2012 Cannes Critics’ Week: Opens with “Broken”, Special Screenings from Alice Winocour and Sandrine Bonnaire

Earlier in the day, first term Charles Tesson delivered the lottery like news that a lucky ten films/filmmakers (out of a whopping 1200 submissions) are the make up of the 51st edition of the Critics’ Week – which is, for those who aren’t familiar with how the Cannes film fest works is a smallish sidebar standing at the near end of the main strip on the Croisette. The section will open with UK helmer Rufus Norris’ Broken – a film which stars Tim Roth, Cillian Murphy and the word is – pre-teen newcomer Eloise Laurence (see pic above) delivers a stellar performance as a young girl who witnesses a violent assault. Intermission, and Boy A scribe Mark O’Rowe penned the screenplay based on the book. The bookend/closing film will be announced shortly.

While the Competition section is next to impossible to predict, we did highlight in our predictions piece that both Alice Winocour’s Augustine and Sandrine Bonnaire’s J’enrage de son absence would make the cut (here and here) – and both of these picks were selected as the Special Screenings pair. Of the seven comp films, we’re most intrigued by Antonio Ménde Esparza’s Aquí y Allá (Spain, US, Mexico) – a fictional-docu fusion where normal folk lives are affected by the huge narcotic problems of the U.S./Mexican border. Actor Louis-Do de Lencquesaing (Father of My Children) brings along his daughter Alice de Lencquesaing (also in Mia Hansen-Løve’s film) and a cast of familiar French actors on board for his directorial debut and worth noting is the presence of the atypical Indian film production in the drifter type tale in Vasan Bala’s Peddlers and the section includes the rare documentary film (Armadillo was the first ever docu to be featured in the section) from Bulgaria in Ilian Metev’s Sofia’s Last Ambulance – here’s the trailer for this film. Be sure to check out the complete program are the jump.