The Cannes Festival remains the global center of the world of film art, as the program press conference for the 76th edition on Thursday once again confirmed. When it kicks off in May, big American names – Martin Scorsese, Wes Anderson, Todd Haynes, the fifth installment in the “Indiana Jones” series – will meet celebrated auteur filmmakers from the rest of the world: Ken Loach, Marco Bellocchio, Alice Rohrwacher, Nanni Moretti, Catherine Breillat, Kore-eda Hirokazu, Aki Kaurismäki – and even twice on Wim Wenders.
The presence of Scorsese’s long-awaited magnum opus “Killers of the Flower Moon,” starring Leonardo DiCaprio and about historical crimes on the Osage County Indian Reservation, signals an attempt at an arrangement with the streaming services, in this case Apple TV+. The platform, which is already planning a movie theater offensive in the USA, agreed to bring the film about Paramount to cinemas in France, and there was a place for it in the official program. That would not have been possible with Netflix, the streaming market leader rejects longer cinema windows and therefore remains sulkingly away from Cannes.
There were no such problems with Wes Anderson, whose star-studded ensemble film “Asteroid City” is in competition. You don’t have to announce anything big, said Cannes festival director Thierry Frémaux, this is “simply a Wes Anderson film”. You can guess what he means – it’s about a gathering of young stargazers in 1955, at which cosmic events then cause excitement.
The first joint appearance of the new dual leadership, Frémaux and Knobloch
Wim Wenders is represented in the competition with “Perfect Days” and is also showing “Anselm – The Noise of Time”, his new documentary about the artist Anselm Kiefer, as a special screening. However, one hesitates to claim “Perfect Days” as a purely German contribution – the film takes place in Tokyo, as Thierry Frémaux revealed, and has a Japanese leading actor, Koji Yakusho. In debating “The Noise of Time”, Frémaux had help from Iris Knobloch, the new President of Cannes, German-born but raised in France’s film distribution scene – the future tandem at the helm of the festival made their first appearance together here.
The six directors in this year’s competition – there have never been more in Cannes – include, for example, the Austrian filmmaker Jessica Hausner with “Club Zero”, she tells a story inspired by the “Pied Piper of Hamelin”. She is supported by the directors Justine Triet with “Anatomie d’une chute”, Alice Rohrwacher with “La Chimera”, Catherine Breillat with “L’été dernier”, Ramata-Toulaye Sy with her debut film “Banel et Adama” and Kaouther Ben Hania with “Les Filles D’Olfa”. The latter two, from Senegal and Tunisia respectively, lead a delegation of African filmmakers, which this time is particularly well represented in all sections.
The opening film “Jeanne du Barry”, which is screened out of competition, was also directed by a Frenchwoman Maïwenn. She tells of the mistress of the French King Louis XV, who is played by Johnny Depp, and also plays this leading role herself. The German actress Sandra Hüller, who celebrated her international breakthrough in Cannes with “Toni Erdmann”, is two international films – starring in Justine Triet and British director Jonathan Glazer’s ‘Zone of Interest’.