Jenna Ortega is officially stepping deeper into the arthouse world, and honestly, this might become one of the most unexpected projects of her career so far. At the Cannes Film Festival, acclaimed French filmmaker Leos Carax unveiled his next movie titled Lily May B, with Ortega set to lead the mysterious dystopian story. The announcement instantly grabbed attention because Carax is known for making visually strange, emotionally chaotic, and deeply dreamlike cinema — and pairing that style with one of Hollywood’s fastest-rising young stars feels both risky and fascinating at the same time.
The film is currently scheduled to begin shooting in Spring 2027 and will mark Carax’s first feature since Annette, the surreal musical starring Adam Driver and Marion Cotillard that opened Cannes back in 2021. That movie divided audiences heavily but still earned Carax the Best Director award at the festival. Anyone familiar with his earlier films already knows he rarely makes straightforward stories. His projects usually feel more like emotional fever dreams than traditional cinema, and Lily May B already sounds exactly like that kind of experience again.
According to the cryptic synopsis revealed at Cannes, the film follows a little girl, a young woman, and a young boy who each carry painful secrets inside a collapsing “end-of-the-world world.” The trio eventually travel together across abandoned cities, empty highways, and ancient forests while riding a massive motorcycle. Along the way, they face danger while searching for identity, meaning, and possibly even survival itself. The premise honestly sounds somewhere between a dystopian road movie, a fantasy nightmare, and a poetic coming-of-age story all at once.
The early concept art shown alongside the announcement strongly hints that the film will lean heavily into Carax’s signature surreal visual style. Dark landscapes, dreamlike imagery, lonely roads, and emotionally fragmented characters already seem central to the atmosphere. Carax himself gave a very Carax-like quote while teasing the project, saying: “Once upon a time, this is what destroyed us, and this is what kept us alive.” Which sounds confusing, emotional, dramatic, and mysterious — basically everything people expect from him at this point.
Jenna Ortega Keeps Moving Further Away From Mainstream Horror
For Ortega, Lily May B feels like another major step in her transition from mainstream genre star into more experimental filmmaking spaces. While the actor exploded globally through Wednesday and later strengthened her popularity through the modern Scream movies, her recent choices suggest she’s actively trying to balance commercial fame with more artistic projects.
She already surprised many people by taking on more indie-oriented work recently, including this year’s Sundance project The Gallerist opposite Natalie Portman. Now collaborating with someone as unpredictable as Leos Carax pushes that evolution even further. Actors usually don’t enter Carax’s cinematic world unless they’re ready to fully surrender to strange storytelling, intense emotion, and unconventional filmmaking methods.
The project is also backed by producer Hugo Sélignac and Chi-Fou-Mi Productions, which arrived at Cannes this year carrying several major titles. Sélignac openly admitted that working with Carax had been a personal dream for years because the filmmaker played a huge role in shaping his love for cinema. He also praised Ortega heavily, saying her talent feels like a natural fit for Carax’s unusual creative universe.
Cannes Continues Embracing Big Artistic Risks
The announcement also reflects how Cannes still remains one of the few major film spaces where ambitious and genuinely weird projects can generate massive excitement. In an industry increasingly dominated by sequels, franchises, and algorithm-friendly content, a movie about emotionally damaged characters wandering through apocalyptic landscapes on motorcycles somehow feels refreshingly unpredictable.
Of course, Carax films are never guaranteed crowd-pleasers. His movies often split audiences completely between people who see genius and people who leave confused. But that unpredictability is also exactly why film lovers keep paying attention whenever he announces something new.
The rest of the cast for Lily May B is expected to be announced later this September. But with Jenna Ortega already attached and Carax returning after Annette, the project has instantly become one of the most intriguing arthouse films currently on the horizon. And knowing Carax, there’s a very high chance the final movie will end up even stranger than the synopsis already sounds.
