Here Are All the Cannes 2016 Movie Trailers

Cafe Society (dir. Woody Allen)

Woody Allen's latest, starring Kristen Stewart, Jesse Eisenberg, Parker Posey, Blake Lively, Corey Stoll, and Steve Carell, will open the 2016 Cannes Film Festival. It's about time Eisenberg starred in an Allen movie; he's often embodied characters whose neurotic tendencies give Allen's a run for their money. In Cafe Society, Eisenberg plays a young man from Brooklyn who moves to Tinseltown under the tutelage of his uncle, a legendary agent (Carell). True to form, the film looks to be chock-full of snarky banter, unrequited love (for a glamorous Stewart), and tension between the pursuit of an intellectual and hedonistic life. A character in the trailer quotes Socrates: "The unexamined life is not worth living, but the examined one is no bargain." Amazon Studios will release Cafe Society in late 2016. 

Julieta (dir. Pedro Almodóvar)

"Always remember that when a man goes out of the room, he leaves everything in it behind," the Nobel Prize-winning author Alice Munro wrote. "When a woman goes out, she carries everything that happened in the room along with her." Nobody loves strong, complex women more than Munro—except, perhaps, Pedro Almodóvar. The Spanish director adapted three Munro short stories for his twentieth feature, Julieta, which chronicles the strained relationship between a mother and daughter. As family secrets come to the fore, the pair realize they are, in many ways, strangers to each other. Sony Pictures Classics will release the film in the U.S.

Neon Demon (dir. Nicolas Winding Refn)

Not only does Nicolas Winding Refn have the name of an auteur, but he now holds the highest prize in auteurism: Neon Demon will be his third consecutive Cannes premiere. The film stars Elle Fanning as an aspiring model whose angelic appearance belies her raving ambition to rise to the top of a cutthroat industry. Refn's signature style—flashy visuals with a barrage of colors, blood, and sex—is on full display in Neon Demon, which looks to be every bit as extravagant as Refn fans had hoped. Amazon Studios will release the film in the U.S. on June 24.

The BFG (dir. Steven Spielberg)

Fans of Roald Dahl are finally getting their adaptation of his arguably most famous story, The BFG, from none other than Disney and Steven Spielberg, and the film is just as big and mighty as that pair might suggest. 

Slack Bay (dir. Bruno Dumont)

2015's deadpan comedy L’il Quinquin was a significant change of tone for Bruno Dumont, who had previously carved out a niche for himself in the austere European art house arena. It seems the new leaf is still turned over. Slack Bay, every bit as absurdist and comedic its predecessor, is the turn-of-the-century story of an inbred family with cannibalistic tendencies. Kino Lorber picked up the film sight unseen just a few weeks ago, so audiences can likely expect the film stateside in the coming year.

Captain Fantastic (dir. Matt Ross)

Viggo Mortensen stars as a rugged father who is raising his horde of children entirely off the grid. But when a family tragedy forces him to take his kids into the real world, their self-sustained utopia of rigorous physical and intellectual education may not hold up. The heartfelt Captain Fantastic premiered at Sundance and will screen in the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes. 

Apprentice (dir. Boo Junfeng)

Singaporean filmmaker Boo Junfeng was at Cannes in 2010 with Sandcastle. This year, he's back with a haunting drama about a young correctional officer and a prison chief, aptly dubbed "the executioner." Judging from the trailer, the apprentice is quite a complex character; he must reconcile his destructive nature with the demands of his conscience in the prison environment.  

Elle (dir. Paul Verhoeven)

Paul Verhoeven is back at Cannes for the first time since 1992, and his new film reverberates with the psychological thriller elements of Basic Instinct. Isabelle Huppert stars as a super-powered video game CEO who is raped by an unknown assailant alone in her home. She decides to track down that man and give him a taste of his own medicine, instigating a game of cat and mouse that surely can't end well for both of them.

After the Storm (dir. Hirokazu Kore-eda)

Hirozaku Kore-eda films—including Our Little Sister, which screened at Cannes last year — revel in the intimate details of the contemporary family. After the Storm concerns a father mourning the prime of his life; when he reconnects with his estranged son, both father and son revitalize.

Ma'Rosa (dir. Brillante Mendoza)

Brillante Mendoza won Best Director at Cannes in 2009 for his Kinatay, but despite the fact that he's a Cannes regular, next to nothing was known about Ma'Rosa until this trailer dropped just last week. Even the trailer itself is sparse, but here's the core of the story: a mother of four living in the slums of Manila sells narcotics to make ends meet. But when the police arrest them, the children are saddled with their parents' debt. Mendoza is known for his uncompromising rigor, famously alienating Roger Ebert, who wrote of Kinatay: "Here is a film that forces me to apologize to Vincent Gallo for calling The Brown Bunny the worst film in the history of the Cannes Film Festival."

Money Monster (dir. Jodie Foster)

Jodie Foster is back in the director's chair with a pulse-pounding thriller sure to strike fear in the hearts of contemporary Americans. When a Wall Street guru (George Clooney) who picks stocks on TV is held at gunpoint by a disgruntled investor, the control room (headed by Julia Roberts) is tasked with disarming the man using only an earpiece to communicate with the hostage.