo Sorrentino, Willem Dafoe, Ray Winstone, Stellan Skarsgård, and Michel Franco,” who received the honor several years ago.

Meanwhile, the new Open Air Premiere lineup will “showcase films from the former Yugoslav region in the unique setting of the Uniqa Open Air Cinema Stari Grad,” fest organizers highlighted.

Check out the full Sarajevo open air lineups below.

Open Air Program

The Pavilion (Paviljon) – opening film

Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, North Macedonia,...

Willem Dafoe will become the latest recipient of Sarajevo Film Festival’s honorary Heart of Sarajevo award, at the festival’s 31st edition (August 15-22).

Dafoe will give a masterclass at the festival, discussing his career and reflections on contemporary filmmaking with the local audience.

“[Dafoe’s] body of work is something to which every actor aspires,” said festival director Jovan Marjanovic. “Every time he steps in front of the camera, he demonstrates that he is a true master of his craft.”

Dafoe has worked with a roll call of top US and international filmmakers across his career, including Wes Anderson, Kathryn Bigelow,...

France’s box office continues to suffer through the start of summer with ticket sales dropping by 23% year on year to a total of 10.9 million admissions (€79.2m*), down from14.1 million admissions (€105.1m) in 2024, according to estimates from the Cnc.

Despite high hopes the box office would kick back into gear starting with the summer months after May saw ticket sales fall by nearly 25% compared to the same month last year, June’s box office results failed to deliver.

Fifty-three new releases opened in France in June including 31 French films and just four US films. The market share of French films...

Films by Richard Linklater, Oliver Laxe and Joachim Trier are among 53 titles selected by the Munich International Film Festival for its four main competition strands CineMasters, CineVision, CineRebels and CineCoPro.Munich runs from June 27 to July 6.

CineMasters

Oliver Laxe’s Sirat will be joined by another two Cannes 2025 Official Competition titles - Richard Linklater’s Nouvelle Vague and Mascha Schilinski’s award-winning Sound Of Falling - to screen in the CineMasters competition for the €15,000 CineMasters Award. The prize is being sponsored for the first time this year by Dorint Hotels & Resorts and is presented to the director of the best international film.

Despite significant wins at major film festivals and policies enforced by the National Film Board (Cnc) aimed at boosting female representation behind the camera, male crew members still dominate the French film industry.

A study conducted by the organization Collectif 50/50 on 220 titles released in 2024 shows that the proportion of women in key below-the-line positions has remained mostly stagnant compared with 2023, rising rarely.

The only two fields where women lead in terms of representation are costume designers and casting directors with 90% and 80%, respectively.

The org 50/50 says these “jobs are historically perceived as feminine” and are therefore “still overwhelmingly occupied by women.” These are followed by editors with 50% of women, set designers with 47% (compared with 41% in 2023), music composers with 12% (compared with 8% in 2023), cinematographers with 13% (compared with 18% in 2023), music composers with 12% and sound engineers with 11%. While modest, the biggest year-on spike was seen in special effects where the number of female heads of...

After a difficult start to the month, France’s box office kicked into gear on May 21 as Disney’s Lilo & Stitch and Paramount’s Mission Impossible – The Final Reckoning opened to garner a combined near 3m admissions (approximately €21.9m* ) , accounting for 70% of the total box office for the month according to Cnc figures.

Lilo & Stitch sold 1.3 million tickets (€9.5m), making it the best opening week of the year to date, and Mission Impossible – The Final Reckoning attracted some 866,000 admissions (€6.3m).

Disney’s Thunderbolts, released on April 30, clocked just over 1 million admissions (€7.3 million).

Further Hollywood titles, Warner Bros.’ Destination Finale Bloodlines,...

By the end of this year’s Cannes Film Festival — well, technically, up until this Memorial Day when Netflix announced the streamer snapped up Richard Linklater’s “Nouvelle Vague” — 13 of the 22 films in competition had walked away with a stateside home.

That’s impressive, but there are still many more gems waiting out throughout the Official Selection, including even Harris Dickinson’s IndieWire-adored directorial debut “Urchin”. Kristen Stewart’s acclaimed Imogen Poots vehicle “The Chronology of Water,” one of three actor-turned-director efforts in Un Certain Regard along with Dickinson and Scarlett Johansson, doesn’t have a home yet, either. She’ll get there.

Surveying the Main Competition, either films like “Eddington” (A24) or “The Phoenician Scheme” (Focus Features) or “Sentimental Value” (Neon) came to the festival with deals in place, or a handful for stateside berth were brokered on the ground. Mubi took the buzziest buy of the festival...

The 78th edition of the Cannes Film Festival concludes today with the Closing Ceremony and presentation of the coveted award, the Palme d’Or, which was awarded to Jafar Panahi for the film It Was Just an Accident.

The Jury, chaired by director Juliette Binoche, was tasked with awarding the Palme d’Or to one of the 21 films in the Competition. The jury included Halle Berry, Payal Kapadia, Alba Rohrwacher, Leïla Slimani, Dieudo Hamadi, Hong Sangsoo, Carlos Reygadas and Jeremy Strong.

Related: Cannes Film Festival 2025: Read All Of Deadline’s Movie Reviews

The Croisette has been a buzz so far with glamorous parties and red carpet fashion statements. Director Amélie Bonnin’s debut feature, Partir Un Jour, opened the festival with other highlight premieres from this year’s slate including Paul Mescal in The History of Sound; Spike Lee’s Highest 2 Lowest; A Private Life starring Jody Foster...

Every so often Amélie Bonnin’s first film bursts into song - not the kind of production numbers so beloved of Hollywood or the likes of Jacques Demy but pop standards that may mean a lot to generations of French music lovers but less so to anyone else.

She serves up a tale of a celebrity chef Cécile (played by the singer Juliette Armanet) who is based in Paris and is about to open her own restaurant but still feels drawn back to her roots in the country on occasions. Her parents run the roadside restaurant where Cécile learned to cook.

The visit coincides with her discovery that she is pregnant with her partner (Tewfik Jallab) in her new culinary pursuits and she’s not entirely sure how she will cope. First off she needs to create a signature dish although her cantankerous father (François Rollin), who has suffered three heart attacks,...

Exclusive: Guillaume Canet will star as former French justice minister Robert Badinter, who led the fight to abolish the death penalty in France, in Simon Jacquet’s debut feature for French powerhouse studio Pathe which is handling international sales and will release in France.

Los Angeles and Paris-based Iconoclast will produce the film gearing up to shoot in 2026 about one of France’s most respected intellectual figures and defense lawyers, who died aged 95 last year.

Badinter is best known for enacting the 1981 law that put an end to capital punishment in France..

Jacquet recently penned the script for Karma, Canet...

The new psychological drama starring Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson has been well-received by critics. While Pattinson is perhaps best known for his franchise roles including Edward Cullen in the Twilight movies, Cedric Diggory in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, and Bruce Wayne in The Batman, he has also starred in a variety of titles from auteur directors. This includes Robert Eggers' The Lighthouse, Christopher Nolan's Tenet, Bong Joon Ho's Mickey 17, David Cronenberg's Maps to the Stars, and Claire Denis' High Life.

Jennifer Lawrence movies have taken Pattinson's co-star on a similar career trajectory. She has held two major long-running franchise roles, playing Katniss Everdeen in the Hunger Games movies and Mystique in the most recent branch of the X-Men franchise, prior to the characters joining the Marvel Cinematic Universe. However, she first rose to prominence off the back of her Oscar-nominated performance in 2010's Winter's Bone,...

This week on “Screen Talk,” we take you behind the scenes of the goings-on at the 78th annual Cannes Film Festival on the French Riviera, where we recorded on Day Two. Politics dominated the first press conferences with director Thierry Frémaux and the nine-member jury led by Juliette Binoche. They turned up for opening night as well, where Leonardo DiCaprio presented an honorary Palme d’Or to Robert De Niro, and Quentin Tarantino bounded onto the stage to declare the festival open. The opening night film “Leave One Day,” from French rookie Amélie Bonnin, a strictly local jukebox musical with the actors singing French pop hits of the ’80s, will not travel.

Later that night, DiCaprio attended the gala dinner with De Niro at the Palm Beach, where Anne enjoyed talking with “Anora” Oscar-winners Sean Baker and Samantha Quan, the hilarious Michael Covino (“Splitsville”), Amazon’s Scott Foundas, Michael Barker...

The black market for Cannes parties and screenings is alive and well, according to a list seen by Screendaily.

One of the most expensive offerings is a pair of tickets to Scarlett Johansson’s Eleanor The GreatUn Certain Regard premiere and after-party on May 20, which are being touted for $5,495 per person. A photo with Johansson is on offer for an extra $1,995.

The film’s distributor Sony Pictures Classics was unavailable for comment. However a festival spokesperson responded robustly.

“Tickets issued by the Festival de Cannes are free of charge and strictly prohibited from being sold. Any attempt to sell or...

The black market for Cannes parties and screenings is alive and well, according to a list seen by Screendaily.

One of the most expensive offerings is a pair of tickets to Scarlett Johansson’s Eleanor The GreatUn Certain Regard premiere and after-party on May 20, which are being touted for $5,495 per person. A photo with Johansson is on offer for an extra $1,995.

The film’s distributor Sony Pictures Classics was unavailable for comment. However a festival spokesperson responded robustly.

“Tickets issued by the Festival de Cannes are free of charge and strictly prohibited from being sold. Any attempt to sell or...

Hi there, hope you’re enjoying the opening Cannes week. Jesse Whittock here to curate the big news from the sunny Croisette and elsewhere. Sign up for the newsletter here.

Crusie In Cannes

Tom Cruise on the Palais red carpet

Workers rights and ‘The Final Reckoning’: Cannes 2025 opened this week in almost identical fashion to last year’s edition: With a tepidly reviewed French movie and staff protests. Amélie Bonnin’s Leave One Day was the movie this year, and Cannes staffers represented by the unofficial union Sous Les Écrans La Dèche were present at the opening night gala with placards and posters. The staffers were once again protesting to raise awareness about what they have described as their unfair working conditions. They’re hoping to finally be included in France’s unique scheme for seasonal cultural workers, which grants benefits like unemployment pay. Last-minute talks between Cannes and the French government broke down,...

In this edition of Screen’s Cannes Close-Up interview series, French actress and singer-songwriter Juliette Armanet talks about her new film Leave One Day that opened this year’s Cannes Film Festival, and picks out her favourite French films of all time.

Armanet plays a star chef in crisis going back to her parents’ roadside restaurant in the film directed by Amélie Bonnin.

In the interview she also recommends three musts for a Cannes first timer, and why the festival is so important: “A film can changes your life and the way you see the world. We need fiction to be able to survive.

Exclusive: French mini-major Pathé is at the Cannes Film Festival this year with opening film Leave One Day as well as Martin Bourboulon’s August 2021 fall-of-Kabul action feature 13 Days, 13 Nights, which plays Out of Competition.

It follows on from a high-profile 2024 at the festival, when the company attended with The Count of Monte-Cristo, which was a hit at home and when on to gross more than $100 million, as well as Emilia Pérez and Partenope among other films.

Amélie Bonnin’s musical film Leave One Day made history on Tuesday evening as the first debut film to open the festival across its 78 editions.

The romantic musical builds on Bonnin’s 2023 César-winning short film of the same name. French singer Juliette Armanet stars as a rising chef in Paris who is forced to return to her small hometown to help out in her family’s roadside diner after her father suffers a heart attack.

Gaetan Bruel, the new president of the Cnc, France’s National Film Board, has landed the job at a crucial time for the industry. While one of his goals is to boast the profile of France internationally and ramp up the volume of international shoots in the country, Bruel has, like most of the European film industry, been coping with a flow of alarming declarations by U.S. President Trump who proposed a 100% tariff on movies produced outside of the U.S.

The 37-year old executive, who knows the U.S. industry better than any of his predecessors at the Cnc. Indeed, Bruel lived there for several years as the former head of French Cultural Services, a division of the French Embassy with a footprint in nine American cities, from 2019 to 2023, and worked hand-in-hand with the Cnc to promote French talent and the country’s audiovisual sector in the U.

Sylvie Pialat (“Timbuktu”), the producer of Cannes’ opening night movie “Leave One Day” directed by Amelie Bonnin, is on the roll. The Cesar-winning producer, who runs the Paris-based banner Les Films du Worso, is currently developing a raft of new projects from renown European auteurs and up-and-comers, including Alain Gomis, Emmanuelle Bercot, Atiq Rahimi, Hu Wei and Felipe Gálvez.

Pialat will be working for the first time with Emmanuelle Bercot, the critically acclaimed French actress and filmmaker whose directorial effort “Leaving” world premiered at Cannes in 2021 and earned Benoit Magimel a best actor prize at the Cesar Awards in 2022. Bercot also had her 2015 movie “Standing Tall” open the Cannes Film Festival.

Bercot’s untitled next movie, which will reteam Pialat with Pathé Films, her partner on “Leave One Day,” is an adaptation of the book called “L’Enragé,” written by journalist Sorj Chalandon. The movie will tell the gripping true story...

Robert De Niro accepted the honorary Palme d’Or at Cannes on May 13 and used his platform to condemn the Trump administration’s proposed 100 percent tariff on foreign films. Leonardo DiCaprio, who presented the award and credited De Niro with launching his career during the “This Boy’s Life” audition, praised him for treating acting as a “physical transformation.” After DiCaprio’s introduction and a cheek kiss, De Niro addressed the audience.

“In my country, we’re fighting like hell for the democracy we once took for granted,” he said. “Art brings people together and seeks truth. That’s why it’s a threat to fascists.” Turning to the tariff, he added, “You can’t put a price on creativity, but apparently you can put a tariff on it. This move is unacceptable. These attacks affect everyone who values liberty. We must organize, vote and celebrate artistic expression.”

Festival director Thierry Frémaux...

Cannes opening night can be hit or miss, but lately, festival director Thierry Frémaux has used the occasion to import Hollywood luminaries like Meryl Streep, tributed by Juliette Binoche last year. (The French star returned in 2025 to preside over the Competition jury.) This year, Frémaux scored big as Leonardo DiCaprio showed up to present a tearful Robert De Niro with his honorary Palme d’Or. He was rewarded with a warm hug.

“It is a great honor to recognize someone who, for me and so many actors, has always been the archetype of who we look up to,” said DiCaprio. “That is Robert De Niro. It’s not just the roles he plays. He inspired actors to treat the craft not as performance but as physical transformation.”

DiCaprio recalled screaming during his “tough” audition for “This Boy’s Life” to break through, and that De Niro recommended him, thus launching his...

Exclusive: UK actor Jason Isaacs is set to join Djimon Hounsou and Ariyon Bakare in Donovan Marsh’s action drama The Bleeding Ground, due to shoot in South Africa early next year.

The White Lotus star will play an oil executive caught in a stand-off against a militant leader who is driven by personal loss and a quest for justice.

The Bleeding Ground is being produced by Jean-Luc Van Damme of Belgium’s Happy Moon Productions, with UK producer David P Kelly. The script is by UK screenwriter Mathew Bayliss.

Production is scheduled to begin in early 2026 for nine-weeks in Cape Town and Durban.

Exclusive: Cineart has taken Benelux rights to Critics’ Week title Reedland, the feature debut of Dutch director Sven Bresser, that is being sold by France’s The Party Film Sales.

Reedland is a dark drama featuring non-professionals and about a farmer who discovers a girl’s body in the reed land where he works. Marleen Slot’s Viking Film has produced the film which was presented as a work in progress in Les Arcs 2024.

Cineart has also pre-bought Eric Toledano and Olivier Nakache’s coming-of-age drama, Just An Illusion, starring Camille Cottin and Louis Garrel from Gaumont.

Now part of the Mubi empire,...

Frequent festival-goers learn not to expect much from opening films. Quality is but one of many factors that lead to the selection for this symbolic slot. In order to avoid offending sensibilities and setting a controversial tone for the whole festival from the get-go, programmers tend to pick something less adventurous or challenging for their curtain-raiser. Even with reasonably lowered expectations,, French director Amélie Bonnin’s comic-dramatic musical Leave One Day, which opened the 78th Cannes Film Festival, is an underwhelming experience. There’s no question that this sweet, nostalgia-laced ode to life in the countryside has its heart in the right place, but a lack of nuance and creative risk-taking greatly hampered the delivery of its message.

Expanded from Bonnin’s 25-minute, César-winning short of the same name, the film centers around Cécile (Juliette Armanet), who has left her country home for Paris some time ago to pursue a career as a chef.

Chef’s Kiss: Bonnin Uses Familiar Recipe in Pleasant Debut

For her directorial debut, Partir un Jour (Leave One Day), based on her own 2021 Cesar Award Winning short film, Amélie Bonnin whips up a crowd pleasing confection which could have used a little less sugar and a little more tart. In the annals of French cinema, sporadic musical numbers utilized to enhance the emotional interiority of characters navigating life’s foibles happens to be one of the country’s specialities, a legacy including Jacques Demy and Christophe Honore, both of whom come to mind in Bonnin’s scruffy, likable addition to the subgenre.…...

Leonardo DiCaprio presents Robert De Niro with his honorary Palme d’Or Photo: Courtesy of Cannes Film Festival The opening of the 78th edition of the Cannes Film Festival last night was a fairly muted affair with a first time French film Leave One Day, a musical comedy, kicking off proceedings. Although the cast, including Juliette Armanet as well as director Amélie Bonnin, looked the part it took the legendary Robert De Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio to bring some Hollywood chutzpah to the proceedings.

DiCaprio was presenting De Niro with his honorary Palme d’Or but this year’s mega star Tom Cruise (in town for the global launch of the latest Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning) was conspicuous by his absence. Instead we had Quentin Tarantino striding out alongside last year’s Palme d’Or winner Sean Baker (for Anora) and jury president Juliette Binoche and her cohorts...

“Leave One Day,” Amélie Bonnin’s feature film that opened the Cannes Film Festival on Tuesday evening, is an unusual film for a Cannes opener in several ways.

It’s a musical, only the third to open Cannes in this century, after Leos Carax’s twisted “Annette” in 2021 and Baz Luhrmann’s lavish “Moulin Rouge!” in 2001. It’s directed by a woman, Bonnin, again only the third time that’s happened in the 2000s, after Maïwenn in 2023 and Emmanuelle Bercot in 2015. And it’s a first-time feature from a female director; the last time Cannes opened with one of those was, well, never.

In one major way, though, “Leave One Day” is quite similar to other recent Cannes openers, in that it’s likely to be largely forgotten a few days into the festival, quickly overshadowed by other films. A slight character study that strains to be charming but only occasionally gets there,...

Amélie Bonnin’s romantic dramedy Leave One Day (Partir un Jour) made history at the Cannes Film Festival this evening, becoming the first debut feature to ever open the event.

It also got a five-minute-plus ovation from the crowd.

Leave One Day builds on Bonnin’s 2023 César-winning short film of the same name. The romantic musical revolves around rising chef Cécile (Juliette Armanet), who is about to fulfill a lifelong ambition of opening her own signature gourmet restaurant in Paris.

Cécile is forced to put the project on hold when her father suffers a heart attack and she is called back to her small hometown. Exasperated at being cut off from her bustling life in Paris, she unexpectedly reconnects with a teenage crush, Raphaël (Bastien Bouillon). The meeting rekindles long-buried memories and leads Cécile to question past choices and the current direction of her life.

Related: Standing Ovations At Cannes: How We Clock Those Claps,...

With America not only spinning out of control but threatening to take the rest of the world with it, the Cannes Film Festival can be a place to play out that tumult, to see it writ large — on the big screen, where over the next two weeks it inevitably will be. It hardly matters that the films showing at Cannes were made before Trump took office. Movies are psychic, and always have been. It’s all but assured that a number of Cannes offerings this year — and, indeed, the very vibe of the festival — will channel the new world disorder.

But there’s another side to Cannes. Each year, the festival presents itself as a sanctuary, a ritzy oasis, a cinematic shelter from the storm. That’s the cozy bourgeois side of Cannes. Just look at the official poster for this year’s festival. You might have expected it to...

Robert De Niro criticised president Donald Trump’s proposed tariffs on films made outside the US at the Cannes Film Festival’s opening night ceremony, which took place tonight (May 13).

De Niro, receiving the honorary Palme d’Or, said: “In my country, we’re fighting like hell for the democracy we once took for granted. And that affects all of us here because the arts are democratic. Art is inclusive. It brings people together, like tonight. Art looks for truth, art embraces diversity and that’s why art is a threat — that’s why we are a threat — to autocrats and fascists.

Opening Cannes, like closing it, has traditionally been a poisoned chalice. The festival has tried a few moves to address the latter, mostly predicated on the fact that, by the end of nearly two exhausting weeks, nobody cares anymore. But first night is still a tough nut to crack, and with the selection of a very local first-time film — a modest, low-key character study with no traditional red-carpet movie stars — festival chief Thierry Frémaux might seem, at first glance, to be giving into the idea that it’s a graveyard slot.

Leave One Day, however, is a smarter choice than it might first appear — a stealth charmer, if you like — and almost certainly a film to baffle the international festivalgoers who descend on Cannes for the meatier stuff, whether that’s the Hollywood A-list fare or the more punishing arthouse discoveries. It will mean much, much more to the French, evoking memories of a country that’s fast disappearing while, at the same time, being fully cognizant of its evolving, multicultural present.

Directed by first-timer Amélie Bonnin, Leave One Day isn’t so notable just for being a musical, since Leos Carax’s Annette filled the same slot just a few years ago. But it is rare to see a film that uses its music choices so playfully and so cleverly. It’s title song, for instance, is a deconstruction of boyband 2Be3’s cheesy 1996 hit; while another key sequence involves French rapper Yannick’s 2000 hit “Ces Soirées-là,” a hip-hop version of Claude Francoise’s 1976 hit “Cette Année-là,” itself a version of The Four Seasons’ 1975 hit “December, 1963” and one of the few songs recognizable to non-French audiences. It sounds fresh, maybe even new. But it’s not new — like K. Maro’s infectious “Femme Like U,” which also features — Yannick’s hit is over 20 years old, and the way pop music distracts us like that, creating a big, blurry disjunct between what was then and what is now, between nostalgia and reality, is central to Bonnin’s film.

The lead in her story is Cécile, played by singer Juliette Armanet, best known for performing John Lennon’s “Imagine” at the opening of the Paris Olympics last year. If you didn’t know that, you might not even guess she was a professional, since Leave One Day isn’t a showcase for slick, show-stopping numbers. Rather, it’s a film that wears its ragged edges with pride, matching music to the cast with a poignancy that will resonate with the French far more than others, who may balk at the clunky translations of songs such as Claude Nougaro’s “Cécile Ma Fille,” a soppy but affecting ’60s chanson sung by Cécile’s father. The same could be said of the story, which as old as time, or at least romantic fiction.

When we meet Cécile, she is just about to find out that she is pregnant. It’s the worst possible moment; she’s something of a foodie star (a regular on cooking show Top Chef) and getting ready to open her own restaurant in two weeks’ time. Her father has just been hospitalized, having suffered a heart attack (his third), and on top of that, she has yet to figure out her new eatery’s signature dish. Nevertheless, she takes to the road and goes home, leaving her business partner/lover Sofiane (Tewfik Jallab) to hold the fort.

Cécile’s backstory is a bit on the nose; her parents, Fanfan (Dominique Blanc) and Gérard (François Rollin), are the proprietors of a roadside diner called The Pitstop, serving the kind of food that Cécile has snootily dismissed as being to haute cuisine “what flip-flops are to haute couture.” Cécile knows she said this because Gérard has made a note of all her Top Chef witticisms, especially one that cut so deeply he knows it by heart: “Truck stops are by the road so you can make a fast getaway.” It’s an awkward homecoming, but Cécile reconnects with some old friends, notably hot grunge mechanic Raphaël (Bastien Bouillon), an old flame of sorts, albeit one she never hooked up with. “We live in a time warp,” his friend says. “Nothing moves.” Which is how Cécile comes to realize that Raphaël, despite his too-cool-for-school demeanor, is still in love with her.

The ensuing love triangle among Cécile, Sofiane and Raphael plays out much as you might expect, which may sound a little underwhelming for a film that’s been given such a high-profile slot at an international festival. This is Cannes, though, and the audiences there are less likely to dwell on the details of such a familiar story and respond more viscerally to the way that it’s being told, triggering memories of all kinds of inter-generational music, all kinds of food and so many things even they wouldn’t think they’d ever see anymore, like a dog having the run of a working kitchen.

Some may wonder why Cannes would open with such a film, but festivalgoers with longer memories will remember the olden days, when someone there thought that three whole hours of The Barber of Siberia would make an awesome curtain-raiser. Compared to that, Leave One Day is a joy; a very particular kind of crowd-pleaser that doesn’t do anything especially new, and, even then, doesn’t really do it in a very distinctive way.

Crucially, though, it has heart, capturing a sense of time having passed and an optimism for the time to come. The cheesy, stopped-clock setup of The Pitstop will be instantly recognizable to any tourist who’s ever found themselves in some backwater bar that’s all Johnny Hallyday this, Pernod that and lots of Gauloises cigarettes. But Bonnin’s film not only embraces those clichés, it celebrates them, and the unexpected, emotional strength of the film lies not in its nostalgia for the past but in its touching belief in our capacity to make peace with the things we have to lose in order to get on with our lives.

Title: Leave One Day

Festival: Cannes

Sales agent: Pathé

Director: Amélie Bonnin

Screenwriters: Amélie Bonnin, Dimitri Lucas

Cast: Juliette Armanet, Bastien Bouillon, Dominique Blanc, François Rollin

Running time: 1 hr 33 min...

Chalk it up to Cannes’ unique position that you’re reading this review.

Which isn’t to say that Amélie Bonnin’s locally flavored jukebox musical “Leave One Day” is anything close to a wash — nor does this year’s Cannes opening film dishonor the (at best) checkered legacy of recent predecessors such as Michel Hazanavicius’ “Final Cut,” Quentin Dupieux’s “The Second Act,” and the botched Johnny Depp comeback “Jeanne du Barry.” Hell, by way of pleasure and ambition, this slight-but-winsome dramedy offers a step-up from recent vintages; by way of international resonance, however, this latest opener seems unlikely for a world tour.

Taking a sturdy, mainstream premise — a big-city careerist reflecting on her life path during a trip back to the holler, in a setup that faintly echoes “Sweet Home Alabama,” among a hundred other rom-coms — and shading it with moral grays, natural light, and a more unvarnished turn from a well-known star,...

The 78th edition of the Cannes Film Festival got off to both a politically charged and Hollywood start on Tuesday evening as Robert De Niro was presented with an honorary Palme d’Or by Leonardo DiCaprio.

An impassioned De Niro used his acceptance speech to address issues he said are facing the artistic community and threatening democracy under the presidency of Donald Trump.

“In my country, we are fighting like hell for the democracy we once took for granted. That affects all of us here because the arts are democratic. Art is inclusive, it brings people together. Art embraces diversity and that’s why art is a threat, that’s why we are a threat to autocrats and fascists,” he said.

“America’s philistine president has had himself appointed head of one of our premier cultural institutions,” he continued. “He has cut funding and support to the arts, humanities and education.

The Cannes Film Festival kicked off its 78th edition with the Opening Ceremony and the world premiere of Amélie Bonnin’s debut feature, Partir Un Jour (Leave One Day), led by Juliette Armanet, Bastien Bouillon, and François Rollin.

The premiere was attended by the cast of the film, including Quentin Tarantino, Rossy De Palma, Julia Garner, Nava Mau, Zahra Amir Ebrahimi, and Leonardo DiCaprio, who presented the honorary Palme d’Or to Robert De Niro.

Leave One Day follows Cécile, a budding restaurateur whose ambition to open a gourmet haven in Paris takes an unexpected detour. A family crisis compels her return to her rural roots, where, amidst the echoes of her youth, she reconnects with a long-lost love.

Related: ‘Leave One Day’ Review: Amélie Bonnin’s Nostalgic Musical Debut Is A Stealth Charmer – Cannes Film Festival

The festival formally kicked off on Monday with the poster installation, then moved to the Hotel Martinez,...

This evening’s opening night gala in Cannes was briefly interrupted when festival staffers staged a labor protest next to the red carpet.

Around a dozen Cannes staffers, covertly stationed next to the red carpet, blew whistles and held red Sous Les Écrans La Dèche placards as the Cannes jury led by Juliette Binoche made their way into the opening night gala.

The protest was almost immediately shut off by armed police. We captured footage of the brief demonstration, which you can view below. However, Deadline’s journalist was barred from filming the demonstration by a festival official. The official told us on the ground, “Sometimes you’re allowed to film but sometimes not.”

Festival workers protest during the #Cannes2025 opening ceremony.

Advocacy group Sous Les Écrans La Dèche are launching a fresh call to action over what they describe as precarious and unfair working conditions pic.twitter.com/PUscAmrIPO...

Re-elected for a second mandate earlier this year, Cannes Film Festival President Iris Knobloch is kicking off the 78th edition in high spirits. Her arrival at the helm of the festival two years ago has coincided with Cannes’ renaissance and closer-than-even bonds with Hollywood. Curated by longtime artistic director and general delegate Thierry Fremaux, last year’s selection premiered a record number of Oscar nominations with movies such as Sean Baker’s “Anora,” which made history by winning four major statuettes including best picture and best director; as well as Coralie Fargeat’s “The Substance,” Jacques Audiard’s “Emilia Perez” and Gints Zilbalodis’s “Flow.” A year prior, Cannes was also behind two best picture nominees, Justine Triet’s “Anatomy of a Fall” and Jonathan Glazer’s “The Zone of Interest.” In an interview with Variety on the eve of the festival’s kick off, the hands-on Knobloch, who previously headed Warner Bros. in Europe,...

Exclusive: Cannes Film Festival organizers have urged all staffers to remain politically neutral while on the job in a series of guidelines sent out ahead of this evening’s opening-night gala.

The instructions, which were sent to all staff members working on this year’s event and have been reviewed by Deadline, list guidelines on social media use and dealing with the press alongside instructions on steering clear of political discussions. News of the updated guidelines comes as we learn a selection of Cannes staffers aim again to mount demonstrations during this year’s event, including at the opening ceremony, to raise awareness of their working conditions.

“Maintain a certain political neutrality in your exchanges with festival-goers,” reads the instructions sent in the pre-festival letter from organizers. We understand the specific note on politics is a new addition to advice traditionally shared with festival staffers.

Multiple Cannes staffers we spoke...

Just hours before the Cannes Film Festival opening gala, jury member Halle Berry revealed she had to swap her planned gown after organizers unveiled strict guidelines banning nudity and oversized trains on the red carpet. Speaking at the Palais des Festivals press conference on May 12, Berry said her custom Gupta dress featured a train deemed too large. “I’m not going to break the rules,” she said, adding that the ban on nudity “is probably a good rule.”

Cannes officials issued a statement explaining the measures align with the festival’s charter and French law. Attire that risks blocking other guests’ passage or complicating seating in screening rooms may be refused entry. Festival programmers say the guidelines formalize long-standing practices rather than introduce new mandates.

Berry sits alongside jury president Juliette Binoche and peers Jeremy Strong, Payal Kapadia, Hong Sangsoo, Alba Rohrwacher, Leïla Slimani, Dieudo Hamadi and Carlos Reygadas. The...

Juliette Binoche said Gerard Depardieu is “no longer sacred”, following the French actor’s conviction for sexual assault earlier today.

Speaking at the Cannes Competition jury press conference, Binoche fielded multiple questions about Depardieu.

“For me, what is sacred is when something happens, when you create, when you act, when you are on stage,” said Binoche. “We have no grasp of the sacred; and now he is no longer sacred. That means you need to think hard about the power wielded by certain people who take that power; and the power may lie elsewhere.”

Depardieu was handed a suspended 18-month prison sentence,...

Halle Berry, Jeremy Strong, and Cannes jury president Juliette Binoche were immediately pressed on all things Trump at the festival’s first press conference on Tuesday.

They were joined by Alba Rohrwacher, auteur directors Hong Sangsoo, Payal Kapadia, and Carlos Reygadas, French Moroccan writer Leïla Slimani, and Congolese documentarist Dieudo Hamadi.

Of course, the conversation swiftly moved to the looming shadow of President Donald Trump whose spate of tariffs has upended the global economy. He has, in recent days, turned his attention to Hollywood: a 100 percent movie tariff on international films putting the fear of god into every producer flocking to the Croisette.

“I’m not sure I’m capable to answer that because it requires an analysis of the industry and cinema in the world,” Binoche said when asked how the proposed tariffs threaten the international film industry. “I understand President Trump is trying to protect… he was trying to protect his country,...

A group of more than 350 international actors, directors and producers have signed a letter published on the first day of Cannes condemning the killing of Fatma Hassona, the Palestinian photojournalist and protagonist of the festival-bound documentary “Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk,” in an Israeli airstrike.

The letter, signed by names such as Mark Ruffalo, Guy Pearce, Ralph Fiennes, Melissa Barrera, Yorgos Lanthimos, Javier Bardem, Hannah Einbinder, Pedro Almodóvar, David Cronenberg, Alfonso Cuarón, Mike Leigh, Alex Gibney, Viggo Mortensen, Cynthia Nixon, Tessa Ross and many more, also called out the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences’ for its “lack of support” for “No Other Land” co-director Hamdan Ballal.

Just three weeks after winning the Oscar for the documentary, Ballal was assaulted by settlers and kidnapped by the Israeli army. After being criticized for its silence over the incident, AMPAS eventually publicly apologized. “We are ashamed of such passivity,...

Leonardo DiCaprio will present Robert De Niro with the honorary Palme d’Or for lifetime achievement at the Cannes Film Festival’s opening ceremony on Tuesday evening, Variety has confirmed.

DiCaprio and De Niro first starred together in the 1993 film “This Boy’s Life,” and reunited for “Killers of the Flower Moon,” which screened in official selection in Cannes in 2023.

De Niro will also participate in a masterclass on Wednesday at the Debussy theater in the Palais. “The Raging Bull” and “Godfather Part II” Oscar winner is a Cannes veteran and presided over the Cannes jury in 2011, the year the Palme d’Or went to Terrence Malick’s “The Tree of Life.”

When the honor was first announced, De Niro said in a statement, “I have such close feelings for Festival de Cannes…Especially now when there’s so much in the world pulling us apart, Cannes brings us together — storytellers,...

Filmmaker Amélie Bonnin wanted her feature debut to carry a personal imprint.

The auteur behind this year’s Cannes Film Festival opener “Leave One Day” had already field-tested the concept of a modern jukebox musical with her César-winning short “Bye Bye,” but once she got to work expanding the premise — and looking for new tracks — she began to question her very focus.

“I had originally chosen a male lead more out of habit than intention,” Bonnin explains. “Once I realized that, I knew I wanted to take a different path. I wanted to bring a specific perspective — that of a forty-year-old woman navigating work, questions of motherhood, and desire. I needed to tell this story through my own lens.”

‘Leave One Day’

Bonnin reshaped her musical dramedy around a rising chef, played by French pop star Juliette Armanet, who returns to her rural hometown to confront a family health crisis...

General delegate Thierry Fremaux bristled at the notion that Cannes Film Festival always selects the same filmmakers for its Competition, saying that “it’s really not true.”

At the pre-festival press conference, Fremaux was asked why the Dardenne brothers are in Competition for the ninth time, with their film The Young Mother’s Home.

“This question hides another one,” said Fremaux, mimicking those who say “‘the Dardenne brothers yet again, it’s always the same people!’”

“If you look at the statistics, it’s not,” said Fremaux, citing the first-time filmmakers in Competition this year, including Ari Aster with Eddington, Carla Simon...

Cannes boss Thierry Fremaux addressed Trump’s proposed tariff of 100% on foreign-produced movies and the resilience of American cinema at his press conference on Monday.

U.S. President Donald Trump threw the film industry into confusion on the eve of the Cannes Film Festival which hosts the world’s biggest market, by proposing a 100% tariff on all movies produced outside of the U.S. Asked to react to this, Fremaux said he’d prefer to hold off on commenting, suggesting that Trump has a habit of changing his mind.

“The American president has, over the last three months, accustomed us to saying one thing and then adding to it, elaborating on it, contradicting it, etc. So, no, I don’t know what to say,” he said.

“The idea that American cinema could be penalized by foreign countries is, I think, an idea that can be discussed, but there is one thing we have noticed,...

Pathé, the storied French film producer and cinema operator founded in 1896, has agreed to sell a 20 percent equity stake to Merit France, the investment vehicle of logistics magnate Rodolphe Saadé’s family. Announced on Monday, the transaction comes as Pathé seeks fresh capital to underwrite a slate of internationally oriented productions and overhaul its European cinema network. Financial terms were not disclosed.

The news arrived just before the opening of the 78th Cannes Film Festival, where Pathé serves as both presenter and exhibitor. The company’s opening-title slot at Cannes is occupied by Leave One Day, directed by Amélie Bonnin, which follows a Parisian chef who returns to her rural hometown after her father suffers a heart attack. Pathé also backed Martin Bourboulon’s Kabul-set drama 13 Days And 13 Nights, a late addition to the Official Selection announced last week.

Chairman Jérôme Seydoux highlighted the deal’s timing. “This partnership...

French film producer and cinema operator Pathé has sold a 20 percent stake as part of a “strategic partnership” with Merit France, the holding company of the family of French-Lebanese logistics magnate Rodolphe Saadé.

Financial details of the deal, unveiled on Monday, weren’t disclosed.

“Amid a rapidly evolving macroeconomic and industrial landscape rich with opportunity, this transaction is aimed at equipping Pathé with the resources needed to accelerate its growth — particularly in the production of internationally-oriented films and series, as well as the modernization of its cinema network to offer customers a premium, innovative experience unmatched in Europe,” the company said. “This long-term partnership enables Rodolphe Saadé and his family to continue diversifying their assets into the cultural sector.”

The Monday news of the deal came a day before the 78th edition of the Cannes Film Festival opens with Pathé’s Amélie Bonnin-directed movie Leave One Day, starring Juliette Armanet,...

After plotting an IPO that didn’t happen, Jérôme Seydoux’s venerable French studio Pathé is welcoming a new shareholder, Rodolphe Saadé, a French-Lebanese shipping billionaire who’s taken a 20% stake in the company through his family holding, Merit France.

Saadé also runs CMA Cgm, the world’s third-largest container shipping company, which also recently nabbed 10% of France’s second-biggest commercial network M6, and the daily newspaper La Provence, as well as the news channel Bfm and radio station Rmc; it has invested in Brut, the influential digital media publisher which became one of the main partners for the Cannes Film Festival in 2022.

Pathé just had a banner year with “The Count of Monte Cristo,” which was 2024’s second-biggest box office hit in France, and is at Cannes with the opening night movie, “Leaving One Day,” Amelie Bonnin’s feature debut, as well as Martin Bourboulon’s thriller “13 Days, 13 Nights,...

A few days before the start of the Cannes Film Festival, Variety gathered top French producers, distributors and talent, including Dominik Moll, Elodie Bouchez, Justine Triet and Coralie Fargeat at an intimate dinner hosted at the glamorous landmark restaurant Laperouse.

Bouchez, who recently starred in “Beating Hearts,” will be presenting two films at Cannes’ Directors Fortnight, “Enzo,” directed by Robin Campillo and late filmmaker Laurent Cantet, as well as “Classe Moyenne” by Anthony Cordier. The actor was sitting besides Oscar-nominated producer Marie Ange Luciani (“Anatomy of a Fall”) who produced “Enzo” as well as Laura Wandel’s “Adam’s Sake” which will open Critics’ Week; and Alexandra Henochsberg, president of Ad Vitam, which will distribute seven films from the Official Selection in France, including “The Secret Agent” by Kleber Mendonça Filho; “Romeria” by Carla Simón; “La Petite Dernière” by Hafsia Herzi; “Vie Privée,” starring Jodie Foster and directed by Rebecca Zlotowski; and “Enzo,...