By Sudouest.fr with AFP
Posted on 05/31/2021 10:36 a.m.
Updated on 05/31/2021 at 10:44 am
The Cannes Film Festival, the world’s largest event for the 7th art, unveils on Thursday the outlines of its first edition since the pandemic with a highly anticipated official selection, which promises to be rich in star filmmakers.
Scheduled from July 6 to 17 on the Croisette, the festival will bring together thousands of cinema professionals from around the world, happy to meet again after the cancellation of last year’s edition.
Who will go up the steps? Will the Americans be there? How to reconcile masks, sequins and sanitary measures? So many questions on which the organizers of the Festival are expected.
From Wes Anderson to Nanni Moretti
The suspense is up to the expectations of the films in the running to succeed “Parasite” by South Korean Bong Joon Ho, Palme d’Or 2019. More than 2,000 films were viewed.
The delegate general Thierry Frémaux has already confirmed three names among the films submitted to the jury, chaired by the New Yorker Spike Lee, the first African-American to occupy this function.
It is a Frenchman, Leos Carax, who will open the ball with “Annette”: the film brings together Marion Cotillard and Adam Driver, with the legendary American group Sparks with the script and the music.
In a completely different genre, Paul Verhoeven (“Basic Instinct”, “Elle”), filmmaker whose films have a scent of scandal, promises not to leave indifferent with “Benedetta” a film about a lesbian nun in the seventeenth century, interpreted by Virginie Efira.
And the American Wes Anderson will present “The French Dispatch”, a film shot in Angoulême, in the southwest of France, which was already ready for last year and will be able to provide its quota of stars on the red carpet: besides Bill Murray, the director’s favorite actor, the cast brings together Tilda Swinton, Timothée Chalamet, Adrien Brody, and on the French side, Léa Seydoux and Mathieu Amalric.
The Italian Nanni Moretti, Palme d’Or in 2001 for “La Chambre du fils”, should most certainly return with “Tre Piani”.
The last James Bond?
Abundance of films obliges, the medium is lost in conjectures on the lucky ones elected who could join them: Joel Coen, the eldest of the Coen brothers, can claim to the competition with a “Macbeth” in black and white, interpreted by Denzel Washington, just like the mystic Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Palme d’or 2010) for his first film in English outside Thailand (“Memoria”)… The competition could see the return of Catherine Deneuve (in “In his lifetime”), or the last film by Jane Campion (“The Power of the Dog”), the only woman to have won the Palme d’Or, in 1993.
A blockbuster could also be invited, probably out of competition, like the last James Bond or the next superhero film by Chloe Zhao, the American who has just won the Oscar with “Nomadland”.
The Venice Film Festival was able to be held in September, with a red carpet protected from public view to avoid crowds, but where the stars could pose without a mask. The Berlinale had resolved in March to organize an online edition.
Thursday’s press conference will also probably be an opportunity for Cannes to detail its projects and commitments in terms of parity, diversity or the environment, subjects which are now essential for the sector.
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