The full line-up of Directors’ Fortnight world premieres at the 68th Cannes Film Festival with details on each title including sales contacts.
In The Shadow Of Women (Fr)
Dir Philippe Garrel
Opening film
French director Garrel was present at the first edition of the then rebel section Directors’ Fortnight in 1969 with his Bible-inspired The Virgin’s Bed. He returns with a tangled tale of love and betrayal revolving around a documentary-maker who drops his mistress after he discovers his long-term partner also has a lover. Garrel, whose actor son Louis makes his directorial debut in Critics’ Week, competed for the Palme d’Or in 2008 with Frontier Of The Dawn and won the Perspectives du Cinéma Award at the festival in 1984 with Liberté, La Nuit.
Contact Wild Bunch obarbier@wildbunch.eu
Dope (US)
Dir Rick Famuyiwa
Closing film
Famuyiwa’s rap-infused coming-of-age story was a Sundance hit and makes the time-honoured trek from Park City to the Cote d’Azur. Shameik Moore stars as a teen from Los Angeles’ badlands who aspires to attend Harvard and finds himself into a spot of bother when he attends an underground party. Open Road and Sony took Dope off the table for US and international respectively after its world premiere in Park City.
Contact Open Road (US); Sony Pictures Releasing (international)
Arabian Nights (Port-Fr-Ger)
Dir Miguel Gomes
The fourth feature from experimental film-maker Gomes, best known for the award-winning Tabu in 2012, is an ambitious six-hour plus drama based on the folk tales One Thousand And One Arabian Nights and set in present-day Portugal. The film is split into three volumes (The Restless One, The Desolate One and The Enchanted One), took a year to shoot and drew inspiration from real-life headlines in Portugal as it struggled under the economic crisis. This is the first time in Cannes with a film for Gomes, who was head of the Critics’ Week jury in 2013.
Contact The Match Factory info@matchfactory.de
Beyond My Grandfather Allende (Chile-Mex)
Dir Marcia Tambutti Allende
Allende’s documentary is a personal essay about her grandfather Salvador Allende, the socialist ruler of Chile who was overthrown in 1973 in a CIA-sponsored coup. Beyond My Grandfather Allende explores the interplay between his public and private lives.
Contact Doc & Film International sales@docandfilm.com
The Brand New Testament (Lux-Fra-Bel)
Dir Jaco Van Dormael
Belgian director Van Dormael launched his career in Directors’ Fortnight back in 1991 with Toto The Hero, which won the Camera d’Or, and played in Competition in 1996 with The Eighth Day, which picked up best actor prizes for Daniel Auteuil and Pascal Duquenne. Van Dormael returns with a religious satire in which God exists and lives in Brussels, where he treats his wife and his young daughter very badly. In revenge, his daughter publishes everybody’s dying day on the internet. Catherine Deneuve features in an ensemble cast that includes Benoit Poelvoorde as God and Yolande Moreau as God’s wife.
Contact Le Pacte c.neel@le-pacte.com
Cowboys (Fr-Bel)
Dir Thomas Bidegain
This is the much anticipated directorial debut of one of France’s hottest writers. Bidegain’s credits include A Prophet, for which he won a César, Rust And Bone and Saint Laurent. Cowboys is the story of a father and his son’s search across continents for his daughter following her disappearance with her boyfriend, a suspected Islamic fundamentalist. Belgium’s Francois Damiens stars with young newcomer Finnegan Oldfield (who also appears in Clément Cogitore’s Critics’ Week selection The Wakhan Front). Bidegain wrote the script with his regular collaborator, Noé Debré; the pair also co-wrote Audiard’s Competition entry Dheepan.
Contact Pathé International muriel.sazay@pathe.com
Embrace Of The Serpent (Col-Ven-Arg)
Dir Ciro Guerra
Anticipation surrounds Guerra’s return to the Croisette after the Colombian’s acclaimed 2009 Un Certain Regard entry The Wind Journeys. His new film chronicles the friendship between an Amazonian shaman and two scientists and claims to be the first film to shoot in the Colombian jungle in three decades. Screen Future Leader Cristina Gallego of Colombia’s Ciudad Lunar produced with Venezuela’s NorteSur and MC Producciones and Buffalo.
Contact Films Boutique info@filmsboutique.com
Fatima (Fr-Can)
Dir Philippe Faucon
Faucon’s debut film L’Amour won Cannes’ Perspectives du Cinéma Award in 1990 and he is back with his ninth feature Fatima, which explores the struggles between first and second-generation immigrants. Fatima is a single mother who arrived in Lyon from Morocco 20 years earlier. With the gap between Arabic-speaking Fatima and her French-speaking teenage daughters becoming intolerable, she resolves to learn French. Faucon’s Istiqlal Films produced and the film is being released by Pyramide Films in France.
Contact Pyramide International sales@pyramidefilms.com
Green Room (US)
Dir Jeremy Saulnier
Saulnier is back in Directors’ Fortnight after his 2013 drama Blue Ruin won the Fipresci Prize and marked him out as a red-hot talent. Green Room stays in the gritty hinterland of its predecessor and centres on a punk band caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. Patrick Stewart stars as the head of a white supremacist group. Upstart distributor Broad Green Pictures, which not long ago acquired a 45% stake in Mister Smith Entertainment, produced and financed.
Contact WestEnd Films info@westendfilms.com
The Here After (Fr-Pol-Swe)
Dir Magnus von Horn
Von Horn’s feature debut following several award-winning shorts (Echo, Without Snow) is the story of a man released from prison after serving time for his ex-girlfriend’s murder. Life on the outside overwhelms him until he meets the mother of the girl he killed. The Here After is produced by Tom Dercourt and Sophie Erbs of France’s Cinema Defacto and Screen Future Leader Mariusz Wlodarski of Poland’s Lava Films. Sweden-born Von Horn studied at the National Film School in Lodz, Poland, and is based in Warsaw.
Contact Lava Films lava@lavafilms.pl
Much Loved (Mor-Fr)
Dir Nabil Ayouch
Ayouch’s Horses Of God made a big splash in Un Certain Regard in 2012. Back with his new feature in Directors’ Fortnight, Ayouch continues his exploration of life in contemporary Morocco for those on society’s margins. This time he turns his attention to the lives and loves of four prostitutes. Ayouch spent 18 months researching the film, which is produced by Morocco’s New District, Ayouch’s Ali n’ Productions and France’s Barney Production and Les Films du Nouveau Monde. Celluloid Dreams is releasing in France later this year.
Contact Celluloid Dreams sales@celluloid-dreams.com
Mustang (Fr-Ger-Turk)
Dir Deniz Gamze Erguven
The debut feature of award-winning shorts director Erguven, who won acclaim for Bir Damla Su, her graduation film from Paris’s La Fémis film school, is the story of five sisters growing up in a remote Turkish village who attempt to assimilate into the modern world, despite the pull of tradition from their family and community. Mustang is produced by France’s CG Cinema, with Germany’s Vistamar and Turkey’s BAM Films. Ad Vitem has French rights.
Contact Kinology gmareschi@kinology.eu
My Golden Days (Fr)
Dir Arnaud Desplechin
Described by Director’s Fortnight’s artistic director Edouard Waintrop as “maybe his best and most moving film”, Desplechin’s My Golden Days (Trois Souvenirs De Ma Jeunesse) revisits the childhood of Paul Dedalus, the protagonist of the director’s 1996 film My Sex Life… Or How I Got Into An Argument, who also featured in his 2008 feature A Christmas Tale. Both premiered in Competition at Cannes. My Golden Days is Desplechin’s first film in Directors’ Fortnight. Mathieu Amalric returns to the role of Paul Dedalus and is joined by newcomers Quentin Dolmaire and Lou Roy-Lecollinet. The film is produced by Why Not Productions, with Le Pacte releasing in France.
Contact Wild Bunch obarbier@wildbunch.eu
Peace To Us In Our Dreams (Lith-Fr)
Dir Sharunas Bartas
Acclaimed Lithuanian film-maker Bartas has written, directed and stars in this film about a fragile young family whose tensions are unblinkingly exposed during a country-house weekend. Janja Kralj of France’s KinoElektron has co-produced the film with Lithuania’s Studija Cinema and Russia’s Look Film. NDM, the nascent international sales arm of Mexican auteur Carlos Reygadas and his producer Jaime Romandia’s Mexico City-based production outfit Mantarraya Producciones, is selling the film worldwide.
Contact NDM fm@mantarraya.com
A Perfect Day (Sp)
Dir Fernando Leon de Aranoa
Olga Kurylenko, Benicio del Toro and Tim Robbins star in the English-language debut of popular Spanish director Leon de Aranoa (Mondays In The Sun). The ironically titled comedy drama follows a group of aid workers in a war zone as they try to haul a corpse out of a well before it poisons the water supply. This will be the first time in Cannes for the four-time Goya award-winning director, whose company Reposado produced the film with Jaume Roures’ MediaPro. WestEnd has pre-sold the film to a raft of territories including France (TF1/UGC), Germany (X Verleih) and Israel (United King). Universal Spain opened the film at home on April 28.
Contact WestEnd Films info@westendfilms.com
Songs My Brothers Taught Me (US)
Dir Chloé Zhao
Born in Beijing, schooled in London and the US and currently a student in NYU’s Graduate Film programme, Zhao arrives in Cannes with her debut feature, which played in competition at Sundance Film Festival and centres on the relationship between a brother and sister on the Native American reservation of Pine Ridge. Zhao spent months on the reservation filming real pow-wows, homecomings, rodeos and protests, and nearly everyone on screen is from Pine Ridge. Producers include actor Forest Whitaker and Nina Yang Bongiovi, who previously backed Ryan Coogler’s Fruitvale Station.
Contact Fortissimo Films info@fortissimo.nl
Yakuza Apocalypse: The Great War Of The Underworld (Jap)
Dir Takashi Miike
Special Screening Prolific and controversial Japanese film-maker Miike returns to Cannes after previously playing in Competition with Hara-Kiri: Death Of A Samurai in 2011 and Shield Of Straw in 2013. His latest feature is billed as the first yakuza vampire movie and promises to be one of the more extreme features screening at this year’s festival. Hayato Ichihara stars as a yakuza underling who discovers his boss is a vampire, only to be bitten himself before going up against a gang of deadly international assassins. Indonesian action star Yayan Ruhian (The Raid) also features.
Contact Nikkatsu Corporation international@nikkatsu.co.jp
No comments yet