Memo to Distributors: Buy These 2024 Cannes Movies

Ryan Lattanzio and David Ehrlich

28 May 2024 at 2:00 pm·1-min read

The big winners out of the 2024 Cannes Film Festival suggest bright times ahead for indie and international moviegoing. Sean Baker’s “Anora” winning the Palme was a kind of apotheosis for the self-made indie filmmaker. And Neon already has the movie for U.S. distribution — the company’s fifth Palme d’Or winner in a row. Meanwhile, other Cannes winners like “Emilia Pérez” (Netflix), “All We Imagine as Light” (Sideshow/Janus), and “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” (Neon) have homes awaiting them on the other side of their journeys out of Cannes and into the world.

But in a compressed time for film sales across fiction and nonfiction titles, that means plenty of movies that premiered at Cannes are still searching for a home. And what a world where the latest film from two-time Palme d’Or winner Francis Ford Coppola is among them (“Megalopolis”). Same with David Cronenberg (“The Shrouds”). They will get there, though, while it’s the independents and first- and second-time art movies that may seem too great a risk for buyers. So we’d like to spotlight them.

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Below, we’ve rounded up 14 movies worthy of buyers’ attention at Cannes, from Halfdan Ullmann Tøndel’s buzzy “Armand” to the latest form Jia Zhangke, Karim Aïnouz, and more.

Read IndieWire’s critics survey and our own list of the 15 best movies out of the festival for more options. And see the full running list of acquisitions so far here.

Wilson Chapman, Josh Slater-Williams, Adam Solomons, and Christian Zilko also contributed to this story.

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