Cannes 2011 Un Certain Regard: Durkin, Naranjo, Ki-duk, Sang-Soo, Dresden and Dumont Among 19 Selected

We were the first on the interwebs to mention Mitulescu, Dresen, Labaki, Pierre Schoeller, Joachim Trier and Bruno Dumont’s L’Empire (now going by the title of Hors Satan) as strong contenders for the Un Certain Regard 2011 edition, but as usual there are a handful of titles/filmmakers particularly from Asia, that were completely off our radars. Added to the odd inclusion of Gus Van Sant’s film announce yesterday, we’re happy to see Kim Ki-duk again — we hope that Arirang is a return to form for the filmmaker and the prolific Hong Sang-soo must be in some creative surge period in his life — he will present The Day He Arrives in the same section he won last year with Hahaha. Both of these Cannes-selected films sandwich Oki’s Movie – a film which he presented at Venice.

This year we find only a pair of Camera d’Or contenders in the section (oddly matching that of the main comp). Brazil’s Marco Dutra and Juliana Rojas give us Trabalhar cans, and we have Sean Durkin’s Martha Marcy May Marlene (see pic) – which follows in the pathway of Blue Valentine as a favorite film at Sundance that ends up being programmed for UCR. I was thinking that a Directors’ Fortnight inclusion was in the cards, but it looks like they were “promoted”. Here’s hoping that Borderline come packing Simon Killer as well in the Directors’ Fortnight.

We’ll be updating our database – but for the time being here’s the complete UCR list for 2011.

Bakur Bakuradze’s The Hunter
Andreas Dresen’s Halt auf freier Strecke
Bruno Dumont’s Hors Satan
Sean Durkin’s Martha Marcy May Marlene
Marco Dutra and Juliana Rojas’s Trabalhar cansa
Robert Guédiguian’s Les neiges du Kilimandjaro
Oliver Hermanus’s Skoonheid
Hong Sang-soo’s The Day He Arrives
Cristián Jiménez’s Bonsái
Eric Khoo’s Tatsumi
Kim Ki-duk’s Arirang
Nadine Labaki’s Et maintenant on va où?
Catalin Mitulescu’s Loverboy
Na Hong-jin’s Yellow Sea
Gerardo Naranjo’s Miss Bala
Pierre Schoeller’s L’exercice de l’Etat
Ivan Sen’s Toomelah
Joachim Trier’s Oslo, August 31st