Todd Haynes at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival: "In the United States, we are facing an unprecedented assault on freedom of expression."

The ^57th Filmmakers' Fortnight is under the high patronage of Todd Haynes, 64, an American filmmaker and crucial figure in the independent scene, based in the city of Portland, Oregon. His sinuous and unclassifiable work – around ten feature films in thirty years –, hatched in the effervescence of the 1990s, has successfully recycled counter-culture legacies and cinephile memories, in versatile films – from the narrative experiments of Safe (1995) or I'm Not There (2007) , to reflective melodramas like Far from Heaven (2003) or Carol (2015), by way of the glam explosion of Velvet Goldmine (1998) or the legal thriller Dark Waters (2020) . As a producer, he has overseen the emergence of Kelly Reichardt , present this year in competition with The Mastermind . The filmmakers of the Society of Film Directors have joined forces to present him with the Golden Coach, an honorary prize accompanied by a screening and a meeting.

This award is very important to me because the Fortnight is the result of a unique history. It's a highly political event, born in 1968, which drew a line separating the official Cannes festivities from a more auteurist approach, on the fringes of the system. I've been fortunate to have a career that has allowed me to maintain this position. Of course, I've worked with renowned studios and actors, and I've made films that explore various genres, sometimes with a certain commercial success. But I've never really crossed the line into mainstream cinema.

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