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# The second week of the Cannes Film Festival brought premieres of several notable films
- URL: https://theparnassian.com/en/na-vtoroi-nedele-kannskogo-kinofestivalia-sostoialis-premery-neskolkikh-zametnykh-filmov/
- Published: 2025-05-22T18:33:55.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-01T05:30:03.000Z
- Author: Alexandr Radayev
- Tags: In the Press, Cinema

The second week of the Cannes Film Festival brought premieres of several notable films. The film critic Andrei Plakhov, in an [article](https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/7737389?utm%5Fsource=yxnews&utm%5Fmedium=desktop&utm%5Freferrer=https%3A%2F%2Fdzen.ru%2Fnews%2Fsearch) for Kommersant, tells of the most eagerly awaited among them.

**Kirill Serebrennikov's "The Disappearance of Josef Mengele"**  
Out of competition, the festival screened Kirill Serebrennikov's film "The Disappearance of Josef Mengele", based on the book by the French writer Olivier Guez. It is Serebrennikov's second foreign-language film after "Limonov".

The film tells of the life of the Nazi doctor after his flight to South America, where for decades, right up to his death, he hid from justice and from Israeli retribution (for those who do not know, during the Second World War Josef Mengele worked at Auschwitz, conducting inhuman experiments and sending prisoners to the gas chambers).

August Diehl's performance in the title role has been singled out for particular praise. His character is a complex one, not devoid of human traits, and all the more frightening for it.

**Wes Anderson's "The Phoenician Scheme"**  
Wes Anderson's new work, "The Phoenician Scheme", was received with restraint. The director continues to employ his glamorous and meticulously calibrated style, larding the film with allusions to topical matters. Benicio del Toro plays the magnate Korda, whose story is interwoven with mythology and dreams in which appear characters played by Bill Murray, Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg. Some critics have noted a resemblance between the film's visual style and the work of Sergei Parajanov.

**Julia Ducournau's "Alpha"**  
"Alpha" by Julia Ducournau, who earlier won the Palme d'Or for "Titane", did not live up to expectations. The story of a thirteen-year-old girl confronting the panic surrounding AIDS in France in the 1990s seems insufficiently convincing. The film is criticised for being overlong and for its reliance on clichéd characters.