Festival Scope offers past work from Cannes emerging talents

Doing pre-Cannes homework is getting easier this year with the help of Festival Scope. As part of its partnership with Cannes Critics Week and Directors Fortnight, the online streaming platform will offer previous work from directors with films in those sections this year. Many of the works – past features or shorts (see preliminary list below) – are online now with more being added in the run-up to Cannes.

Films from this year’s Cannes Critics Week and Directors Fortnight will then be available on the growing film industry platform. The titles will be put online after the Cannes Festival ends, on May 22.

But the current offerings should help professionals, including buyers, sales companies and even critics get to know a director’s past work ahead of Cannes.

“Having the selections announced really creates a desire to watch films and learn more about emerging filmmakers, and the filmmakers can take advantage of that appetite,” said Alessandro Raja, one of Festival Scope’s founders.

For example, Rebecca Daly is in Directors Fortnight with her debut feature The Other Side of Sleep and Festival Scope is now screening her short film Joyriders. Mathilde Henrot, another Festival Scope founder, said: “I’ve seen Joyriders before. She’s a great talent to follow. It’s like seeing an Andrea Arnold short film, you’re really seeing a talent.”

“This is in the spirit of Festival Scope’s ambition: helping promoting talent,” adds Henrot. “It is especially helpful when a first feature is presented — which made great sense for us to work with Critics’ Week and Directors’ Fortnight: known for their ability to discover talent.”

Raja also highlighted selections such as Ruben Ostlund’s Involuntary, which was the director’s debut feature (in Un Certain Regard) ahead of 2011 selection Play. “He’s one of the most interesting directors of the Swedish New Wave. It’s a very good time for Swedish cinema.”

One rarely seen film being shown is Merci Cupidon, by the trio Dominique Abel, Fiona Gordon, Bruno Romy, who have the film The Fairy in 2011’s Fortnight. Festival Scope is showing their two previous features and first short.

Frédéric Boyer, Artistic Director of Directors’ Fortnight, says: “We are very happy to start this partnership with Festival Scope, we have been following the development of the project since the early days back in 2009, and we found the concept very interesting. The idea to present the previous works of the directors who have a film selected at this year’s Quinzaine is definitely a way to create awareness and interest even before the Quinzaine starts and to put filmmakers at the centre of attention.” 

Raja noted that they were working with producers or sales agents to highlight the right past work (not just any past short, for example) for each filmmaker in these Cannes sections.

“We’re so happy to do this, it’s really presenting the kind of cinema we want to help promote. We hope our platform will be useful for them,” Henrot adds.

In all, Festival Scope now has deals in place with about 40 festivals including Berlinale, Locarno, CPH PIX, Goteborg, Rotterdam, Sarajevo, Melbourne, Jeonju, Clermont Ferrand and Cartagena.

“The good thing is to adjust to each festival, each festival we work differently with them. We look at the best solutions for each event,” Henrot notes.

The service is currently free for industry professionals (who are individually vetted by Festival Scope). To register send an email to join@festivalscope.com.

More titles will be announced before Cannes.

From this year’s Director’s Fortnight directors, the past works are:

Rebecca Daly’s Joyriders 
Philippe Ramos’ Captaine Achab
Valérie Mréjen’s French Courvoysier 
Kamel Kalev’s Eastern Plays 
Ruben Ostlund’s Involuntary 
Vimukthi Jayasundara’s Between Two Worlds 
Leila Kilani’s Our Forbidden Places
Gust Van den Berghe’s Little Baby Jesus Of Flandr (a Fortnight selection from last year)

And a complete retrospective of the trio Abel, Gordon, Romy!, of Rumba, Iceberg, Merci Cupidon

From this year’s Critics Week directors, Festival Scope is showing:

Valérie Donzelli’s The Queen of Hearts
Jonathan Caouette’s All Flowers In Time (short film starring Chloe Sevigny)
Katia Lewkowicz ‘s C’est Pour Quand?
Jeff Nichols’ Shotgun Stories