By Cannes is one of, if not the most-esteemed film festivals in the modern circuit, hosting the premieres of the hottest, most-abstract, “I-don’t-get-it-but-everyone-else-loves-it” films and filmmakers in the medium. For its 72nd incarnation, the lineup for competition has been unveiled, with a couple of suspicions confirmed and surprises dropped.
The poster for this year’s Festival features the late Agnes Varda, the French New Wave filmmaker who not only broke cinematic molds, but championed women in filmmaking. She also just seemed like a remarkably down-to-Earth lady, especially when you get pomp by the pound from so many lauded artists.
In Competition for the top-prize (Palm d’Or) are:
Pain and Glory (Pedro Almodóvar)
The Traitor (Marco Bellocchio)
The Wild Goose Lake (Diao Yinan)
Young Ahmed (Jean-Pierre Dardenne & Luc Dardenne)
Oh Mercy! (Arnaud Desplechin)
Fire Next Time (Mati Diop)
Matthias and Maxime (Xavier Dolan)
Little Joe (Jessica Hausner)
The Dead Don’t Die (Jim Jarmusch)
Sorry We Missed You (Ken Loach)
Les misérables (Ladj Ly)
A Hidden Life (Terrence Malick)
Nighthawk (Kleber Mendonça Filho & Juliano Dornelles)
The Whistlers (Corneliu Porumboiu)
Frankie (Ira Sachs)
Portrait of a Lady on Fire (Céline Sciamma)
It Must Be Heaven (Elia Suleiman)
Sibyl (Justine Triet)
Playing out of competition are the following:
The Best Years of a Life (Claude Lelouch)
Too Old To Die Young (Nicolas Winding Refn)
Diego Maradona (Asif Kapadia)
La Belle Époque (Nicolas Bedos)
Featured in Un Certain Regard, the polite way of saying wilder stuff, or films with an “alternate vibe,” are:
Invisible Life (Karim Aïnouz)
Beanpole (Kantemir Balagov)
The Swallows of Kabul (Zabou Breitman & Eléa Gobé Mévellec)
A Brother’s Love (Monia Chokri)
The Climb (Michael Covino)
Jeanne (Bruno Dumont)
A Sun That Never Sets (Olivier Laxe)
Room 212 (Christophe Honoré)
Port Authority (Danielle Lessovitz)
Papicha (Mounia Meddour)
Adam (Maryam Touzani)
Zhuo Ren Mi Mi (Midi Z)
Liberté (Albert Serra)
Bull (Annie Silverstein)
Summer of Changsha (Zu Feng)
And Special Screenings include:
Tommaso (Abel Ferrara)
Share (Pippa Bianco)
For Sama (Waad Al Kateab & Edward Watts)
Etre vivant et le savoir (Alain Cavalier)
Family Romance, L.L.C (Werner Herzog)
Que Sea Ley (Juan Solanas)
with a Midnight Screening of The Gangster, The Cop, The Devil (Lee Won-Tae)
I admit to having very little clue about most of these films, though many of the filmmakers I know of. Potentially the splashiest name would be Quentin Tarantino, whose Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is in the cutting room now, with potential to premiere at Cannes should it finish on time.
There are a few films which I’ve been hearing about that I linked to further information above, with many others set to be truly unveiled when the Festival starts its run from May 14th to 25th.
Cannes 2019 Lineup Includes New Films from Terrence Malick, Bong Joon-ho, Jessica Hausner & More [The Film Stage]