Thirty-seven years after his last participation in the official competition of the Cannes Film Festival with the hallucinated After Hours, here comes Martin Scorsese again. As the boss of the great raout, Thierry Frémaux, had suggested, the Italian-American filmmaker will present his new film, Killers of the Flower Moon, “world premiere” May 20, at the Grand Théâtre Lumière. It is through a press release hailing a man who has “dedicated his life to the seventh art” that the Festival announced the news this Friday, stressing that this screening will take place “in agreement with Apple Original Films”, the producer.
Based on David Grann’s bestseller and written by Eric Roth and Martin Scorsese himself, Killers of the Flower Moon is set in Oklahoma in the 1920s and traces the serial murders of members of the Osage indigenous people, who had made their fortune from the oil present under their land. The film brings together two of the filmmaker’s favorite actors, Robert De Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio. It will be released in theaters in France on October 18 before being posted on Apple’s streaming platform.
A good catch for the festival whose diplomacy with films from American platforms is a delicate matter, which has regularly earned it the pawn of the Venice festival. Scorsese’s history with Cannes goes back to his Palme d’Or obtained in 1976 for Taxi Driver. He then returned regularly to the official selection and won the prize for directing for After Hours, ten years after. In 1998, he chaired the jury that crowned the Greek Theo Angelopoulos for eternity and a day. In mid-April, the traditional press conference will reveal the details of the sections of the official selection, including the list of films in competition for the Palme d’Or.