Cannes Film Festival unveils historic first for 2025: A look back at the best posters

The Cannes Film Festival has already treated us to a promising line-up for this year’s 78th edition, and now the festival has released dual images for 2025 – the first time the event has ever had two official posters. 

The posters use two views from Claude Lelouch’s 1966 romantic drama Un homme et une femme (A Man And A Woman), depicting an embrace between Anouk Aimée’s Anne and Jean-Louis Trintignant’s Jean-Louis from two sides.

“Because it is undoubtedly the 7th Art’s most famous embrace (“étreinte” in French, the anagram of “éternité”), because you can’t separate a man and a woman who love each other, because you can’t separate that Man from that Woman, the Festival de Cannes has chosen for the first time in its history to present a double official poster. A Man and a Woman. Side by side. Back together,” said the festival. 

A Man And A Woman centered on a young widow and widower who meet by chance at their children's boarding school and whose budding relationship is complicated by the memories of their deceased spouses. It won the Cannes Grand Prix – then the festival’s main prize – jointly with The Birds, The Bees And The Italians. It went on to win Golden Globes for Best Foreign-Language Film and Actress in a Drama for Aimée, as well as Oscars for Best Foreign-Language Film and Original Screenplay. 

“During times that seem to want to separate, compartmentalize or subjugate, the Festival de Cannes wants to (re)unite; to bring bodies, hearts and souls closer together; to encourage freedom and portray movement in order to perpetuate it; to embody the whirlwind of life to celebrate it, again and again,” said the festival. 

A sequel, Un homme et une femme: Vingt ans déjà (A Man And A Woman: 20 Years Later) was released in 1986, followed by Les plus belles années d'une vie (The Best Years Of A Life), released in 2019 – both films also starring Aimée and Trintignant.  

Trintignant died in 2022, aged 91; Aimée died last year, aged 92.

This year’s posters are a fitting, tender and rather beautiful tribute, one which got us thinking about the best Cannes posters of the past 20 years.

During that time, the festival has either used iconic images from cult movies as the basis for its posters, focused on cinema icons, and on two occasions chosen a snap of a kiss – Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward in Melville Shavelson‘s A New Kind of Love in 2013, and... well, we won’t spoil the other as it features in our favourites below.

Here are our picks:

2006

While Wong Kar-wai’s In The Mood for Love was only six years old at the time, it was already iconic. The dark but evocative poster, created by Gabriel Guedj from a set photograph by Wing Shya, remains one of the festival’s very best. Fittingly, Wong Kar-wai was jury president in 2006.

2008

This poster designed by Pierre Collier, using a photo by David Lynch of a lead performer at Paris’ Le Crazy Horse, is another moody (and sexy, let's not deny it) offering by the festival. We thought that Lynch might have been honoured on this year’s poster, but who knows? Maybe Cannes is waiting for the 80th edition to pay tribute to the peerless filmmaker we lost earlier this year.  

2010

Ever since the 1990s, Cannes has showcased female film icons on its posters. The first was Marlène Dietrich, the face of the 45th edition in 1992, and in 2010 came Juliette Binoche. The poster for the 63rd edition featured the wonderful actress – who happens to be this year’s jury president - with a magic lightbrush, no shoes and that disarming smile. The effect is stunning and reminds that without Lumière, there’s no cinema. In all senses of the word.

2012

To celebrate the festival’s 65th edition, Paris-based agency Bronx created this high-contrast design from an Otto L. Bettmann photo of Marilyn Monroe. Simple and timeless.  

2017

Claudia Cardinale became the 70th anniversary edition’s poster figure and it’s a joyful snap. No one knows who took the photo of Cardinale dancing on a Rome rooftop in 1959, but kudos to Philippe Savoir for adding that splash of red and making it one of the festival’s most vibrant images.  

2018

There’s that second kiss, courtesy of Jean-Luc Godard’s Pierrot le Fou. The hyper-saturated image of Jean-Paul Belmondo and Anna Karina’s kiss made the poster feel like it was honouring the past while simultaneously looking to the future. While a warmer counterpart to this year’s poster, which feels a wee bit colder due to its colour palette, the same passion and desire to celebrate love (and cinema) is there.

2019

The festival was on a roll in the second half of the 2010s, as the 72nd edition saw Cannes pay a gorgeous tribute to the late and oh so great Agnès Varda, who died that same year. This 1954 photo from the set of her first movie, La Pointe Courte, shows Varda standing on the shoulders of a technician to get the right shot. It says everything: Varda’s passion as a then 26-year-old; her mischievousness that made her such a shining light in the world of cinema during her whole career; and her commitment to showing that whatever men could do behind the camera, women could do just as well. If not better. Stellar work from designer Flore Maquin, who was behind our favourite poster of the past 20 years.

2024

After an admittedly excellent 2023 poster featuring Catherine Deneuve, last year’s image stands out as a poetic and rather moving nod to Arika Kurosawa’s film Rhapsody In August. Mirroring the movie theater, this image celebrates the Seventh Art. There’s a sense of wonder, magic and naivety to Hartland Villa’s poster that reminds us that cinema should always be a safe space where viewers can be united as a family in a shared dream. If only for a few hours.  

The 78th Cannes runs from 13 – 24 May. Check out our take on this year’s line-up here and our thoughts on the films we’re aching to see here.