Above image: Still, Lovers Rock, 2020 (dir. Steve McQueen)

This year, Cannes Film Festival will be without its glitzy red carpets and exclusive Riviera yacht parties. Stripped of its customary extravagance, the world’s second most prestigious film festival – usually considered a barometer of a film’s success for the first – will be forced back to basics.

In lieu of the usual Oscar front-runners, and with its traditional categories temporarily suspended (no Palme d’Or this year, folks), Cannes’ 2020 selection reveals an exciting look at how the film industry will emerge from this pandemic. Featuring a global and eclectic mix of projects that range from Pixar blockbusters to experimental debuts, this expanded roster of 56 films will demonstrate everything we’ve missed about cinema.

Beyond Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch and Disney’s hotly-anticipated Soul (an animation about a high-school band teacher with an undiscovered talent for jazz) are fifteen films from first-time directors and sixteen by women, up on last year’s fourteen. Competing under the category of ‘Newcomers’ is Ammonite, by upcoming British director Francis Lee (God’s Own Country) with cinematography by Stéphane Fontaine (A Prophet, Jackie). Starring Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan, the film follows the life of 19th-century fossil hunter Mary Anning who made some of the most important discoveries on what’s now known as the Jurassic Coast but never got the kudos she deserved.

Under the ‘First Features’ category comes an exciting debut from everyone’s favourite rugged Scandi: Viggo Mortensen, who will premiere Falling, a film he wrote and directed. Given his endless talent away from acting (Mortensen speaks seven languages, paints, take photographs and has a discography of over twenty records), and the fact he stars alongside David Cronenberg in this story about a conservative patriarch who moves in with his gay son’s LA family, all means we’re very excited for this one.

For the foodies comes a documentary all about the elusive (and insanely valuable) white Alba truffle and the group of men who dedicate their lives to unearthing them. The Truffle Hunters is set in northern Italy, where filmmakers Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw (The Last Race) are given unprecedented access to an esoteric world. They follow white-haired men accompanied by their faithful canines as they hunt exclusively at night so as not to provide clues for competitors. The truffle cannot be grown or cultivated and so these men hold the key to a mystery of nature that is at the centre of a booming global trade involving many of the best restaurants in the world.

Competing under the category of ‘The Faithful’ (filmmakers who have shown at Cannes multiple times), are two new projects from Steve McQueen that are both part of Small Axe, a BBC commissioned anthology of five stories exploring London’s West Indian community from the late-1960’s to mid-1980’s. Mangrove and Lovers Rock are a mix of fact and fiction, the former (starring Letitia Wright) recounts the true story of the Mangrove 9, British black activists tried for inciting a riot in 1970, while the latter tells the fictional story of blossoming love at a blues party in the early 80s. Speaking recently on the projects, McQueen said, “I dedicate these films to George Floyd and all the other black people that have been murdered, seen or unseen, because of who they are, in the US, UK and elsewhere. ‘If you are the big tree, we are the small axe.’ Black Lives Matter.”

Discover the full line-up here.