Sandrine Kiberlain’s first production will be presented at the Critics’ Week in Cannes. – FRANCK CASTEL / MPP / SIPA
For its 60th anniversary, Critics’ Week, organized during the Cannes Film Festival, wants to continue to explore “the cinema to come”. The selection, unveiled this Monday, aligns seven feature films in competition, all first films, and six others in special screenings, among more than 1,000 viewed by the selectors, slightly less than in other years.
Many films show “characters who fight, stories of emancipation of boys or female characters, the desire to forge one’s path, to go all the way,” Charles Tesson told AFP , the general delegate.
A jury chaired by Cristian Mungiu
Among the films in competition submitted to the jury chaired by Romanian filmmaker Cristian Mungiu (Palme d’Or 2007), all first films and only one French work: Nothing to give a fuck, by Julie Lecoustre and Emmanuel Marre with Adèle Exarchopoulos, flight attendant for a low cost company.
The other films in competition come from Egypt (Feathers, by Omar El Zohairy) the story of a father turned into a chicken during a magic trick that goes wrong, from Colombia (Amparo, by Simón Mesa Soto), portrait of a woman in a country in civil war, or sailing between Switzerland and Ukraine (Olga by Elie Grappe).
A first for Sandrine Kiberlain
The opening film (out of competition), Robust, by Constance Meyer, according to the organizers, reveals “a Gérard Depardieu as we had rarely seen, surprisingly authentic”, facing Deborah Lukumuena, one of the young revelations of Divine.
Actress Sandrine Kiberlain will present her directorial debut feature in a special screening, A young girl who is doing well, portrait “of a 19-year-old Jewish girl, Irene, who aspires to become an actress under the Occupation in 1942”.
The selection for Critics’ Week is equal: seven directors and seven female directors (for 30% of films by female directors among the 1,000 films viewed). “We are not starting from an obsession with the 50/50”, underlined Charles Tesson. “We start from the films themselves, and we are happy to achieve this joint result”.
Critics ‘Week (July 7 to 15), one of Cannes’ main parallel sections, will celebrate its 60th anniversary this year. “Our identity remains that of our origin, of new cinema: a pioneering spirit, to see where things are moving in the world map of cinema, where new things are born”, he added.