It’s a big day for film lovers everywhere. We’re a little over a month away from the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, and I woke up today to find that a few of my faves will be touching down in France to show out and show off their new releases. 

First up, Oscar winner and culture curator Spike Lee announced that his new crime thriller, Highest 2 Lowest, starring Denzel Washington, will premiere out of competition at the festival, which kicks off on May 13. 

This marks the fifth collaboration between Lee and Washington and serves as a reinterpretation of Akira Kurosawa’s 1963 crime thriller High and Low. Kurosawa’s film follows a wealthy shoe executive whose moral and financial world is thrown into chaos when his chauffeur’s son is mistakenly kidnapped in a botched extortion attempt meant for his own child. 

In Lee’s version, Washington plays a music mogul with a sharp ear and a powerful reputation in the industry. The cast also includes Jeffrey Wright, Dean Winters, Ice Spice and ASAP Rocky. I was wondering about the casting of ASAP and Ice Spice but it seems likely they’ll be in their wheelhouse as rap stars.

Lee and Washington last worked together on 2006’s criminally underrated Inside Man (my favorite Spike Lee joint). Their previous collabs include Mo’ Better Blues (1990), Malcolm X (1992)—which earned Washington an Oscar nomination that he definitely should have won—and He Got Game (1998).

It’s been too long since the film world has been blessed with Spike’s unique vision, and I have high hopes for this one. (pun intended)

Alpha by Julia Ducournau

The third feature from Titane director Julia Ducournau is officially set to premiere at Cannes 2025. Thank you, Neon 🙌🏾 

Julia Ducournau is a singular voice in the industry, and her last two films, Raw and Titane, left me desperately craving more of her moving, disturbing and wholly original work. And fiiiiinally—after obsessively checking the trades daily for even a crumb of news about her third film—we’ve been blessed with some plot details. Turns out, Alpha is not going to be a remake of her 2011 short Junior as was previously reported.

Per Wikipedia: The story centers on Alpha, an 11-year-old girl growing up in a fictional 1980s city inspired by New York. As the AIDS crisis spreads across the globe, one of her parents becomes seriously ill, pushing Alpha to face grief and mortality for the first time.

I absolutely loved Titane—it was chaotic, deeply emotional and completely unlike anything I’d seen before. What’s especially interesting here is that Alpha seems to be a bit of a departure from Ducournau’s signature body horror. It’s being called a genre-bender, which has me wondering: Is she leaning into sci-fi horror, or is this more of a horror-drama hybrid? Either way, if Ducournau’s behind the wheel, I’m all in.

Urchin by Harris Dickinson

I visited London last year, right around the time Harris Dickinson’s directorial debut—then titled Rough Sleeper—was supposed to start filming. I was hoping to catch a glimpse of the set, but alas, production was delayed by a couple of months. So instead, I consoled myself the only way I knew how: by eating my feelings at Borough Market.

The Triangle of Sadness breakout and future John Lennon is one of my favorite new actors, in part, because of his great taste in roles. So when I found out he had directing ambitions and had cast the uber-talented Frank Dillane as the lead of his first outing, I was thrilled. 

Dillane is a phenomenal actor who I’d love to see in more roles, but he’s more meticulous about his choices, which I appreciate. Oh, and did I mention he’s also a brilliant musician? 

Plot details are still under wraps, but Urchin will spotlight the widespread housing crisis, following a young drifter navigating life on the streets of London—where one in 47 people is experiencing homelessness. 

“It’s about the people that fall between the cracks,” Dickinson told Daze. “It’s about mental health and about the ways in which the system fails people in certain ways.”

Now to manifest my way to becoming a semi-notable film critic just in time for the premiere, so I can work the red carpet and ask some burning questions✨🙏🏾