A competition section of (currently) twenty-one features with, according to Thierry Frémaux, one more potential last minute Palme d’Or contender addition to be announced (or not) in the week(s) ahead, we find a group of films that are both heavy on regular auteurs but also welcomes several first time competition filmmakers. Only two Palme d’Or winning filmmakers are returning in Cristian Mungiu and Hirokazu Kore-eda — they are part of Neon’s four horses in the race (they’ll be looking to add to that number) with Sheep in the Box and Fjord plus the twosome of All of a Sudden, The Unknown. The folks at Mubi have Minotaur and Fatherland in the mix, and let us not forget that Sony Pictures Classics are also on the early scoreboard with (the only film that has already premiered) in Pedro Almodóvar’s Bitter Christmas. We have a total of five female filmmakers who are making their competition debuts in France’s Jeanne Herry, Lea Mysius and Charline Bourgeois-Taquet, with German-speaking Valeska Grisebach and Marie Kreutzer in the mix as well. In a rush to complete the film, Lukas Dhont’s Coward was only viewed by the committee yesterday, so we imagine the Belgian filmmaker will surface a bit later in the competition. IONCINEMA.com will of course be on hand to provide wall-to-wall coverage of the competition section and we’ll be happily surprised if the name of Albert Serra, Ruben Ostlund or Terrence Malick is added to the list in the eleventh hour. Here are the twenty-one competition films for the Park Chan-wook led jury:
Minotaur / Andrey Zvyagintsev
The Beloved / Rodrigo Sorogoyen
The Man I Love / Ira Sachs
Fatherland / Paweł Pawlikowski
Moulin / Laszlo Nemes
Histoire de la Nuit / Léa Mysius
Fjord / Cristian Mungiu
Notre Salut / Emmanuel Marre
Gentle Monster / Marie Kreutzer
Nagi Notes / Koji Fukada
Hope / Na Hong-Jin
Sheep in the Box / Hirokazu Kore-eda
Garance / Jeanne Herry
The Unknown / Arthur Harari
All of a Sudden / Ryusuke Hamaguchi
The Dreamed Adventure / Valeska Grisebach
Coward / Lukas Dhont
La Bola Negra / Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo
A Woman’s Life / Charline Bourgeois-Taquet
Parallel Tales / Asghar Farhadi
Bitter Christmas / Pedro Almodóvar
