Cannes 2020: What Films Would Have Competed for the Palme d'Or?

Now that we have scratched off Cannes until, at least, end of June/early July, if not until 2021, I received a particularly interesting email the other day from a reader that was wondering what the main competition lineup would have looked like if Cannes were to have actually happened this year. Aided by IndieWire’s precious info that Sofia Coppola’s “On the Rocks” was always planned for a Venice launch and that Chloe Zhao’s “Nomadland” is still not completed, we can, more or less, snip down my original list of 35 contenders to the usual 18-21 films that would usually compete for the Palme d’Or every year.

Mia Hansen-Løve’s “Bergman Island”
Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s “Memoria”
Paul Verhoeven’s “Benedetta”
Leos Carax’s “Annette”
Wes Anderson’s “The French Dispatch”
Nanni Moretti “Tre Piani”
Nadav Lapid “Ahed’s Knee”
Francois Ozon’s “Summer of 85”
Edgar Wright’s “Last Night in Soho”
Ari Folman “Where is Anne Frank?”
Maiwenn's "ADN"
Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s “Wife of a Spy”
Naomi Kawase’s “Come Morning”
Kornél Mundruczó’s “Pieces of a Woman“
Michel Franco’s “Lo que algunos soñaron”
Laurent Cantet’s “Arthur Rambo”
Kirill Serebrennikov’s “Petrov’s Flu”
Thomas Vinterberg’s “Druk”
Ulrich Seidl "Böse Spiele"
Ana Lily Amirpour’s “Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon”