The Cannes Film Festival is Back, Promising to Make Up for Lost Time – The Films To Watch Out For. Report by Lucy Broadbent.
Last year, the streets of Cannes were eerily quiet. No celebrities. No red carpets. Not even the usual gaggle of fans along the Promenade de la Croisette.
This year, with a line up of glittering heavyweights like directors Wes Andersen and Paul Verhoeven, competing for the prestigious Palme D’Or, the 74th Cannes Film Festival is set to be a film-lover’s dream come true.
More than 2,500 films were submitted for consideration for this year’s event, according to festival director Thierry Frémaux. Of these, 24 were selected for the main competition, which also contains two rollovers from last year’s selection that have not yet been screened. The director Spike Lee will oversee the panel of judges.
Although the number of Coronavirus cases continue to rise and fall in France, the competition’s organizers, as well as the mayor of Cannes, want the show to go on, commencing July 6 to 17. Let the glamour begin. Here now follows a sneak peak at some of the the films that look set to get us all talking:
The French Dispatch
Wes Anderson’s humorous take on journalists working in Twentieth Century France, with Timothée Chalamet, Frances McDormand and Tilda Swinton.
Annette
This year’s opening film about a singer and a stand up comic whose lives turn upside down with the arrival of their child, directed by Leos Carax, starring Marion Cotillard and Adam Driver.
Benedetta
Virginie Efira plays a 17th century nun who performs miracles during a devastating plague in Paul Verhoeven’s erotic thriller.
Mothering Sunday
It’s 1924 and a maid, played by Odessa Young, gets the day off, while her employers, played by Colin Firth and Olivia Colman, attend a celebration to mark the engagement of the maid’s lover, played by Josh O’Connor.
Bergman Island
Tim Roth and Vicky Krieps play an American filmmaking couple who head to the island of Faro in the Baltic to get inspiration from Ingmar Bergman who lived and died on the island.
Memoria
Written and directed by Thai filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul, who won the Palme d’Or in 2010, this film will keep you in suspense. Tilda Swinton plays a Scottish woman who hears strange sounds in the night.
The Story of my Wife
A sea captain bets his friend that he will marry the next woman to walk in the door of the tavern where they are drinking. Lea Seydoux plays that woman, Lizzy. Set in the 1920s, and based on the Hungarian novel by Milan Fust. Directed by Ildiko Enyedi.
