Cannes 2015: Un Certain Regard

An (Jap)
Dir Naomi Kawase

Opening film

‘An’ is the name of the sweet red-bean paste that fills the centre of traditional Japanese pastries called dorayakis. Kawase’s new feature is about the friendship between a baker and an older woman, who bond over a passion for the pastries. Toshiyuki Nagase and Kirin Kiki star. Kawase is a Cannes veteran whose films have played in Competition four times previously (Shara, The Mourning Forest, Hanezu and Still The Water), with The Mourning Forest winning the Grand Jury Prix in 2007, while her debut film, Suzaku, won the Camera d’Or in 1997 in Directors’ Fortnight. An is produced by Kawase’s Kumie Inc and her long-time collaborator Comme des Cinémas based in Paris.

Contact MK2   juliette.schrameck@mk2.com

Alias Maria (Col-Arg-Fr)
Dir Jose Luis Rugeles Gracia

This drama stars newcomer Karen Torres as Maria, a 13-year-old Colombian guerrilla who must go on the run after her superiors learn that she is pregnant, which is forbidden. Alias Maria is the second feature from director Rugeles Gracia, who will be making his first trip to the Croisette. His debut feature, 2010’s Garcia, was a dark crime caper about a middle-aged security guard who discovers that his wife has been kidnapped.

Contact Urban Distribution International  eric@urbandistrib.com

Cemetery Of Splendour (Thai-UK-Fr-Ger-Malay)
Dir Apichatpong Weerasethakul

Thai director Apichatpong scooped the Palme d’Or in 2010 with his otherworldly Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives. He was previously in Competition with Tropical Malady (2004) and in Un Certain Regard with Blissfully Yours (2002). Apichatpong - these days as much at home on the art gallery circuit as he is at festivals - returns with a film set in his home town Khon Kaen, where a middle-aged woman experiences strange visions while tending a soldier with sleeping sickness. The film’s production companies include the UK’s Illuminations Films, France’s Anna Sanders Films and the director’s own Kick The Machine.

Contact The Match Factory info@matchfactory.de

The Chosen Ones (Mex)
Dir David Pablos

Hailing from San Sebastian’s 2014 Europe-Latin America Co-Production Forum, the Mexican child prostitution drama The Chosen Ones (Las Elegidas) is produced by the hip Canana production company that was founded by Pablo Cruz, Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna. Canana’s El Ardor co-producer Manny Films of France is also on board.

Contact Mundial cristina_garza@mundialsales.com

Disorder (Fr-Bel)
Dir Alice Winocour

Winocour follows her lauded debut Augustine (which played in Critics’ Week in 2012) with this Antibes-shot psychological thriller about a former French Special Forces soldier suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, who has to protect the wife and child of a wealthy Lebanese businessman. Matthias Schoenaerts and Diane Kruger lead the international cast. Mars Distribution has French theatrical rights for an autumn 2015 launch. Producers are Isabelle Madelaine for Dharamsala and Emilie Tisné for Darius Films.

Contact Indie Sales info@indiesales.eu

Fly Away Solo (Fr-Ind)
Dir Neeraj Ghaywan

Ghaywan’s debut feature, Fly Away Solo (Masaan), is a France-India co-production between Mélita Toscan du Plantier and Marie-Jeanne Pascal at Macassar Productions, Anurag Kashyap’s Phantom Films and The Lunchbox producer Guneet Monga. The film is about four frustrated lives that intersect in Benares, the holy city on the banks of the Ganges. Pathé handles international sales and will also release in France on June 24. Ghaywan, who previously worked as an assistant director for Kashyap on 2012 Directors’ Fortnight selection Gangs Of Wasseypur, won the Sundance Institute/Mahindra Global Filmmaking Award for Fly Away Solo in 2014.

Contact Pathé International muriel.sauzay@pathe.com

The Fourth Direction (Fr-Ind)
Dir Gurvinder Singh

Based on two short stories by Waryam Singh Sandhu, The Fourth Direction (Chauthi Koot) uses mostly non-professional actors for its Punjab-set tale, which takes place in 1984 during India’s tumultuous groundswell for a Sikh separatist state. Director Singh is making his Cannes premiere with this follow-up to his debut, Alms For A Blind Horse, which was unveiled at the Venice Film Festival in 2011. For The Fourth Direction, Singh reunites with his Alms director of photography Satya Nagpaul. The pair were honoured on that film with awards for best direction and best cinematography at India’s National Film Awards.

Contact The Film Café kartikeyanarayansingh@gmail.com

The High Sun (Cro-Slov-Serb)
Dir Dalibor Matanic

This Croatian drama comes from a Zagreb-born writer-director best known for his 2002 feature Fine Dead Girls but who has also had two shorts in Cannes: Drought (2003) in Directors’ Fortnight and Party in Critics’ Week (2009). Matanic’s The High Sun (Zvizdan) is about forbidden love across national borders - a tale that starts just before the Balkan war in 1991 and travels through to 2011. As producer Ankica Juric Tilic puts it, it is “a film about love, purely and simply”.

Contact Sebastien Chesneau, Cercamon   sebastien@cercamon.biz

I Am A Soldier (Fr-Bel)
Dir Laurent Lariviere

French director Lariviere has chalked up various awards on the festival circuit with his shorts, which he has been making since 1999 and include L’Un Dans L’Autre and J’ai Pris La Foudre. He has also published fiction, as well as creating stage work that mixes live drama and cinema. This debut feature, whose producers include Dominique Besnehard of Mon Voisin Productions, stars Louise Bourgoin and Jean-Hugues Anglade. It tells the story of a woman who finds herself in a very male world after taking a job with her uncle, and getting involved in a dog-trafficking racket.

Contact Le Pacte c.neel@le-pacte.com

Journey To The Shore (Jap)
Dir Kiyoshi Kurosawa

Best known for horror movies such as The Cure, Kurosawa won the Un Certain Regard prize for his 2008 family drama Tokyo Sonata. He returns to Cannes with Journey To The Shore (Kishibe No Tabi), an adaptation of Kazumi Yumoto’s novel about a wife (Eri Fukatsu) who discovers that her husband (Tadanobu Asano), who was presumed dead three years ago, is still alive - and now wants her to meet the people who helped him during his disappearance. The director’s Bright Future was in Competition in 2003, while 1999’s Charisma screened in Directors’ Fortnight and 2001’s Pulse in Un Certain Regard.

Contact MK2 juliette.schrameck@mk2.com

Lamb (Ethiopia)
Dir Yared Zeleke

Reportedly the first Ethiopian film to feature in Cannes’ official selection, Lamb centres on a nine-year-old boy in famine-ravaged Ethiopia and the pet lamb that is his constant companion. An NYU graduate, director Zeleke secured funding for this first feature at the Cannes Cinéfondation L’Atelier in 2013. Co-produced by Gloria Films (France) and Heimatfilm (Germany), Lamb is the first offering of Slum Kid Films, a new company launched by Dublin-based Nigerian producer Ama Ampadu that aims to nurture emerging African talents.

Contact Films Distribution info@filmsdistribution.com

Madonna (Kor)
Dir Shin Su-won

Acclaimed South Korean film-maker Shin returns to the Croisette with her third feature, about a hospital caregiver who is asked to assist in an organ donation by the unscrupulous son of an important patient. Shin left her mark in 2012 when she picked up the Canal Plus Prize in Critics’ Week for her short film Circle Line. A former secondary school teacher, her latest film stars Seo Young-hee, who featured in The Chaser and Bedevilled.

Contact Finecut  cineinfo@finecut.co.kr

Nahid (Iran)
Dir Ida Panahandeh

Tehran-born Panahandeh makes her feature debut at Cannes, having previously made shorts and TV movies for Iranian state TV. The director has shown a commitment to women’s rights in her documentaries and this concern is also reflected in Nahid, which centres on a young divorcee in a small northern Iranian city who wants to remarry but risks losing custody of her son if she does so. Sareh Bayat, who shared the best actress prize at Berlin in 2011 with her female co-stars in Asghar Farhadi’s A Separation, stars as Nahid.

Contact Noori Pictures info@nooripictures.com

One Floor Below (Rom-Fr-Ger-Swe)
Dir Radu Muntean

Less celebrated than some of his Romanian New Wave colleagues, Muntean began to make a name for himself with his third feature, Boogie (aka Sumer Holiday), which screened in Directors’ Fortnight in 2008, and his fourth, sleeper indie hit Tuesday, After Christmas, which premiered in Un Certain Regard in 2010. The director is back in Cannes with One Floor Below (Un Etaj Mai Jos), a drama about a middle-aged man (Teodor Corban from 12:08 East Of Bucharest) who is the only witness to a domestic quarrel that ends in murder. Muntean’s rising stock is demonstrated by the four-territory co-production and by a raft of backers including Film i Vast and HBO Romania.

Contact Films Boutique info@filmsboutique.com

The Other Side (Fr-It)
Dir Roberto Minervini

Minervini’s French-Italian documentary, his fourth feature, reveals a marginalised community of retired war veterans, uncommunicative teens and drug addicts in rural America. The Italian writer-director reteams with producer Denise Ping Lee after the duo’s 2013 drama Stop The Pounding Heart secured a Special Screening berth at Cannes. Minervini is one of four Italians to screen in official selection this year. Lucky Red will distribute in Italy.

Contact Doc & Film International sales@docandfilm.com

Rams (Ice-Den)
Dir Grimur Hakonarson

Following 2010’s Summerland, Icelandic director Hakonarson’s second feature Rams (Hrutar) tells the tale of two estranged brothers who have to reunite to save their sheep during an outbreak of disease. The Iceland-Denmark co-production was shot in the Icelandic farming valley of Bardardalur. Thor Sigurjonsson, whose credits include Only God Forgives and Z For Zachariah, is one of the film’s executive producers. DoP Sturla Brandth Grovlen won Berlin’s Silver Bear for shooting the single-take Victoria.

Contact New Europe Film Sales jan@neweuropefilmsales.com

The Shameless (Kor)
Dir Oh Seung-uk

Oh’s first film in 15 years follows a detective who forms a friendship with the girlfriend of a killer, only for their relationship to descend into turmoil. Oh was a prominent screenwriter in Korea in the 1990s whose credits include Green Fish by director Lee Chang-dong, with whom he made a number of films. Oh’s feature directing debut Kilimanjaro  (2000) received a strong critical reception. Jeon Do-yeon, who won the best actress prize in Cannes in 2007 for her role in Lee Chang-dong’s Secret Sunshine, stars in The Shameless alongside Kim Nam-gil (The Pirates). The film opens in Korea on May 27.

Contact CJ Entertainment filmsales@cj.net

Taklub (Thai)
Dir Brillante Mendoza

Filipino film-maker Mendoza previously turned up in Competition in Cannes with Service in 2008 and Kinatay in 2009, winning best director for the latter, while his foster-care drama Foster Child screened in Directors’ Fortnight in 2007. His latest tells the story of three survivors picking up the pieces after the devastating 2009 typhoon Haiyan, which killed more than 6,000 people. Legendary Filipina actress Nora Aunor, who appeared in Lino Brocka’s 1981 Directors’ Fortnight entry Bona, takes the lead.

Contact Films Distribution info@filmsdistribution.com

The Treasure (Rom-Fr)
Dir Corneliu Porumboiu

It’s been a while since Romanian director Porumboiu’s arthouse hit 12:08 East Of Bucharest, a Directors’ Fortnight entry that won the Camera d’Or for best first film at the 2006 festival. Since his Un Certain Regard entry Police, Adjective in 2009, Porumboiu has traced an increasingly experimental route, but he is back in more conventional comedy-drama territory with The Treasure (Comoara), which Wild Bunch describes as a “tender black comedy” about a young father who is roped into a suburban treasure hunt by a neighbour. It stars Cuzin Toma, whose credits include Radu Jude’s Berlin Competition entry Aferim!.

Contact Wild Bunch obarbier@wildbunch.eu