2025 Cannes Report Part 1: Plagues
Afflictions are on the mind: The Plague, Eddington, Sirât, Alpha
I detected four major through-lines in my nine days and sixteen movies at the Cannes Film Festival: plagues, politics, the personal, and the past.
The films I saw have much more nuance than can be described in just a word, but for the sake of helping you understand what these movies represented, this is the systemized classification I've come up with.
Over the next four days, I’ll present these films and my quick thoughts on them—and how they relate to their theme
So, without further ado, let’s kick off this four-part series. Let me take you on the ground to Cannes and tell you about some movies.
In this edition: The Plague, Eddington, Sirât, Alpha
Plagues
It makes sense that movies premiering at Cannes 2025 are reflecting COVID. If you think about it, the life cycle of a movie—from idea to script to production to post-production—is about four years. So the movies premiering this year are definitely reflecting their creators being locked up, pent up, frustrated, and motivated by COVID and what it symbolizes.
One of the earlier films I saw was Charlie Polinger's really impressive debut, The Plague. Set in 2003, it’s as if David Cronenberg directed Lord of the Flies. It's about boys at a water polo camp and an urban legend of a plague that affects one weirdo adolescent, ostracizing him from the others.
Our lead character both doesn’t want the plague and is also somewhat disbelieving of it. This has some comedic and horror elements. It's confidently directed with amazing child performances. I watched it seated next to Charli XCX. I didn't get the chance to ask her at the end what she thought of it, but I saw on Letterboxd she gave it a five. I'll definitely be looking out for Polinger and what he does next after this impressive debut.
Maybe no movie was more emblematic of the pandemic than Eddington, which makes no bones about being set directly in one of the most torrid, hot-button moments during COVID: May 2020, amidst the George Floyd protests and mask mandates. Watching the film, I sensed it’d be divisive, but I didn't know just how absolutely split audiences would be on it.
I found it entertaining as hell. I thought it was darkly funny and action-packed. Joaquin Phoenix was great, as was Pedro Pascal. It kind of reminded me of The Curse or Fargo in the sense that it's really holding up a mirror to American stupidity and ego. And to those saying that it's not about anything or that it’s failing to access a deeper layer of meaning—I would refute that and say that it's about something for sure: our collective hypocrisy and our algorithmically set up echo chambers that have only siloed us more since.
Ari Aster is not necessarily prophetic by setting a movie five years in the past, but every trend he keys in on is accurate and has only gotten worse since. Add in that this is a ripping good time neo-Western, and I walked away, to my surprise, loving Eddington.
There is a plague of a sort in Sirât, Oliver Laxe's new film, which emerged from the festival as really the critical darling for just how unique it was and unlike any other cinematic experience. The film follows a father and his son looking for one of their missing family members, who may have gotten lost in the rave scene in the Moroccan desert.
This is like a bleaker, more existential Mad Max or Sorcerer, as these two Spaniards traverse the Sahara with oddball ravers set against the hint of a potential World War III raging on in the background. This film is sweaty, angry, sad, and ambiguous.
As for the plague, there’s an attempt by the characters to escape into parts unknown. How unknown, though, when on the face of it, this is just white people partying on North African land. But no matter how much one thinks they can disappear into the beat and the drugs, there’s a certain dread that’s impossible to outrun. Sirât is not for the faint of heart, but it's an entirely worthwhile, unforgettable experience.
Much more forgettable is Alpha, Julia Ducournau's follow-up to the Palme d'Or–winning Titane. I swear I went into this with an open mind. I saw the bad reviews, but I also heard from some really reputable critic friends that there was a lot of merit in the movie.
And while I will say that Alpha is delivered very passionately and with feeling, it is a mess. It looks extremely ugly. Its message gets muddled. It is daringly unsatisfying and unentertaining as it starts as a sort of sci-fi AIDS parable but then shifts into an exhausting family drama. I really wanted to find the goodness in this, knowing Ducournau is such a talented director, but I thought this was such a strange misfire.
Tomorrow, POLITICS, because this Cannes, like all Cannes, was very political