Cannes 2025: What is the common point between Kristen Stewart, Scarlett Johansson and Raphaël Quenard?

Each year, the Cannes Film Festival highlights authors, and shines its spotlight on actors and actresses. Who are sometimes a single person, as this 78th edition has still proven. Because no less than six feature films, divided between the official selection (competition and a certain look), Cannes Classics and the fifteen of filmmakers, were staged by actors.

It was even, for the majority of them, their first respective feature films. Small review of these films which made the event for more than one reason at the time of their presentation, while waiting for you to discover them in theaters.

Kristen Stewart – The Chronology of Water

This first feature film, Kristen Stewart has been thinking about it for many years. Since she knew, by discovering them, that the Memoirs of Lidia Yuknavitch were intended for her. Officially announced in 2022, the project will have taken a long time to see the light of day, but it was in Cannes, in the Un Certain Regard category, that it turned out.

Carried by Imogen Poots, The Chronology of Water competes for the Golden Camera (given to the best first work, all sections combined) and is like her director: raw, unpredictable, intense, raw, free … A real cinema experience, not always very comfortable, which tells the life of her heroine with a very strong way to represent memory and traumatism. Plus beginnings and a film, without release date for the moment, validated by the Cannes audience that he had discovered it at 10:30 p.m.

Raphaël Quenard – I Love Peru

It is the most dazzling ascent of French cinema: with around thirty roles in five years, Raphaël Quenard has become an unavoidable and popular player with the public. Present at the Cannes Film Festival in the Cannes Classics section, the actor Cesarized engages in the documentary I Love Peru, whom he produced with his acolyte Hugo David, met on the set of the dog's dog-of breakage. Raphaël Quenard tells of it his race for success and his internal questions with the Bagou that we know him before embarking on a spiritual quest that brings him to Peru in search of a condor.

Hafsia Herzi – The Little Last

Unlike most of the actors cited in this article, Hafsia Herzi is a veteran from the top of her three achievements. And of this participation in the competition offered to him with the youngest, after passages by the week of criticism (you deserve a love) and a certain look (good mother). A logical progression for an actress, rewarded at the César in 2025 for Borgo, who continues to confirm her filmmaker's talents.

Inspired by the Homonym and Autobiographical Book of Fatima Daas, the feature was said to be one of the best in this competition, for the correctness and the sensitivity with which he tells the story of emancipation of his heroine, torn between his faith and his desires. More than a film on homosexuality or religion, a universal account that reveals between Nadia Melliti a raw talent to follow.

Harris Dickinson – Urchin

Three years after the Ruben Öslund golden palm, in which he held one of the main roles, Harris Dickinson (Babygirl, The Iron Claw) returned to Cannes to present his first film as a director in the Un Certain Regard section. Entitled Urchin, the feature follows the fate of a young London homeless (Frank Dillane) and his fight to resume his life in hand. The new filmmaker questions the empathy of a society through this story of heroes on the fringes with real identity.

Scarlett Johansson – Eleanor the Great

Actress since the age of her 10 years, Scarlett Johansson is one of the most famous actresses in American cinema. Inevitably, his passage behind the camera represents an event on the Croisette. With Eleanor The Great, presented in the Un certain Regard section, the director tells of the fate of a 94-year-old grandmother (June Squibb) who invents a past of the Holocaust survivor. A lie so huge that it will not remain without consequences. Scarlett Johansson succeeds in his transition with a funny, touching and human dramatic comedy. All the ingredients are present to imagine a little success.

Thomas Ngijol – Indomitable

Fourth feature film behind the camera for Thomas Ngijol. After Case Departure (co -breaded with Fabrice Eboué and Lionel Steketee), Fastlife and Black Snake (co -breaded with Karole Rocher), he returns with a police film entitled Indomitables and which will be released very soon in our cinemas, June 11, 2025, after a Cannes passage with emotion.

Presented to the fifteen filmmakers, Indomitables follows Commissioner Billon who investigates the murder of a police officer, in Yaoundé. In the street as in his family, he struggles to maintain order. Man of principle and tradition, he approaches the point of rupture. The film mixes genres, between thriller and comedy. Its history is the adapting of a documentary entitled a crime to Abidjan which was particularly close to heart to its director and main actor.