The Cannes Film Festival’s role as a launchpad for theatrically successful arthouse films is increasingly crucial. Several films including Anatomy Of A Fall, The Zone Of Interest, Killers Of The Flower Moon and Perfect Days from the 2023 competition alone went on to dominate the awards and cultural conversation for the next nine months.
More importantly, these films, which can all loosely be termed ‘broad arthouse’, cut through to mainstream cinema audiences around the world.
This year’s selection suggests Cannes is embracing this description – with the obvious caveat no one has actually seen all the films yet. When announcing the selection in April, general delegate Thierry Fremaux and president Iris Knobloch leaned into the success of the class of 2023. “While streamers are a great way to reach wider audiences and preserve films, the magic of the wide screen is intact,” said Knobloch. “More than ever, cinemas are where films have a rendez-vous with their stories and it is where their legends are born.
“Cineastes, auteurs, artists and professionals all agree that nothing can replace the cultural event represented by the release of a film in a theatre.”
The focus on theatrical comes at a pivotal moment, particularly in France where arthouse distributors are struggling to draw audiences. France’s Urban Distribution and Rezo Films were both forced to close in the first months of this year. While cinemagoing in France has recovered to near pre-pandemic levels, Urban Group’s founder Frederic Corvez lamented, “Auteur cinema hasn’t gotten its audiences back.”
Greta Gerwig, this year’s jury president, who carved out a career in independent cinema before going on to shatter box office records with Barbie, “epitomises the soul of the Cannes Film Festival” according to Knobloch. Like the festival itself, “Gerwig embraces all genres and addresses all audiences from the independent scene to Hollywood”, Knobloch enthused.
2024 films
Yorgos Lanthimos’ Poor Things, one of the biggest ’broad arthouse’ films of the last year, was launched in Venice where it won the Golden Lion, after Cannes reportedly turned it down. Now Lanthimos is back in the Cannes fold with Kinds Of Kindness, the film Lanthimos shot while Poor Things was in post.
While cinemas are hoping Lanthimos can deliver more of the same with Kinds Of Kindness, Fremuax and his team have picked a Competition lineup in which many regulars are also returning but with some unusual twists. Several directors usually found probing the darker side of the human soul will be on the Croisette with films seemingly lighter in tone.
Jacques Audiard’s Emilia Perez is a musical comedy about a Mexican cartel boss who sets out to realise his dream of becoming a woman in which Selena Gomez and Zoe Saldana star.
David Cronenberg is bringing The Shrouds, described as a more personal and emotion-driven story than some of his other films, while Ali Abbasi, whose last film Holy Spider was a searing, challenging portrait of violence against women in Iran, is back this year with The Apprentice.
It stars Sebastian Stan as a young Donald Trump and is a film with an accessible audience appeal – on paper at least. And French director Gilles Lellouche, whose popular films normally land out of competition, is in Competition for the first time with Beating Hearts, starring Adèle Exarchopoulos, which is described as an epic romance.
Throughout official selection, genre titles, starry casts and offbeat and feelgood comedies abound. In Midnight Screenings, Noemie Merlant’s The Balconettes blends comedy and horror in a story about roommates in Marseille; Un Certain Regard has Laetitia Dosch’s Dog On Trial, an irreverent tale of an idealistic lawyer dedicated to lost causes who agrees to defend a dog; while Rumours, in Special Screenings, is a dark political comedy from Guy Maddin and Evan and Galen Johnson about world leaders who get lost in the woods while attempting to draft a statement. Cate Blanchett and Alicia Vikander star.
“Our goal is to help them find audiences”
Even Directors’ Fortnight and Critics’ Week, both conceived as art-focused experimental alternatives to the festival’s official selection, are brimming with commercially appealing titles.
“We don’t want radical films or films that are chic or snobby,” as Julien Rejl, artistic director of the Fortnight, puts it. “We’re trying to strike a balance between singularity and audience appeal.”
The sidebar will close with Jean-Christophe Meurisse’s comedy Plastic Guns. “We wanted to close with something totally wacky that would make everyone laugh and leave the festival on lighter, more joyous tone,” Rejl said.
The Critics’ Week line-up includes Alexis Langlois queer musical Queens Of Drama about a young pop idol and punk icon navigating rivalry and passion.
“There is more and more space in Cannes for more ‘popular’ films,” said Ava Cahen, artistic director at Critics’ Week. “We’re the first to see these first and second films, but we don’t want to be the only ones to see them. Our goal is to help them find audiences.”
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