Cannes is sending 24 competition films into the race.
It could be the most important edition in recent festival history. When the curtain rises again on July 6th in Cannes, the film world will celebrate its resurrection after the lockdowns, but the fight for survival has not yet been won: with the streaming portals, powerful competition has grown. Even before the pandemic, the festival led by Thierry Frémaux decided to exclude them. It is enough for 24 competition films.
The French film artist Leos Carax opens with one of his rare works: “Annette” is a musical with Marion Cotillard and Adam Driver. The American Wes Anderson has kept his film “The French Dispatch”, which was announced for last year. His homage to the magazine “The New Yorker” unites the regular actors Bill Murray, Adrian Brody and Owen Wilson with Tilda Swinton, Frances McDormand and Benicio del Toro. How many celebrities will decorate the red carpet, Frémaux left open. Everyone is invited, whoever is not vaccinated only needs a corona test.
German filmmakers are not in the main sections, but the Cologne producer Michael Weber is involved with his world distributor Match Factory in the long-awaited new work by the Thai Apichatpong Weerasethakul, “Memoria”.
Only four of the 24 films in the competition were made by women, which corresponds to the proportion from 2019. The Hungarian Berlinale winner from 2017, Ildikó Enyedi, shows “The Story of My Wife”. In “Bergman Island”, the French Mia Hansen-Løve sends an American couple to the former home of the Swedish director to write scripts there. The other two directors also come from France, Julia Ducournau with the horror play “Titane” and Catherine Corsini with the comedy drama “La fracture”.
The competition is fierce: the best-known competitors for the Golden Palm include Paul Verhoeven, Sean Penn, Joachim Trier, Jacques Audiard, Bruno Dumont, Nanni Moretti, Asghar Farhadi and François Ozon.
