All Nordic countries are represented in 2025 Cannes, two in the main competition

With the final additions to the official Cannes 2025 line-up now unveiled, a distinct and varied Nordic presence materialises across the sections. Given prime spotlight among the 21 exquisitely selected world cinema luminaries in the main competition are Joachim Trier of Norway and Tarik Saleh of Sweden. Both are firmly installed into the core Cannes contingent of reoccurring regulars, Trier threefold since Oslo, August 31st (Oslo, 31 august, 2011) and Saleh making a first revisit since his Best Script Award-winning Cairo Conspiracy (Boy from Heaven, 2022).

Trier’s Sentimental Value (Affeksjonsverdi) and Saleh’s Eagles of the Republic are the titles set to defend the Nordic colours this year. Upon immediate observation, the two share few, if any, similarities in their respective voices and choices of subjects, with one creator looking at his most intimate and familiar of Oslo home environments and the other setting course across the continent and all the way to Northern African territory and its political turmoils. By chance, though, both stories deal with the cinema medium, each involving a protagonist trying to cope with an industry infested with its fair share of problematic aspects.

Cairo is again the hotspot in Eagles of the Republic, Saleh’s third chapter of what is indeed called “The Cairo Trilogy”, starting out with The Nile Hilton Incident (2017) and followed by Cairo Conspiracy. “Personally, I’d appoint this last instalment the most complete of the three”, Saleh told this reporter upon putting the final touches to a close to decade-long journey, all set for arrival.

Again, as in the previous entries, celebrated actor Fares Fares plays a main part, this time as a celebrated actor, reluctantly starring in a film commissioned by the Egypt government and further complicating things by getting romantically involved with the wife of a high-rank general overseeing the film. Saleh promises echoes of political Italian thrillers of the 1960s and 70s and calls Eagles of the Republic “about 98% true to its script” and “possibly the most difficult film I’ll ever make”. Main producers are Unlimited Stories, Sweden, Memento, France, Ström Pictures, Denmark and Oy Bufo, Finland.

Long before Joachim Trier started to grace the red carpets of the Riviera and long before the wonders of a Norwegian cinema boom was anywhere near the map, his senior compatriot Erik Løchen succeeded in bringing his debut feature The Chasers (Jakten, 1959) to Cannes, an unexpectedly fresh piece of northern nouvelle vague. Reportedly far too ahead of its time to be of any domestic success and ultimately never opening up for the grand directorial career it promised, the film has since then been voted the greatest Norwegian film of all time at least once.

Of special interest here is the fact that Løchen happens to be the maternal grandfather of Joachim Trier, who’s repeatedly paid tribute to him, for paving the way to Trier’s generation of flourishing countryman filmmakers. Sentimental Value even places a likely Løchen-inspired character in the spotlight; Gustav, “once a renowned film director” as the synopsis reads, who tries to make a comeback and offers his estranged daughter Nora the lead role in his next film. Co-written by Trier together with his ever-cohort Eskil Vogt, the film is a portrait of an Oslo family with a turbulent emotional history and stars Renate Reinsve, Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas and Elle Fanning and, as the charismatic Gustav, Norway’s ever-preferred Swede Stellan Skarsgård. Mer Film is the main producer with Eye Eye Productions co-producing, as well as Zentropa Denmark and Sweden, Komplizen Film, Germany, and Lumen and MK Productions, France.

Sentimental Value and Eagles of the Republic have both received support from Nordisk Film & TV Fond – as has The Love That Remains (Ástin sem eftir er), seen in the 2025 Cannes Premiere section and directed by Iceland’s Hlynur Pálmason.

Returning to Cannes just two years after his extraordinary 2022 historical drama Godland (Volaða land), Pálmason now steps right into current times and the all too ordinary topic of divorce. Spanning across one year in the life of a family, The Love That Remains is a compassionate portrait (not without humour, it is promised) of “the bittersweet nature of faded love and shared memories amidst the changing seasons“, all playing out in eastern Iceland. Saga Garðarsdóttir and Sverrir Gudnason star together with several young members of Pálmason’s own family in the main cast, including Ída Mekkín Hlynsdóttir, seen and enjoyed in all of her father’s films since A White, White Day (Hvítur, hvítur dagur, 2019). Iceland’s Still Vivid is main producer together with Denmark’s Snowglobe with Sweden’s Hobab and Film i Väst and Maneki and Arte France in co-production.

Denmark will be prominently represented in Stéphane Demoustier’s The Great Arch (L'inconnu de la Grande Arche), a French production with Danish co-production – via Zentropa Entertainments – entered in the Un Certain regard section. The film portrays the Danish architect sensation Otto von Spreckelsen, who memorably came to design the Grande Arche triumphal arch in La Défense in Paris, inaugurated in 1989. Claes Bang and Sidse Babette Knudsen head a distinguished cast.

Also entered in Un Certain Regard is A Poet (Un poeta), Colombian director Simón Mesa Soto’s third collaboration with Sweden’s Momento Film, all of them entered at Cannes. The initially darkly comedic story centres on an aging, hapless and disillusioned poet whose drab existence is invigorated though the encounter with a teenager with writing talents and their artistic and human interactions.

Finland will be seen, and heard, in the ACID (Association for the Distribution of Independent Cinema) section, where Lauri-Matti Parppei will premiere his debut feature A Light That Never Goes Out (Jossain on valo joka ei sammu), produced by Made, Finland and Goodtime Pictures, Norway. Music plays a significant part (Parppei has a long personal history in several bands as singer, guitarist and occasional saw-player) as two temporarily lost young souls, Pauli and Iiris, embark on a joint journey of recovery, creating some groundbreaking sounds around their home town of Rauma by the Bothnian Sea.

In all, 69 feature films make up the 2025 and 78th edition of the Cannes Film Festival.
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