Cannes 2025 Recap Part One: Hello Brave New Multipolar Film Industry

May 26, 2025

It was an odd Cannes film festival this year. The films were good, but the business was muted and the instability created by US President Donald Trump rattled around the market, much like the mistral winds that led to the unfortunate palm tree incident on the Croisette.

But then we should expect Cannes, as the only truly international event on the film festival circuit, to reflect back at us the creative, political and economic movements that are sweeping the world. We are moving from a unipolar world, one dominated by America’s soft power and economy, to a multipolar world with several competing spheres of influence. In the film industry, as in any other industry, we can expect this to be an exciting but unsettling time.

For Asia’s film industry, this year’s Cannes was also a sad time, first with news that a Japanese producer had been badly injured by the falling palm tree, then to hear that we’d lost a friend, Indonesian producer John Badalu, who passed away in Bali as the festival was drawing to a close. John was a generous supporter of emerging Southeast Asian talent and a tireless advocate for LGBTQ+ and other minority voices. He will be greatly missed.

Middle East Talent Triumphs In Cannes Awards

First a few words on this year’s Cannes Awards. Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi won the Palme d’Or on his first visit to Cannes in more than a decade, following multiple travel bans, with revenge thriller It Was Just An Accident, a film that critics said contains a great deal of heart and humour as well as making its point. Iran is unlikely to submit the film as its entry for Best International Feature at next year’s Oscars, but it may be entered in other categories as Neon has acquired the film – marking the US distributor’s sixth Palme d’Or acquisition in a row.

It was a good year overall for talent from the Middle East. Hasan Hadi’s The President’s Cake, set in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, won both the Camera d’Or and the People’s Choice Award in Directors Fortnight. Nadia Melliti, a French actress of Algerian descent, won best actress in Competition for her performance as a teen trying to reconcile her cultural identity with her emerging sexuality in Hafsia Herzi’s The Little Sister. Twin Palestinian directors Arab and Tarzan Nasser won the best directing award in Un Certain Regard for Once Upon A Time In Gaza, about everyday life in Gaza in the 2010s.

Africa also had a significant win at Cannes this year, with Akinola Davies Jr’s My Father’s Shadow, thought to be the first Nigerian film in Cannes official selection, awarded a Special Mention in Un Certain Regard. Among Asian winners – A Useful Ghost, from Thai filmmaker Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke, took the top prize in Critics Week, and Chinese filmmaker Bi Gan won a Special Award in Competition for his hallucinatory epic Resurrection. Japan had a strong presence at the festival this year, from Chie Hayakawa’s Renoir in Competition to Kei Ishikawa’s A Pale View Of Hills in Un Certain Regard and Yuiga Danzuka’s feature debut Brand New Landscape in Directors Fortnight. But while the Japanese entries were positively reviewed, they missed out on awards. (See here for full list of Cannes 2025 Award Winners)

International Pushback Against Trump’s Tariffs

The big story going into Cannes was Trump’s pronouncement that the US should impose a 100% tariff on movies made in “foreign lands”. Trump is right that Hollywood is not having the best of times at the moment, but absolutely nobody thought his tariffs solution was a good idea, and his own advisors were soon proposing alternatives – bolstering US production incentives and getting the US signed up to international co-production treaties. Nobody took what Trump said completely seriously, but the instability it created cast a shadow over negotiations in Cannes. For those companies selling to or buying for the mainland China market, the recent announcement from the China Film Administration that it would “moderately reduce” the number of US imports in response to Trump’s trade tariffs was another downer (more on that below).

Heading into the market, it was interesting to note the international pushback against Trump’s proposals and the various US guilds and lobbying organisations that have been emboldened by his moves. On May 12, a group of more than 100 film and TV bodies from around the world, including the European Film Academy, Screen Producers Australia and France’s Société des Auteurs et Compositeurs Dramatiques, issued an open letter appealing to governments to “safeguard the systems that support independent film and audiovisual creation.”

The open letter called out direct threats to “essential protections” such as the Audiovisual Media Services Directive in the European Union and proposed local content obligations and/or screen quotas in various parts of the world. “We, creators, professionals, companies and organisations from the film and audiovisual sector, along with culturally-engaged citizens, unite to defend out right to tell our own stories – stories rooted in our cultures, languages and identities – and ensure that people everywhere can continue to access and enjoy them,” the letter said.

There are many reasons for the current Hollywood downturn – the 2023 strikes, media concentration, the rise of streaming, which legacy studios didn’t capitalise on quickly enough, inflation and post-pandemic market contraction – but Trump is doing what he always does in blaming the rest of the world for US decline. The irony is that the US continues to dominate many content industries around the world, through the streamers if not through the legacy studios. But in the past, the US has also cut an avuncular figure as a source of finance, distribution opportunities and sound legal business practices, so that international content industries were mostly happy to engage.

Should Trump have his way, the US might start being viewed less as a kindly industry patriarch and more as that embarrassing uncle at a wedding that you’re afraid to leave alone in the company of innocent young women.

One thing that was noticeable at this year’s Cannes is how regional markets and industries are growing up and maturing around the world (see the lengthy round-up of production news links below as evidence of that). Europe has always had a fairly strong regional market, one supported by EU and national funding, but East Asia is also coming into its own as a distinct market – one in which films can recoup across the region so there’s less need to sell to Europe or the US. Other regional markets are emerging – South America, the Arab world and Africa all seemed to have a bigger presence and more confident voice at this year’s Cannes market and festival (more about Africa in Part Two of this recap).

Meanwhile, Hollywood content has been losing market share in most East Asian markets (and never had much share in India). Is this a blip or the new normal? Asian cinema owners need the US tentpoles but production values are improving rapidly in many territories and AI may accelerate that trend. Of course, it’s nice to come to Cannes, walk the red carpet, soak up the glamour and take home a few awards, but perhaps in future this festival will be the place where all the emerging spheres of influence come to learn about each other, rather than bow down to the mighty US market. Or perhaps the US will find a way to reassert its dominance. If it does, I suspect that will be in spite of and not because of the actions of Donald Trump.

No Sign Of Reduction Of US Movies In China

There’s no evidence so far that China is “moderately reducing” the import of US movies, which may be a response to the current de-escalation in the US-China trade war and also driven by the fact that Chinese cinemas badly need some big films this summer. Disney’s Lilo & Stitch is currently topping the box office following its release last weekend and Paramount’s Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, which premiered at Cannes in an Out of Competition slot, is scheduled for China release on May 30. Other upcoming Hollywood releases include Sony’s Karate Kid: Legends (June 7) and Universal’s How To Train Your Dragon (June 13), while June 27 sees the release of Disney’s Elio (June 27) and Warner Bros’ F1: The Movie. Meanwhile, Universal’s Jurassic World Rebirth has been cleared but not yet dated for July.

How all this impacts the sale of US independent movies to China is another matter entirely and one not solely dependent on politics or quotas. The most recent edition of the Streamlined Guides contains a deep dive into Chinese buyers, regulations and current box office data (available to Streamlined’s paying subscribers – it contains a huge amount of research for a small fee). While this report was published on the eve of Cannes, I’ll be following up with buyers and sellers in coming months to see if the market has started moving again.

While there was a flood of production news coming out of Cannes, there was very little sales news, and I’ll be exploring the reasons for that in Part Two of this Cannes recap. I’ll also be looking at the activity that the continent of Africa had at this year’s Cannes festival and market, either in Part Two or in a separate newsletter. Also upcoming is the Streamlined Guide to Asian Co-production Funds (also for paying subscribers), which I naively thought was going to be simple to research but has so far turned out to be one deep rabbit hole. More on that soon.