Re\Center's Most Anticipated Film Debuts at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival

By: Alexis Shoats

Undeniably, one of the most glamorous and prestigious film festivals. Here is a list of our most anticipated releases that debuted at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival. 

Highest to Lowest, directed by Spike Lee 

Starring Denzel Washington, this is the duo’s fifth collaboration. It is also ASAP Rocky’s first time working with both Spike and Denzel. A modern reinterpretation of Akira Kurosawa's crime thriller film High and Low (1963). The film takes place in modern-day New York, and it follows a prominent music mogul’s (Denzel Washington) moral journey as he comes face-to-face with life-or-death decisions.

A Doll Made Up of Clay, directed by Kokob Gebrehaweria Tesfay

The film originally was born out of Tesfay's film exercise for his college, Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute. After spending time with the lead actor, Ahmed, a Nigerian soccer player living in India, he decided to create a part-fictional and part-documentary film about Ahmed’s real-life experiences. Although it is a short film, it is packed with themes that vary from isolation, depression, as well as ancestral rituals, and religion.

Homebound, directed by Neeraj Ghaywan

A story about two best friends who grew up in northern India and were born into a social caste system they are eager to break free from. The two friends decide to join the police force to escape their lives and start anew. The film takes place against the backdrop of a long-term political discussion of discrimination and hierarchy in modern day India. 

My Father’s Shadow, directed by Akinola Davies Jr.

A family saga based on the screenplay by his brother, Wales Davies. The film follows a father and two sons as they travel home during political unrest in Nigeria in 1993. A semi-autobiographical story, “I wanted it to be in service to my family, to our memories, as something that can be a cathartic time capsule for the past, present and future” Davies states in an interview. 

"La Petite Derniere" (The Last One) directed by Hafsia Herzi

Everything about this film feels inherently personal. Based on Fatima Daas’s debut novel. Not only does the author share the name "Fatima" with the protagonist, but the novel serves slightly as an autobiography as well. There are many similarities between the two, and even the lead actress Nadia Melliti. The film follows a seventeen-year-old young girl as she navigates college, sexuality, religious beliefs, and identity.