The Best Films of the 2024 Cannes Film Festival

It was always going to be difficult for the 2024 Cannes Film Festival to compete with its previous edition, given that last year’s installment featured the premieres of everything from future Oscar winners Anatomy of a Fall and The Zone of Interest to May December, Killers of the Flower Moon, and How to Have Sex. This time around, there were quite a few big, ambitious swings which—at least for us—didn’t quite hit the mark (Furiosa, Rumours, Emilia Pérez, The Apprentice) and a handful which proved to be absolute clangers (Parthenope, The Shrouds, Oh, Canada, Megalopolis).

But thankfully, there were also several that knocked it out of the park—audacious horror movies, cryptic thrillers, and intimate, lyrical dramas, many of them directed by women. Below, find the 12 best releases to have debuted on the Croisette that you should add to your watchlist immediately.

My favorite film from the festival is one that’s proved to be thrillingly divisive—a gore-filled, overblown, mile-a-minute body horror from Revenge’s Coralie Fargeat, which casts Demi Moore as the host of a fitness show who, in her 50s, is deemed to be past her prime by her obnoxious boss (Dennis Quaid). Cue a mysterious invitation to try “The Substance,” a procedure that claims to unleash a younger, more beautiful version of yourself—one which causes our heroine’s spine to split open, and a radiant alter ego (Margaret Qualley) to emerge, ready to live out her wildest fantasies. (Yes, really.) Things go off the rails in spectacular fashion, with a finale that is so hilariously batshit that it demands to be experienced on the biggest screen you can find, surrounded by people who are gasping, shrieking, laughing, and shaking their heads in disbelief right along with you. —Radhika Seth

All We Imagine as Light

Photo: Courtesy Cannes Film Festival