Each year, the a certain look section of the Cannes Film Festival opens a singular window on new forms, emerging or marginal voices, and little explored cinema territories. For this 78th edition of the festival, which will be held from May 13 to 24, 2025, the jury of this section will be responsible for supporting and rewarding the most daring and promising works of an international panorama. Twenty films are in the running this year, including nine first feature films, proof that a certain look remains faithful to its founding ambition: celebrating discovery, experimentation, youth.
To drive this jury, the festival has chosen a filmmaker with a dazzling course, who knows the section intimately for having made his debut there. The director, screenwriter and director of British photography Molly Manning Walker This year will preside the jury A certain lookless than two years after being crowned there for his first feature film How to have sex. Alongside her, four personalities from very varied backgrounds will compose a jury that is both young, plural and committed: the director Franco-Swiss Louise Courvoisierthe Croatian director of the Rotterdam festival Vanja Kaludjercicthe Italian filmmaker Roberto Minerviniand the Argentinian actor Nahuel Pérez Biscayart.
A president whose trajectory was born in Cannes
Molly Manning Walker’s journey seems to have been partly shaped by Cannes. Already in 2020, she presented Good Thanks, you? At the criticism week, a poignant short film on the administrative journey of a victim of sexual violence. Three years later, she reached international recognition with her first feature film How to have sexPrice A certain look In 2023. This disturbing story on consent in adolescence, with a remarkable accuracy, imposes it as an essential voice of British cinema. The same year, she also signed the photograph of Scrape by Charlotte Rejea, another first remarkable film, presented in Sundance and appointed to the Bafta. Alternating between achievement and photo direction, she is currently working on her own television series with A24, and develops a new feature film with Plan B, the Brad Pitt production company.
Back in Cannes as president of the jury A certain lookMolly Manning Walker confides in a press release:
“” It is a great honor to return to Cannes as president of the jury a certain look. This selection will always occupy a special place in my heart. To be part of it really changed my world. I can’t wait to discover these films at the epicenter of the new cinema. Today more than ever, I have the feeling that cinema is essential to bring us together and allow us to feel, connect to each other. To escape, amaze us and get to know us. I can’t wait to make this trip with other members of the jury, because I know that it will be a hell of a adventure to escape in the universes of these filmmakers. »»
Louise Courvoisier, the tender gaze of a first remarkable film
Among the members of the jury, the director Louise Courvoisier represents another recent revelation of A certain look. In 2024, his first feature film Twenty gods seduces the section and wins the youth prize. This bright film, centered on a young love cheese, moved by its tenderness, its humor and its attachment to ordinary characters. Former student of the Fémis, Louise Courvoisier had already distinguished herself in 2019 with her short film Mano a manothe story of an acrobats couple, which earned them the first prize in the cinefinition. Coming from a family universe in which art and earth coexist-“artists-farmers”-it builds a cinema that is both rooted and sensitive, inspired by its immediate environment. She is currently writing her second feature film.
Vanja Kaludjercic, the strategy of a visionary
In the direction of the Rotterdam International Film Festival (IFFR) since 2020, Vanja Kaludjercic plays a crucial role in the redefinition of this emblematic meeting of world author cinema. She strengthened bridges between technological innovation and immersive practices, while retaining a radical editorial line. With an experience of more than twenty years in the sector, she has contributed to several European festivals, notably Sarajevo and the Dutch film festival, and worked in platforms like Mubi and Coproduction Office. His look at cinema combines knowledge of the market, artistic requirement and openness to new narrative forms.
Roberto Minervini, a fiction rooted in reality
Installed for more than twenty years in the United States, Roberto Minervini is an Italian filmmaker whose work blurs the boundaries between documentary and fiction. In 2024, he presented The damned has A certain looka harsh and striking drama on the Civil War, awarded the price of the best achievement (ex-aequo). His cinema, anchored in the American margins, shows invisible stories, often inhabited by injured or resistant figures. The Other Side (2015), What you gonna do when the world’s on fire? (2018), The beating heart (2013) – All shown in Cannes in various sections – testify to this desire to film the shadow, in an aesthetic gesture that is both documentary and poetic. Minervini is currently developing two fiction projects.
Nahuel Pérez Biscayart, the actor of all commitments
It is with the overwhelming role of Sean, activist of Act up-Paris in 120 beats per minute of Robin Campillo, that Nahuel Pérez Biscayart is on the international scene. The film, a Jury Grand Prix in Cannes in 2017, reveals an actor of a rare intensity. The same year, he turned in Goodbye up there Albert Dupontel. Since then, he has been building a career that is both demanding and diversified, between European productions (Persian lessons,, Her father’s daughter,, People next door) and more experimental experiences. He is also very active in the theater, both in Paris and in New York, notably with the Willem Dafoe Wooster Group and under the direction of Ivo Van Hove. In 2024, we find it in El Jockey by Luis Ortega. Committed artist, discreet and deeply inhabited by his roles, he brings to the jury a sensitivity of interpreter turned towards humans.
A section faithful to his mind
In 2024, it was Black dog by Guan Hu who had won the prize A certain lookunder the presidency of Xavier Dolan. This year, the jury will have to decide between twenty films, almost half of which are first feature films. Parity, geographic diversity, formal experimentation or social commitment are among the criteria that regularly return to debates around this selection. It will be interesting to observe how this new jury – made up of young creators and experienced programmers, filmmakers from all continents – will grab the mission to identify what world cinema has most alive, more risky, more unexpected.
A Tunisian opening: Promised the sky Erige Sehiri
The section A certain look This year will open on a long -awaited work this year: Promised the sky of the Tunisian director Erige Sehiri, projected at the opening on Wednesday May 14, 2025. Three years after Under the figspresented to the fifteen filmmakers in 2022, Erige Sehiri returned to Cannes with a new feature film which extends its exploration of the link between generations, agricultural work and emotions suspended in the daily life. It is the first time that a Tunisian film has opened this section, and the presence of Erige Sehiri is part of a broader dynamic of emergence of Arab cinema in Cannes selections. This opening therefore has a strong symbolic significance, while announcing a particularly rich 2025 selection.
Go to the 78th Cannes Film Festival
The list of the section A certain look Will be revealed before the festival’s close, May 23, 2025. In the meantime, it is a journey through the images of the world that awaits jurors, and through their choices, a photograph of the future of cinema which will take shape, once again, on the Croisette.
Neïla Driss
