New films from Francis Ford Coppola, Yorgos Lanthimos and George Miller are seizing the festival spotlight, but THR’s chief film critic says there’s plenty more in the lineup to whet the cinematic appetite.

The 77th Cannes Film Festival is poised to serve up a feast for film lovers, including new movies from celebrated directors such as Yorgos Lanthimos and Paolo Sorrentino, as well as living legends like Francis Ford Coppola, David Cronenberg and George Miller.

Meanwhile, Coppola will unveil the highly anticipated Megalopolis, starring Adam Driver, Shia LaBeouf, and Aubrey Plaza, in the competition lineup, while Canada’s Cronenberg returns with The Shrouds, a horror thriller with Vincent Cassel, Diane Kruger and Guy Pearce.

But there is plenty more in the Cannes 2024 lineup to excite film buffs. Here is a look at some of the must-see titles at the festival.

Sean Baker made a splash in the Directors Fortnight in 2017 with The Florida Project before graduating to the main Cannes competition four years later with Red Rocket. He’s a Palme d’Or contender again with this comedy about a young Brooklyn sex worker, played by Mikey Madison, who impulsively marries an oligarch’s son and finds her Cinderella story in trouble once the news gets back to Russia.

Iranian-Danish Holy Spider director Ali Abbasi, demonstrated his skills working in English on two killer episodes of The Last of Us. He takes the next step with what promises to be a juicy probe into the Faustian pact that fueled an American dynasty. It stars Sebastian Stan as Donald Trump, Jeremy Strong as infamous lawyer and political fixer Roy Cohn, Maria Bakalova as Trump’s first wife, Ivana, and Martin Donovan as his father, Fred Trump, the real estate developer known for his discriminatory rental policies.

Jia Zhangke’s sixth Cannes competition entry surveys China’s 21st-century transformation via the fragile love story of a couple spanning two decades, reportedly mixing dramatic realism with documentary techniques. Once again starring Jia’s wife and brilliant muse, Zhao Tao — most recently seen in a memorable turn as a gangster’s tough girlfriend in 2018’s Ash Is Purest White — the new feature, which started shooting in 2001, traverses not only time and space but also Jia’s entire filmography.

Jacques Audiard, director of A Prophet, Rust and Bone and Palme d’Or winner Dheepan, ventured into English-language features in 2018 with the Jake Gyllenhaal Western, The Sisters Brothers. He continues his international reach with this Mexico-set musical crime comedy starring Selena Gomez, Zoe Saldaña and Édgar Ramírez, about a woman helping an escaped cartel leader undergo gender-affirming surgery, in part to evade the authorities. Originally conceived as a four-act opera, the film features original songs by French chansonnière Camille.

Taking its place in the pantheon of all-time great action movies, George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road kicked up the dust in Cannes 2015 and then blazed a trail to the Oscars the following year, landing 10 nominations and winning six. This prequel to the postapocalyptic survival thriller looks back to the younger years of the renegade warrior played by Charlize Theron in the earlier film, before her encounter with Max. Behind the wheel this time as Furiosa is Anya Taylor-Joy, co-starring with Chris Hemsworth.