The 2025 Cannes Film Festival is past its midpoint after Leave One Day by first-time French filmmaker Amelie Bonnin served as the opening-night pic.

Nouvelle Vague, part of the Cannes competition slate, is the ultimate inside-baseball making-of movie. But even more than that, it’s a picture that stands strong on the side of art, of history, of working to solve the puzzle of things that maybe at first you don’t fully understand.

But for me, five releases really rose to the occasion—ranging from poetic family dramas to pitch-black comedies and hair-raising horror movies—all of which I haven’t been able to get out of my head since my first viewing. These are the Croisette-debuting films you need to catch later this year.