Eye For Film >> News >> Linklater, Anderson, and Chomet grab Cannes limelight

Linklater, Anderson, and Chomet grab Cannes limelight

Dardennes, Reichardt and Trier also make cut as selection revealed

by Richard Mowe

With new high profile titles from the likes of Wes Anderson, Richard Linklater, Dominik Moll, Julia Ducournau, Sylvain Chomet, Kelly Reichardt and many more this year’s Cannes Film Festival is shaping up to be a bumper crop as familiar names mingle with comparative unknowns.

As already announced Tom Cruise will be back on the Croisette with Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning, while Robert De Niro is line for an honorary Palme d’Or at the 78th edition.

The Magnificent Life of Marcel Pagnol will join the special screenings Photo: Festival de Cannes

Festival director Thierry Fremaux, who unveiled the selection at a media gathering in Paris alongside president Iris Knobloch, revealed that the festival received a record number of 2909 submissions. The selection is dedicated to the Belgian actress Emilie Dequenne who recently passed away at the age of 43.

Among the attention-grabbers will be Richard Linklater and his French-language Nouvelle Vague, about the making of Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless and the birth of the French New Wave.

Festival favourite Wes Anderson will also be back on the Riviera with The Phoenician Scheme, the story of a family business starring Benicio del Toro, Mia Threapleton, Michael Cera, Tom Hanks and Scarlett Johansson. He’s been to Cannes with Asteroid City, The French Dispatch and Moonrise Kingdom, which opened the festival in 2012. Johansson will also be in town as a director, with Eleanor The Great showing in Un Certain Regard.

There will also be much buzz around Midsommar director Ari Aster with his Western black comedy Eddington starring Emma Stone and Joaquin Phoenix.

Those regular auteurs Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne rarely miss out on a Cannes selection - and they feature again in the crop with social drama The Young Mother’s Home. From Italy Mario Martone returns to the Croisette with Fuori, a biopic of feminist writer Goliarda Sapienza starring Valeria Golino.

Also finding a Cannes berth are Rebecca Zlotowski’s Vie Privée, a Paris-set thriller starring Jodie Foster and Daniel Auteuil, and Fatih Akin’s 1945-set Amrum, re-teaming the director with In The Fade star Diane Kruger and based on the autobiographical novel of screenwriter Hark Bohm.

Frémaux confessed intrigue for the title of new German Mascha Schilinski film - The Doctor Says I’ll Be Alright, But I’m Feelin’ Blue and admitted he preferred its original title to its festival title which will be Sound Of Falling. The film spans four decades and revolves around four young women. Schilinski is one of six female directors in the Competition, underlined Frémaux - two more than last year.

They include Julia Ducournau, whose Alpha provides a genre follow-up to Palme d’Or-winning body horror Titane and stars Golshifteh Farahani and Tahar Rahim while Brazilian critic-turned-director Kleber Mendonça Filho’s The Secret Agent is a political thriller is set in the late 1970s during the final years of Brazil’s military dictatorship. Reichardt, brings her crime drama The Mastermind, starring John Magaro.

Among the Special Screenings, Sylvain Chomet’s hotly anticipated animation The Magnificent Life Of Marcel Pagnol celebrates the legendary cinema pioneer, playwright and novelist.

As previously announced, Juliette Binoche will preside over the jury. It is expected for some additional titles to be added to the array over the next couple of weeks.

The Cannes Film Festival runs from: 13 to 24 May.

Official selection

Competition