Cannes 2018: Our predictions for the official lineup

Back in early 2018 the Cannes Film Festival still felt like a wide-open guessing game. The official lineup would not drop until April 12, yet industry chatter already pointed to ten titles racing through post-production with a plausible shot at the Palais. Film Daily compiled its own wish list of films that looked ready and felt right for the Croisette, from Nicole Kidman crime dramas to Gaspar Noé dance-floor nightmares. The speculation was pure fun at the time, but history now supplies the real score.

Destroyer

Director: Karyn Kusama Starring Nicole Kidman (Big Little Lies) & Sebastian Stan (The Covenant), Karyn Kusama’s highly-anticipated crime drama follows a police detective as she reconnects with people from an undercover assignment to try and make peace. Kidman & Kusama working together is a scintillating prospect and one we can’t wait to see, particularly as this is Kusama’s first feature since the 2015 taut thriller The Invitation. The film ultimately bypassed Cannes and reached theaters in late 2018, where Kidman’s bruised performance earned strong notices even without the festival spotlight.

The Beach Bum

Director: Harmony Korine With a cast boasting such diverse wonders as Matthew McConaughey (Dallas Buyers Club), Snoop Dogg (Training Day), Zac Efron (The Disaster Artist), Jonah Hill (The Wolf of Wall Street), and Martin Lawrence (Bad Boys), The Beach Bum sounds a little Harmony-Korine-by-numbers. However, that’s not to say we aren’t interested, particularly as McConnaughey plays a “rebellious stoner” called Moondog – a comically seductive prospect currently filling our hearts with eternal glee. The stoner odyssey skipped the 2018 festival circuit and finally hit theaters in 2019.

Fuga

Director: Agnieszka Smoczynska The Polish director had one of the strangest releases of 2016 with her cabaret-mermaid-horror joint, The Lure. Her latest film centers on a woman who loses her memory and subsequently struggles with being a mom and a wife. Overall, it could give Smoczynska an opportunity to showcase her singular voice at the festival. Fuga premiered in Cannes Critics’ Week on May 15, 2018, giving the director the sidebar debut she had hoped for before wider European release.

Non Fiction

Director: Olivier Assayas Currently in post production, we’d be very surprised if Cannes favorite Olivier Assayas (Personal Shopper) didn’t premiere his new movie at this year’s festival. The director will be reuniting with Clouds of Sils Maria actor Juliette Binoche for Non Fiction, which focuses on a mid-life crisis set within the ever-changing Parisian publishing industry. The film opened elsewhere in 2018 without a Cannes berth, though Assayas’s usual critical support kept it visible on the awards-season circuit.

High Life

Director: Claire Denis Binoche also stars in High Life – the latest from Cannes regular Claire Denis (Nenette and Boni). As an ambitious sci-fi movie following a father & daughter’s struggle to survive deep space, with a cast including Robert Pattinson (Good Time), Mia Goth (A Cure for Wellness), and Outkast’s André Benjamin, High Life could make for an exciting, high-profile spectacle at the festival. The picture premiered at Toronto in September 2018 and rolled out theatrically the following year.

Hold the Dark

Director: Jeremy Saulnier Netflix was notoriously a point of repeated controversy at Cannes in 2017, with festival organizers suggesting only movies intended for French theatrical release would be part of future programs. However, it remains to be seen whether any of that will change, or if Netflix will find a way around the issue in order to premiere Jeremy Saulnier’s new thriller. Starring Alexander Skarsgård (Mute) in a story about a writer tasked with locating a missing child in the Alaskan wilderness, Hold the Dark will be Saulnier’s first movie since his critically-acclaimed neo-nazi thriller Green Room. The film bypassed Cannes entirely and debuted on Netflix in September 2018.

The Nightingale

Director: Jennifer Kent Ever since The Babadook stunned audiences in 2014, the world has been eagerly awaiting Jennifer Kent’s next cinematic feat. The Nightingale – an 1820s-set story of revenge wherein an Irish woman enlists an Aboriginal tracker to help find the people who murdered her family – sounds far less genre-based than her debut, but potentially just as tense & horrifying. The film found its world premiere at Venice in 2018 before a limited theatrical run the next year.

Psyché

Director: Gaspar Noé The controversial director’s fifth movie is set in the 90s and centers on a group of partygoers who get mysteriously drugged and “plunge into hell”. Whether he’s reviling or wowing audiences at Cannes, Gaspar Noé (Irreversible) is still a seasoned regular at the festival and it would make sense for his latest movie (which sounds as provocative and fantastic as you could hope) to premiere at the fest this year. The project surfaced as Climax and premiered in the Midnight slot on May 13, 2018, giving Noé the Cannes slot he had long enjoyed.

The Sisters Brothers

Director: Jacques Audiard Jake Gyllenhaal (Donnie Darko) plays a sibling on the run from Joaquin Phoenix (You Were Never Really Here) & John C. Reilly (Boogie Nights), both of whom are baiting for his blood in Jacques Audiard’s ruthless Western. If that synopsis doesn’t have you automatically vying for this film to premiere at Cannes, we don’t know what will. The film instead opened the Venice Film Festival in 2018 and reached wider audiences later that fall.

Under the Silver Lake

Director: David Robert Mitchell David Robert Mitchell’s eerie follow up to his indie-horror hit It Follows centers around the strange circumstances of a billionaire's murder and a missing person investigation. Considering what a stellar, obscure smash hit his last movie was, we can’t wait for the release of Under the Silver Lake. The movie landed in Un Certain Regard rather than the main competition and screened at Cannes in May 2018 before its wider release.

What Actually Screened at Cannes 2018

The official selection arrived on April 12 with Asghar Farhadi’s Everybody Knows as the opener. Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Shoplifters claimed the Palme d’Or, while competition titles also included Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman, Pawel Pawlikowski’s Cold War, and Kirill Serebrennikov’s Leto. None of the ten films tracked here appeared in that main slate.

The Netflix Controversy and Its Aftermath

After 2017 organizers signaled they preferred theatrical releases, 2018 reflected that stance. Streaming titles stayed largely outside competition, and the policy shift shaped how distributors positioned their premieres for the next several years.

Later Festival Successes of the Predicted Films

The Sisters Brothers opened Venice, Fuga played Critics’ Week, and Climax hit the Midnight section. Most of the remaining titles found standard theatrical or platform releases throughout 2018 and 2019, proving the slate still reached audiences even without a Cannes main-stage debut.

How Accurate Were 2018 Pre-Festival Predictions?

Zero of the ten predicted titles entered the official competition. Two appeared in sidebars, and the rest followed alternate festival or release paths. The exercise remains a reminder that Cannes forecasting is more art than science, especially when post-production schedules and programming politics shift at the last minute.