Festival Highlights 1 (2025) : Cannes

This year’s film festivals turned into a series of encounters that reminded us once again of both the fragility of cinema and its boundless resilience. Especially Cannes was not only a selection but a threshold where stories from all around the world collided and multiplied. Some films appeared with characters who carry the pain of their geographies in their bodies and some revealed invisible fractures family cracks or the dark regions of the mind. But they all shared one thing that cinema today can still be both political and personal both devastating and healing. In this series of writings while offering a short but intense look at five films that stood out in this year’s festival route we will also follow how each opens into a wide universe through its own inner voice.

Promised Sky

Promised Sky Promised Le Ciel is Erige Sehiri’s second feature film. It was nominated for several awards in the Un Certain Regard section of the 2025 Cannes Film Festival. The story follows Marie Naney and Jolie. Marie who has lived in Tunisia for years is a journalist and also a pastor working with refugee children who need shelter or need to be reunited with their families. But when they welcome a young orphan girl named Kenza into their home the women’s world turns upside down. As the family slowly reshapes itself around Kenza the sense of solidarity between the three women comes under threat in a tense social climate and in the end both the strength and fragility of their bond are revealed.

In the film which is sometimes funny and sometimes heartbreaking Marie Naney and Jolie almost come alive on screen. These three women who migrated from Ivory Coast to Tunisia in search of a better life manage to stay together despite their differences and expectations for the future. Despite the individual challenges they face they try to make Kenza a part of their home ignoring the external pressure from the government and society. The story opens like a slow moving drama that often focuses on the everyday and the social urgency and relevance of the film is felt from beginning to end.

Awards and Festivals

Cannes Film Festival 2025 – Nominee Un Certain Regard Award
Munich Film Festival 2025 – Nominee ARRI OSRAM Award Best International Film

Put You Soul On Your Hand And Walk

Sepideh Farsi’s documentary Put You Soul On Your Hand And Walk portrays life in Gaza under Israeli military occupation. Farsi had previously centered war in her films. The film is interrupted by video calls between Sepideh Farsi and the young Palestinian photographer Fatem Hassona. Hassona continues her resistance by documenting the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Although Farsi is restricted by all conditions she manages to build a touching and heartbreaking portrait of Fatem through these conversations. Although most of the film is shot through video calls made from a phone the sense of closeness to Fatem is rare in cinema. The film ends with Fatem Hassona being assassinated in her home and this completely changes the meaning of the film making it incredibly important and necessary today.

Awards and Festivals

Cannes Film Festival 2025 – Nominee Golden Eye
Chicago International Film Festival 2025 – Winner Gold Hugo Best Documentary
Gotham Awards 2025 – Nominee Best Documentary
Montréal Festival of New Cinema 2025 – Winner Peace Award Best Film International Panorama Audience Award
National Board of Review USA 2025 – Winner Freedom of Expression Award
Athens International Film Festival 2025 – Winner Golden Athena Best Documentary
Washington DC Area Film Critics Association Awards 2025 – Nominee Best Documentary
Asia Pacific Screen Awards 2025 – Winner Best Documentary Film
Cinema Eye Honors USA 2026 – Winner The Unforgettables
New York Film Critics Online 2025 – Nominee Best Documentary
El Gouna Film Festival 2025 – Nominee Golden Star Feature Documentary Competition
El Gouna Film Festival 2025 – Winner Audience Award Documentary
Michigan Movie Critics Guild Awards 2025 – Nominee Best Documentary

Adam’s Sake
Laura Wandel transfers the intensity and physical presence she created in school corridors with Playground this time into the sterile walls of a hospital. Adam’s Sake explores the fragile balances between compassion and rule law and conscience distance and closeness through the story of a nurse trapped between a small child who bears the marks of hunger and neglect and his mother. The bond Lucy establishes with Adam and his mother Rebecca gradually turns into a solidarity that exceeds the limits of the system and in every scene the tension between the weight of responsibility and the coldness of the laws resonates.
Premiering in the La Semaine de la Critique section of the 2025 Cannes Film Festival Wandel treats hospital rooms not only as a setting but as spaces where invisible decisions and conflicts materialize. The camera sometimes fixes itself in Lucy’s gaze and sometimes disappears into Adam’s fragile silences. Adam’s Sake is not only a mother child drama but also a film that questions how institutions touch or fail to touch the human being inviting the audience to understand rather than judge.

Awards and Festivals

Gijón International Film Festival 2025 – Nominee Albar Best Film
El Gouna Film Festival 2025 – Winner Best Actress Léa Drucker
El Gouna Film Festival 2025 – Nominee Golden Star Fiction Feature Competition
Pingyao International Film Festival 2025 – Nominee Roberto Rossellini Awards Best Film
Pingyao International Film Festival 2025 – Nominee People’s Choice Award Crouching Tigers Best Film

Caravan
Nominated for Best Director in the Un Certain Regard and Camera d’Or categories at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival Caravan is Zuzana Kirchnerová Špidlová’s first feature length directorial attempt. Ester and her mentally disabled young son David are on summer vacation in Italy with their friends. After various incidents at home Ester becomes overwhelmed by the idea of staying there and steals a caravan setting out toward southern Italy with David. During the journey they meet many people one of whom is a young woman they take into their home. The trio moves south together and the two women begin searching for a life in which they can work on farms. But as the relationship between Ester and David becomes increasingly tense the outcome of this summer adventure becomes uncertain.
This intimate story by Zuzana Kirchnerová Špidlová realistically portrays subjects considered taboo and rarely explored in cinema. From the very first moment the audience is drawn into the world of Ester and David and as the film progresses the complexity of this relationship unfolds strikingly. The actors’ performances both fragile and strong allow the viewer to fully immerse themselves in this world. Often we forget we are watching a film as we lose ourselves in the story. Combined with impressive cinematography Caravan becomes a successful road movie that transforms an intra family journey into a painful yet universal story of motherhood with characters so vivid they remain in our memory long after the film ends.

Awards and Festivals

Cannes Film Festival 2025 – Nominee Un Certain Regard Award
Cannes Film Festival 2025 – Nominee Golden Camera
Gijón International Film Festival 2025 – Nominee Retueyos Best Film
Warsaw International Film Festival 2025 – Nominee Competition 1 2 Award Best Film

Two Prosecutors
Sergei Loznitsa’s Two Prosecutors tells a chilling story of guilt idealism and the tragedy of power rising within the icy atmosphere of the Great Purge years in Stalin era Soviet Union. A young prosecutor named Alexander Kornev finds a letter revealing that innocent people are being unjustly arrested by the NKVD and this journey he sets out on with hope for justice gradually turns into a labyrinth where he is tested both by institutions and his own beliefs.
Every corridor every cell every office scene is cold like a refrigerator showing how idealism can be crushed through accents delayed approvals and official procedures. The cinematography is so detailed and tense that even visual silence feels like a scream. Aleksandr Kuznetsov’s portrayal of Kornev carries the quiet anger of a man who struggles not to suppress his desire for justice.
Premiering in the main competition section of the 2025 Cannes Film Festival the film won the François Chalais Award emphasizing both the power of historical confrontation and the statements the film makes about the contemporary world. Two Prosecutors asks questions that should not be forgotten today while reckoning with pressures from the past the cold of justice the weight of bureaucracy whose shoulders does it crush.

Awards and Festivals

Cannes Film Festival 2025 – Nominee Palme d’Or
Jerusalem Film Festival 2025 – Nominee Award for International Cinema Nechama Rivlin Award for Best International Film
Valladolid International Film Festival 2025 – Nominee Golden Spike Best Film
Valladolid International Film Festival 2025 – Winner FIPRESCI Prize Best Film
Warsaw International Film Festival 2025 – Nominee Encounters Polish Film Institute Award Audience Award
Montclair Film Festival 2025 – Nominee Fiction Feature Competition
El Gouna Film Festival 2025 – Nominee Golden Star Fiction Feature Competition

Authors: Ilana Petit & Nil Birinci