In the latest in our 10-part series, we run through, in alphabetical order, the films we are most looking forward to next year by the world’s most singular directors

Based on a True Story

Now 83, Roman Polanski remains firmly in the public eye, despite not having shot a film since 2013’s ropy Venus in Fur. But Carnage, released a couple of years before that, suggested there was life and fire in the old genius yet, and this one has the great advantage of being scripted by Olivier Assayas. Another meta-fictional thriller in the mould of The Ghost Writer, this one stars Eva Green as a writer who becomes involved with an obsessive admirer.

Call Me By Your Name

Maybe the most intriguing among a strikingly tasty-looking bunch of Sundance titles, Luca Guadagnino’s latest may not feature Tilda Swinton, but it does look of a brilliant, shimmering kind with the likes of A Bigger Splash. Armie Hammer stars as an American academic who starts a summer love affair with an adolescent boy (Timothée Chalamet) while staying at his parents’ house on the Italian Riviera. Michael Stuhlbarg is the – possibly spluttering – papa.



The Death and Life of John F Donovan

Don’t expect it to show up at Cannes – no way, no how, not after what happened last time – but still we’re reserving space for the latest by enfant terrible Xavier Dolan. Another English-language debut, this one stars Kit Harington as a rising US actor accused by gossip mag editor Jessica Chastain of being a paedophile. The supporting cast is as wow-y as that premise: Natalie Portman, Kathy Bates, Susan Sarandon, Michael Gambon.

Downsizing

Here’s one that should make someone who, say, might be on maternity leave from March, feel really sore to miss: Alexander Payne’s follow-up to the masterful Nebraska. And it’s his most ambitious to date: a sci-fi comedy drama starring Matt Damon and Kristen Wiig (subbing at the last minute for Reese Witherspoon) as a couple who voluntarily decide to be shrunk. But then she backs out at the last minute. Margo Martindale (star of Payne’s fantastic Paris short), Jason Sudeikis, Alec Baldwin and Christoph Waltz co-star.

Here’s the only one on this list any of us have seen already: Park Chan-wook’s simmering adaptation of the Sarah Walters novel Fingersmith. It premiered at Cannes in May and was warmly received as one of the most erotic movies ever made.

Happy End

Michael Haneke and Isabelle Huppert reunite for his first film since Amour and hers since, well, the trio of brilliant hits she had this year. Details are sketchy, but we know it co-stars Amour lead Jean-Louis Trintignant as well as Mathieu Kassovitz, that it was shot in Paris, Calais and London, and that the migrant crisis might be a backdrop. Nous l’aimons déjà.

The Killing of a Sacred Deer

The Lobster might not have picked up the acclaim it deserved but Colin Farrell is still in with a shot at the Golden Globes and it’s certainly upped Yorgos Lanthimos’s profile in the US. Hopefully that bodes well for a great launch for this Cincinnati-set drama about a surgeon (Farrell, again) who forms a familial bond with a teenage boy, with apparently disastrous results. Nicole Kidman plays his wife; Alicia Silverstone crops up too, amazingly.

Lean on Pete

Of all the projects to follow 45 Years, Lean on Pete wasn’t quite what we anticipated from Andrew Haigh. But whatever that fella dishes out, we’ll take it. Lean on Pete is a racehorse; he and a 15-year-old take the trip from Portland, Oregon, to distant relatives in Wyoming. Steve Buscemi, Chloe Sevigny and Steve Zahn feature.



Mektoub Is Mektoub

The fallout from Abdellatif Kechiche’s 2013 Cannes win for Blue Is the Warmest Colour did not paint him in the rosiest light. This one is based on Antoine Bégaudeau’s novel La blessure, la vraie, about a screenwriter whose personal and professional dealings intermingle during a visit to his hometown on the Mediterranean. Other than that, it’s a puzzle: the cast is a mystery, but we’re guessing we’ll find our around late April, when the Cannes contenders are announced.

Metalhead

It’s easy to see why Derek Cianfrance might want a change of direction. His last movie, The Light Between Oceans, was a bruising, heartfelt, 100-hankie weepie on which multiple critics poured scorn (leading to Cianfrance’s wife, no less, writing a letter of protest). The Blue Valentine director this time round is going down the quasi-documentary route with the story of a heavy metal drummer who blows his eardrums out and must learn to adapt to a world of silence.

Redoubtable

As one of the few people who liked The Search, Michel Hazanavicius’s follow-up proper to The Artist (never released in England due to the brutal festival reception), I’m a nervous for and excited about this biopic of Jean-Luc Godard, about his courting of the then 17-year-old wife Anne Wiazemsky. Louis Garrel plays the director, Stacy Martin the actor. Bérénice Bejo is also in the mix; her relationship with husband Hazanavicius may also have informed their involvement in this one.

The Sisters Brothers

Joaquin Phoenix makes his first appearance on this list, this time in the first English-language film from Jacques Audiard. Based on Patrick DeWitt’s novel, it’s about sibling assassins (Phoenix and John C Reilly) pursing a gold prospector across 1,000 miles of 1850s Oregon desert. Audiard was the surprise winner of the Palme d’Or at Cannes last year for Dheepan; this looks quite wildly different.

Submergence

Wim Wenders’ latest sounds faintly bananas. James McAvoy plays an Englishman imprisoned by jihadists in a windowless room on the eastern coast of Africa. Alicia Vikander is a diver prepping to hit the ocean floor in Greenland. The previous Christmas, they had a romance which began on a French beach. How this one will play we have no idea, but Charlotte Rampling co-stars, which suggests swimmingly.

T2 Trainspotting

To everyone complaining about why this didn’t make yesterday’s sequels list … it’s because we wanted to put Boyle in the classiest of company. Plus, we reckon this return to the scene of his finest hour might give him a chance to flex his directorial chops with more force than in the likes of Steve Jobs. Over a decade after Trainspotting’s release, Ewan McGregor, Ewen Bremner, Jonny Lee Miller and Robert Carlyle are back and look just as disturbed as ever, thank God.

Untitled Paul Thomas Anderson/Daniel Day Lewis movie

Here things get really serious. The pair responsible for the best film of the century so far return with a story set in the fashion world of 1950s London. Even movies such as The Master and Inherent Vice weren’t a patch on PTA’s work with DDL; as for the actor, he’s only done two movies in the 10 years since There Will Be Blood (from the sublime Lincoln to the ridiculous Nine). We absolutely can’t wait.

Weightless

We can and probably will have to wait an absolute eternity for Terrence Malick’s new one. Given his last two – To the Wonder and Knight of Cups – that may be a mercy. But, somehow, we’re still more optimistic about this Austin-set number featuring Ryan Gosling, Cate Blanchett, Natalie Portman, Michael Fassbender, Christian Bale, Rooney Mara and Benicio del Toro. Maybe it’s that killer cast; maybe it’s the fact it’s more rooted in a recognisable present (the action unfolds at a music festival). Anyhow, keep ’em crossed.

Wonderstruck

More dual narratives in the latest from Todd Haynes, which splices the story of a girl in 1920s New York who grows up to be Julianne Moore with a partially deaf boy in the 1970s Midwest. Based on the novel by Brian Selznick, whose earlier book was adapted by Martin Scorsese as Hugo, this looks like a more naive tale for the Carol director. Michelle Williams co-stars.

You Were Never Really Here

And here’s Joaquin Phoenix again, this time in Lynne Ramsay’s first film since the debacle of Jane Got a Gun. It’s about a war veteran whose attempts to save a young girl from a sex trafficking ring go horribly wrong. But we’re guessing we’re a long way from Taken.