The Cannes Festival is celebrating its anniversary and in its 75th edition it has summoned great names in cinematography to its competition. four of them, Hirokazu Kore-eda, Cristian Mungiu, Ruben Östlund and brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardennealready distinguished with the Palme d’Or, once again aspire to the prize.
The Japanese Kore-eda, awarded in 2018 for ‘A Family Affair’, enters the fray with ‘Broke‘; the Dardennes, praised in 1999 with ‘Rosett’ and in 2005 with ‘L’enfant’, do so with ‘Tori and Lokita‘, and the Swedish Östlund, who in 2017 surprised with ‘The Square’, returns to the Croisette with ‘Triangle of sadness‘.
The Romanian Mungiu completes the group, which in 2007 topped the list of winners with “4 months, 3 weeks, 2 days” and this year tries to revalidate the maximum title with “RMN”, on the effects of European policies in Transylvania, as detailed this Thursday by the general delegate of the event, Thierry Frémaux, announcing the programming of an edition that will be held from May 17 to 28.
The organizers made their selection among 2,200 films and included in the competition the French Arnaud Desplechin with ‘Frère et soeu’, Claire Denis with ‘Stars at noon’, shot in Central America, and Valeria Bruni Tedeschi with ‘Les amandiers’.
the canadian David Cronenberga regular at Cannes and a special jury prize in 1996 with ‘Crash’, returns with ‘Crimes of the Future’, a film that heralds one of the most coveted red carpets, with Kristen Stewart, Léa Seydoux and Viggo Mortensen among its stars .
Equally awaited will be the screening of ‘Armageddon Time’, del estadounidense James Graywith Anne Hathaway y Anthony Hopkinswithin a competition that unveiled 18 titles, none of them Spanish or Latin American, but which will be expanded in the coming days.
Back to normal
It will be an edition in which, according to Frémaux, it can be considered that fully back to normal after the pandemic: in 2020 its physical celebration was canceled due to health restrictions and in 2021 it took place in July.
The official competition is not the only one that accommodates outstanding filmmakers. It was already known that without aspiring to a prize, the biopic ‘Elvis’, by Baz Luhrmann, and the sequel to ‘Top Gun’, ‘Top Gun: Maverick’, by Joseph Kosinski, would arrive, with a Tom Cruise that he will receive a “great tribute” for “the quality of his commitment to cinema”in palabras of Frémaux.
This Thursday included, among others, the Australian George Miller with ‘Three Thousand Years of Longing’, and current events enter the festival fully with ‘Novembre’, by Frenchman Cédric Jimenez, about the investigation of the November 13 attacks 2015 in Paris, whose trial is currently taking place.
It is not the only nod to the current geopolitical context, in the midst of the war in Ukraine.
The Ukrainian Maksim Nakonechnyi will present his debut feature, ‘Butterfly Vision’, in the Un Certain Regard section, the second most important, shot just a few months ago in Donbas, and the most important documentary filmmaker in the recent history of that country, Sergei Loznitsa, will screen ‘the Natural History of Destruction’, the sequel to ‘Babi Yar. Context’, premiered last year at Cannes.
The festival had vetoed official Russian delegations in line with the sanctions imposed by the international community, but has opened its doors to Kirill Serebrennikov, who left his country and competes with a film about Tchaikovsky’s wife.
Ethan Cohen with ‘Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind’ in the special sessions, Brett Morgen in the midnight ones with ‘Moonage Daydream’, where he talks about the extent to which David Bowie was interested in cinema and he was a pioneer in his video clips, or Marco Bellocchi at the Cannes Première with ‘Esterno Notte’ give equally weight to this 75th Cannes.
The contest will be opened by the French Michel Hazanavicius with ‘Z (comme Z)’, with Romain Duris and Bérénice Bejo, and for the moment it has only one Hispanic title: ‘Sunday and the Fog’, the second film by Costa Rican Ariel Escalante, selected in A Certain Regard.
“It’s very promising. We’ll see if we have a great firm of the future,” he said of him and his director Frémaux, for whom if one had to choose a common thread for this year’s selection, which is in itself “a journey through of the world”, would be “love”.