Skip to content
29 Jan – 8 Feb 2026

Cannes selections for IFFR-backed films and talent

Published on:

A spread of films and talent presented at CineMart and backed by the Hubert Bals Fund are once again a fixture of the Cannes lineup in 2025, telling profound family histories, stories of migrant resilience, Italian cowboys, the ruthless world of J-Pop – and a possessed vacuum cleaner.

Collage of IFFR at Cannes film stills

Alumni of our talent development programmes including Rotterdam Lab are also to be found throughout the selections, working alongside some of the world’s most distinguished filmmakers like those in the official competition, including Kleber Mendonça Filho, Julia Ducournau, Joachim Trier and Kelly Reichardt.

Lacuna by Dutch makers Maartje Wegdam and Nienke Huitenga Broeren has its international premiere in the Cannes Immersive Competition, following its world premiere at IFFR 2025.

HBF+Europe support

Two films, Promised Sky by Erige Sehiri and A Useful Ghost by Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke, were financially backed with €60,000 each through HBF+Europe: Minority Co-production Support. Through the scheme, the Hubert Bals Fund uses support from the Creative Europe – MEDIA programme of the European Union to encourage European producers to participate as a co-producer in film projects by filmmakers from HBF-supported territories. 

Supported films in the Cannes selections

Romería by Carla Simón (CineMart 2021) – Competition

Catalan filmmaker Carla Simón brings her family trilogy to a close with Romería, following on from her Berlinale Golden Bear-winning Alcarràs (2022) and award winning debut Summer 1993 (2019). She once again draws on vivid personal memories to tell a moving story of love, yearning and family anguish, this time through an adolescent lens as the 18 year old orphan Marina travels to meet her parental grandparents in Vigo on Spain’s Galician coast.  

The project was presented at IFFR’s co-production market CineMart in 2021, and was shot by the 2023 recipient of IFFR’s Robby Müller Award, cinematographer Hélène Louvart.

Promised Sky by Erige Sehiri (HBF+Europe 2024) – Un Certain Regard

French-Tunisian filmmaker Erige Sehiri tells a story of sub-Saharan migration to Tunisia in her second feature, Promised Sky. The story focuses on Marie, an Ivorian pastor in Tunisia, whose home becomes a refuge for Naney, a young mother seeking a better future, and Jolie, a strong-willed student, before an orphan girl arrives and tests their solidarity.

Working on the margins of fiction and documentary, the film follows on from her intimate portrait of youth, labour and fleeting moments of connection Under the Fig Trees, which premiered in Quinzaine des cinéastes in 2022. 

The project was supported by the HBF+Europe: Minority Co-production Support scheme in 2024, where it received €60,000 of production financing. 

Testa o croce? by Alessio Rigo de Righi & Matteo Zoppis (CineMart 2023) – Un Certain Regard

Italian-American filmmaker duo Alessio Rigo de Righi and Matteo Zoppis continue their investigation into the legends and myths of Italian folklore with the surrealist Italy-set Western Testa o croce? (Heads or Tails?). 

The name derives from a bet between Buffalo Bill’s American cowboys (who visited Italy with his Wild West Show in 1890) and Italian cowboys over which team was better at taming wild horses. The film follows two young lovers on the run, played by rising French star Nadia Tereszkiewicz (Red Island, The Crime is Mine) and Italy’s Alessandro Borghi (The Eight Mountains, Supersex), joined on the cast by John C. Reilly as Buffalo Bill.

The filmmakers, who earlier screened their documentary Il Solengo in Bright Future at IFFR 2015, presented the project at CineMart at IFFR 2023, where it took home the Eurimages Co-production Development Award worth €20,000. 

Love on Trial by Koji Fukada (CineMart 2022) – Cannes Premiere

Renowned Japanese filmmaker Koji Fukada has made a number of highly acclaimed features across the last fifteen years dealing with “domestic disequilibrium”, from Harmonium (2016) which won the Un Certain Regard Jury Prize at Cannes 2016; A Girl Missing (2019) in competition at Locarno, The Real Thing (2020) at Cannes and Love Life (2022), in competition at Venice. 

Inspired by real cases in Japan, his latest, Love on Trial, follows Mai, a rising J-Pop idol whose big break is threatened when she falls in love, violating the “no love” clause in her contract. The project was presented at CineMart in 2022, where it picked up the IFFR Young Selectors Award. 

A Useful Ghost by Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke (HBF+Europe 2023) – Semaine de la Critique

March is mourning his wife Nat who has recently passed away due to dust pollution. He discovers her spirit has returned by possessing the vacuum cleaner. So begins the premise of Thai filmmaker Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke’s unique, playful, genre-mixing debut A Useful Ghost. Boonbunchachoke’s short Red Aninsri; Or, Tiptoeing on the Still Trembling Berlin Wall won the Junior Jury award at Locarno 2020.

The project was supported by the HBF+Europe: Minority Co-production Support scheme in 2023, where it received €60,000 of production financing. 

Immersive Selection

The immersive media project Lacuna by Dutch makers Maartje Wegdam and Nienke Huitenga Broeren, produced by IFFR-regular Corine Meijers (Studio Biarritz) and Ilja Kok, has its international premiere in the Cannes Immersive Competition, following its world premiere at IFFR 2025. Based on fragments of memories and handed down stories, the project reconstructs 84 year-old Sonja’s early childhood growing up with her aunt and uncle in Paramaribo, Suriname, during WWII.

Immersive still: Lacuna

Another of Meijers’s co-produced projects, Floating with Spirits by Juanita Onzaga, is part of a focus programme on Luxembourg creations after its presentation at IFFR’s Darkroom work-in-progress platform, and world premiere at Venice Immersive 2023.

Hubert Bals Fund alumni in the selections

As well as projects directly supported by IFFR, a range of filmmakers previously supported by the Hubert Bals Fund can be seen across the selections as their careers advance. 

A number present their latest projects to industry in La Fabrique Cinéma, organised by the Institut Français. Brazilian filmmaker Laís Santos Araújo (Marina, HBF 2019 & CineMart 2021), whose first fiction short, Como ficamos da mesma altura premiered at IFFR 2020, presents her project Infantry. 

Cape Verdean filmmaker Nuno Boaventura Miranda (Kmêdeus, HBF 2019), whose most recent short The Last Harvest had its world premiere at IFFR 2025, presents The Flowers of the Dead. Nicaraguan filmmaker Laura Baumeister will present What Follows Is My Death, after her feature debut La hija de todas las rabias screened in Toronto and San Sebastián and her short Ombligo de agua had its world premiere at IFFR 2019. 

Payal Kapadia, whose HBF and CineMart-backed All We Imagine as Light was an IFFR-supported sensation at last year’s Cannes, sits on the competition jury this edition, alongside the Mexican filmmaker and fellow IFFR regular Carlos Reygadas (Japón, HBF 2001, IFFR 2002; Batalla en el cielo, HBF 2005, IFFR 2006; Post tenebras lux, CineMart 2011, IFFR 2013).

Brazilian filmmaker Leonardo Martinelli presents the short Samba infinito in the Semaine de la Critique, on a street cleaner finding a lost child in Rio’s Carnival, featuring an appearance from musician Gilberto Gil. He was supported for his upcoming debut feature Fantasma neon by the HBF in 2023.

Fellow Brazilian and renowned filmmaker Kleber Mendonça Filho (Neighbouring Sounds, HBF 2008, 2011, IFFR 2012) caps off the Hubert Bals Fund alumni at Cannes with his new feature O agente secreto in the official competition, a gripping 70s-set political thriller.  

Film still: O agente secreto by Kleber Mendonça Filho

Rotterdam Lab alumni in the selections

Filho’s competition title O agente Secreto is a Netherlands co-production with Erik Glijnijs of Lemming Film, a producer very familiar to IFFR for his presence in the festival selection (Melk by Stefanie Kolk, IFFR 2024; Met mes by Sam de Jong, IFFR 2022) and at CineMart (The Wolf, The Fox & The Leopard by David Verbeek, CineMart 2020). 

Another Dutch talent with a strong IFFR connection we’re delighted to highlight is Marleen Slot of Viking Film (Dirty God by Sacha Polak, IFFR 2019; HBF-supported Neon Bull and O último azul by Gabriel Mascaro), producer of Sven Bresser’s Dutch title Rietland that screens in the Semaine de la Critique. 

They’re both alumni of our Rotterdam Lab, a launchpad for emerging producers at the start of their careers. Cannes 2025 sees Rotterdam Lab graduates working alongside some of the world’s most distinguished filmmakers like Julia Ducournau, Joachim Trier and Kelly Reichardt in the official competition, filmmakers who have all shown their work at IFFR . See the full list of Rotterdam Lab alumni at Cannes below. 

Competition

Un Certain Regard

Semaine de la Critique

Quinzaine des cinéastes

Supported by

A list with articles