Tarantino makes the final Cannes mix

DiCaprio, Pitt and Robbie on red carpet for love letter to Hollywood

by Richard Mowe

Once Upon A Time In Hollywood heads to Cannes
Once Upon A Time In Hollywood heads to Cannes Photo: Courtesy of Cannes Film Festival

The Cannes Film Festival organisers have confirmed that Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time In Hollywood has made it for the official Competition.

Thierry Frémaux, the festival’s artistic director, said: “We were afraid the film would not be ready, as it wouldn’t be ready until late July, but Quentin Tarantino, who has not left the editing room in four months, is a real, loyal and punctual child of Cannes!

"Like for Inglourious Basterds, he’ll definitely be there – 25 years after the Palme d’Or for Pulp Fiction – with a finished film screened in 35mm and his cast in tow (Leonardo DiCaprio, Margot Robbie, Brad Pitt). His film is a love letter to the Hollywood of his childhood, a rock music tour of 1969, and an ode to cinema as a whole.

"In addition to thanking Quentin and his crew for spending days and nights in the editing room, the festival wants to give special thanks to the teams at Sony Pictures, who made all of this possible.”

Other titles that have been added to the Competition mix are: Mektoub, My Love: Intermezzo by Abdellatif Kechiche, which Frémaux saw last Thursday, as it was still being edited.

Frémaux said: "But it is going to be finished and the director says it will be four hours long. And screened at the end of the Festival so the copy has time to get there. French-Tunisian director Kechiche returns to Cannes six years after his Palme d’Or for Blue Is the Warmest Colour (La Vie d’Adèle). The groundwork for this saga storytelling and extraordinary portrait of French youth in the 90s was laid in his Canto Uno, and it will be a pleasure to see its cast again.”

Gaspar Noé is a late entrant to the Midnight Screenings section with Lux Æterna in which two actresses, Béatrice Dalle and Charlotte Gainsbourg, are on a film set telling stories about witches. Frémaux added: “But that’s not all. Lux Æterna is also an essay on cinema, the love of film, and on-set hysterics. It’s a brilliant fast-paced medium-length film for Gaspar Noé's return – an unexpected one until recently – to the Official Selection, for a film that the selection committee watched at the last minute and which will be shown in a Midnight Screening as hyped as it is mysterious.”

The Un Certain Regard line-up has been boosted by the inclusion of The Bears' Famous Invasion of Sicily (La Famosa Invasione Degli Orsi In Sicilia), by Lorenzo Mattotti, adapted from Dino Buzzati's children’s book.

Frémaux said: “This animated film by illustrator and comic book author Lorenzo Mattotti is a visual extravaganza, whose graphic ingenuity and colour work will delight much wider audiences than the fans of the Italian master. With Italian voices by Toni Servillo, Antonio Albanese, and Andrea Camilleri, and French voices by Leïla Bekhti, Arthur Dupont, and Jean-Claude Carrière. Like the other Un Certain Regard film in animation The Swallows Of Kabul (Les Hirondelles de Kaboul), by Zabou Breitman and Eléa Gobbé-Mevellec, La famosa invasione degli orsi in Sicilia will also be competing in June at the acclaimed Annecy International Animated Film Festival.”

Odnazhdy v Trubchevske - a "chronicle from the village of Troubtchevsk - has also been added to Un Certain Regard. It is directed by Larissa Sadilova, who is making her first appearance at the festival.

Other Special Screenings announced today include:

  • Chicuarotes by Gael García Bernal
  • La Cordillèra De Los Sueños by Patricio Guzmán
  • Ice On Fire by Leila Conners
  • 5B by Dan Krauss

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