Spaniards Carla Simón with Pilgrimage and Oliver Laxe with Syrup They will compete in the Official Section for the Cannes Film Festival, which is held from May 13 to 24. The Catalan director and the Galician will be the first Spaniards to participate in the main contest of the Festival since 2022, when it was presented Pacifiction From Albert Serra. In the official section, presented this Thursday at a press conference conducted by the director of the Thierry Frémaux festival, they will face filmmakers like Wes Anderson (The Phoenician plot), Kelly Reichardt (The Mastermind), Ari Aster (Eddingtonwith Joaquin Phoenix and Emma Stone) and Joachim Trier (Sentimental Value).
Oliver Laxe (which this Friday turns 43) is a veteran of the Cannes Festival. With his first feature film, the essay All of you are captains, He participated in the fortnight of filmmakers and won the Fipresci award. With the second, Mimosasin 2016 became the third Spaniard to take the Grand Prix of Critics’ Week. And with What burns He won the jury award of the section a certain look. In 2025, he has to graduate and jump to the official section of the prestigious French festival with his fourth film, Syrupwhich stars Sergi López.
Con PilgrimageCarla Simón closes her trilogy about the family after Summer 1993 y Alcar willS (with which he won the gold bear in Berlin), and deepens again in AIDS in the eighties. In it, its protagonist, Marina, travels to Vigo to meet the family of her biological father, who died of AIDS, like her mother, when she was very small. Through his family, he will try to build a story about his history.
Syrup Follow a man (López) and his son (Bruno Núñez, The Messiah) that they reach a rave Lost amid the arid and ghostic mountains of southern Morocco looking for his daughter Marina, missing months ago. As usual in Laxe’s cinema, they will be accompanied by a collection of non -professional actors. “Together they will be the vehicle to stage the seizures that affect the world of our time, a time that is asking us to look inside us,” the director explained at the beginning of the filming.
Laxe’s film that will fight for the golden palm that last year won the Aor of Sean Baker (here began the race that led him to the Oscar and whose success, such as Emilia Pérezthe organizers have highlighted) has among its producers El Deseo and Movistar Plus+.
The 78th edition of the Cannes Festival will also deliver the golden palm of honor to actor Robert de Nir Impossible mission: final sentenceannounced as the eighth and last installment of the franchise starring Tom Cruise as the Ethan Hunt spy.
There may still be more Spanish participation in the French festival, because it will not be until next week when the participants of the fortnight of filmmakers (which Jonás Trueba won with Trueba with You will return) and of the Week of Critics, which is carried out in parallel and whose jury will preside over the Spanish director Rodrigo Sorogoyen, since he was called to occupy in 2024, but from which he retired for family reasons.
For the person in charge of The beastswhich was in 2023 at the Festival out of the competition, this contest is “a unique springboard to launch and reinforce the careers of young directors”, since only short films and first or second feature films can participate: “Without these spaces, we would continue to reward, project and give voice only to those who have already established their paths, ignoring the concerns and emerging forms,” said the filmmaker who has rolled together with Javier Bardem and Victoria Luengo his new movie, The loved one. French actress Juliette Binoche will be, on the other hand, the president of the jury.