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Sci-fi to open Directors' Fornight

The Congress heads for Cannes.

by Richard Mowe

The Congress will open the Director's Fortnight
The Congress will open the Director's Fortnight

Although the bulk of the selection for the Cannes Film Festival Directors' Fortnight will not be revealed until Tuesday (23 April) the organisers have announced that Ari Folman’s The Congress will open the 45th edition of the section on May 16.

The part-animation and part live-action film which stars Robin Wright, Paul Giamatti, Jon Hamm, Harvey Keitel, Danny Huston and Frances Fisher, is adapted from the sci-fi novel The Futurological Congress by Polish writer Stanislaw Lem.

Folman's Waltz With Bashir was a competition film in the Official Selection in 2008.

Directors' Fortnight artistic director Edouard Waintrop in making the announcement yesterday said: “The Congress is a haunted look on our future and the future of cinema."

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Movies out this week include:

Ask E. Jean On The Sea The Sacrifice A Useful Ghost Wallace & Gromit: The Curse Of The Were-Rabbit
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Learning to let go Gloria Mercer and Bethany Brown on filming sex, drugs and A Safe Distance

Framing a feature Michele Fiascaris on expanding his short Rain Catcher into a rain-slicked noir thriller

A heroine of the people Avid Liongoren on the Filipino animation industry and Zsazsa Zaturnnah

The girl who didn't want to be happy Julien Birban Levy on the spirit of Seoul and getting inside the head of Niko

Spirit of the art Takeru Shinozuka and Yoshihide Moriyama on animation and Foxing: Kitsuné-Tsuki

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