What’s going to happen at Quentin Tarantino’s super secret Cannes screening?

Quentin Tarantino is headed to Cannes Film Festival, but his latest movie is not, as far as anyone’s aware. The legendary director is working on his possibly final feature, The Movie Critic, but he’s also presenting a mysterious secret screening as a guest of honor at the 2023 festival on the French Riviera.

“In 1969, in Cannes, the Directors’ Fortnight was born, a counter-programming of free-spirited films from all over the world. In 1969, in California, a new generation of filmmakers rose against old Hollywood,” the festival said in a statement (via Deadline). “Of this, Quentin Tarantino has recently published a captivating analysis in a critical essay on 1970s cinema. As an exceptional and generous cinephile, Tarantino is at home at the Fortnight. He will be our guest this year to present a secret screening and discuss his counter-history of cinema. A rockabilly vibe on closing day.”

Tarantino of course has history at Cannes, winning the festival’s highest honor, the Palme d’Or, for Pulp Fiction in 1994 and later serving as president of the jury in 2004. With that in mind—and the fact that he is, at least for now, still a working filmmaker—there’s always the possibility he could be screening something from his own oeuvre, new or old.

However, given the context, it seems a lot more likely that Tarantino is screening something else. His new memoir/cinema theory book Cinema Speculation unsurprisingly references hundreds of films (conveniently compiled by Letterboxd user Christian Ryan here), but the book is specifically focused on “key American films from the 1970s” that inspired the burgeoning director in his youth (per NME). Each chapter is dedicated to one of those films: Bullit, Dirty Harry, Deliverance, The Getaway, The Outfit, Sisters, Daisy Miller, Taxi Driver, Rolling Thunder, Paradise Alley, Hardcore, and The Funhouse.

As a noted cinephile, any number of movies could fit the bill for Tarantino’s secret screening. But one of those films featured prominently in the book would certainly complement the subsequent discussion of “his counter-history of cinema.” Taxi Driver, of course, won the Palme d’Or in 1976, but is that too obvious a choice? We’ll have to wait and see what he chooses on May 25, the closing of Directors Fortnight.