Much like any star studded festival – the internet is still reeling from reposting an unfathomly amount of pics from [insert celebrity name here]’s outfit at the MET Gala – in the digital age, a large focus is, naturally, celebrities. But the Cannes Film Festival is one of the few where the real celebrity is the art in question, in this case, film.
Starting today [May 14, 2024] the 77th Cannes Film Festival has some serious gems buzzing to premiere. Here’s what we know (on top of all the things we already knew).
‘Arab Cinema Centre’ presents at the Cannes Film Festival
We’ll get to the movies in a bit, but The Arab Cinema Centre (ACC) will present a series of engaging panel discussions and events during this year’s market edition at the festival. Highlighting Arab creative talent, the ACC intends to showcase the wealth of storytelling and artistic talent brewing across the MENA region, contributing to the flourishing Golden Age of Arab Cinema. Find specific dates and additional information from their official Instagram account below.
Rendez-vous avec Pol Pot (Meeting with Pol Pot)
Financed by the DFI (Doha Film Institute), Cambodian director Rithy Pahn draws from personal experiences to resurrect unrecorded memories of Cambodia. The film follows three French journalists who were invited to Cambodia by the Khmer Rogue in 1978 to meet with Pol Pot. The film will be shown in competition.
The Brink of Dreams
Directed by Nada Riyadh and Ayman El Amir and co-financed, again, by the DFI, this Egyptian film has earned a place in the Critics’ Week of the Cannes Film Festival, selected by Ava Cahen, who has served as the festival’s Artistic Director three times. This film was is 1/11 films selected from a pool of over 1,000 entries that will show during Cannes Critics’ Week, which provides a platform for emerging directors to showcase their debut or sophomore work. The IMDB description reads: “The story of a group of Coptic girls who refuse the roles forced upon them by forming an all-female street theatre troupe.”
All We Imagine as Light
This Bollywood film has broken a 30-year history of unluckiness by landing a spot in the festival’s Main Competition. The last Indian film to compete for the prestigious Palme d’Or, Swaham, showed at the festival in 1994. Written and directed by female auteur, Payal Kapadia, the film’s IMDB description reads: “In Mumbai, Nurse Prabha’s routine is troubled when she receives an unexpected gift from her estranged husband. Her younger roommate, Anu, tries in vain to find a spot in the city to be intimate with her boyfriend.”
Kinds of Kindness
Greece’s own, Kafkaesque weirdo (I mean that as an unequivocal compliment) Yorgos Lanthimos has made a quick return to the program after Poor Things was nominated for, and won multiple, Oscars just a few months ago, with yet another, presumably existential trip, Kinds of Kindness. Starring returning talent, Emma Stone and Willem Dafoe, the former who won an Oscar for Poor Things, this film is noticeably more realistic than his latest effort. Although not much is given from the trailer, the IMDB description reads: “A man seeks to break free from his predetermined path, a cop questions his wife’s demeanor after her return from a supposed drowning, and a woman searches for an extraordinary individual prophesied to become a renowned spiritual guide.” Sure, Poor Things was terrific, but this film bears much more resemblance to Lanthimos’s earlier (and in my opinion, best) work, such as Dogtooth and The Lobster.
Megalopolis
We’ve already sounded the alarm bells for this eagerly awaited, 40-years-in-the-making, self-funded epic from one of cinema’s greatest, most revered talents, Francis Ford Coppola. The writer/director helmed film starring Adam Driver will be shown in competition for the Palme d’Or. The IMDB description reads: “An architect wants to rebuild New York City as a utopia following a devastating disaster.” Coppola has won the Palme d’Or twice in the past, for The Conversation (1974) and Apocalypse Now (1979). If you haven’t seen either of those, especially the latter, then we need you to seriously reevaluate what you do for fun.
The Shrouds
David Cronenberg returns to Cannes only two years after showing Crimes of The Future which featured the unforgettable man covered in human ears. His latest film is about a grieving widower who builds a device to connect with the dead inside a burial shroud. Cronenberg lost his own wife in 2017, so this film is said to be one of his most personal, and as Scorsese once said, “the most personal is the most creative.” Starring Vincent Cassel, Diane Kruger and Guy Pearce, sadly, there is no trailer available yet, but the poster looks proper eerie.
The Most Precious of Cargoes
The first animated film to be shown in competition since 2008’s Waltz with Bashir and directed by the Oscar-winner behind The Artist, this film tells the story of a twin thrown to safety from a death train transporting his Jewish parents to Auschwitz.
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
Not much more can be said about this eagerly anticipated sequel to Mad Max: Fury Road, other than that a) it looks awesome and b) it’s one of the few contemporary sequels/remakes that deserves every inch of praise its generated. The film will be shown out of competition on May 15.
And if you’re curious about the Arab filmmakers who be making history at the festival, click here.
