At the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, artists dominate as protagonists in the official selection, with Pawel Pawlikowski making the most layered contribution with *Fatherland*. The film follows writer Thomas Mann during five days in 1949 as he visits a torn post-war Germany, and Sandra Hüller plays his daughter Erika, who confronts him with his narcissism. Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s *The Beloved*, with Javier Bardem as a film director who casts his abandoned daughter, reiterates that theme of self-obsession, while Judith Godrèche in *Mémoire de fille* adapts Annie Ernaux’s memoirs as an exploration of trauma and authorship.