Aside from on the radar items of Valeria Golino‘s Euphoria, Ulrich Köhler‘s In My Room (#64 on our most anticipated World Cinema list) and Bi Gan‘s heavily tipped Long Day’s Journey Into Night, the 2018 edition Un Certain Regard line-up gives us an exotic bunch of offerings with almost half of the selections being directorial debuts/Camera d’Or hopefuls. A rare year without at least one Sundance carry over (Captain Fantastic – 2016, Wind River – 2017), we expect at least three more titles to be revealed in the weeks ahead.
Some curtain raisers items include Danish-Iranian director Ali Abbasi‘s fantasy sophomore feature called Border which he co-wrote with Sundance break-out filmmaker Isabella Eklöf (who we recently interviewed for Holiday). Delhi-based actress Nandita Das also embarked on her second feature titled Manto, the “unconventional” biopic stars Nawazuddin Siddiqui (who was a supporting player in The Lunchbox). Multi-disciplinarian (amazing photographer) Vanessa Filho benefitted from some star power in Marion Cotillard for her debut feature, Angel Face. After shoring up in Cannes 2016 with his Cinéfondation selected short, Greek-South African helmer Etienne Kallos also lands with his debut feature, The Harvesters. For better descriptions on all those titles, check out David Hudson lassoing the deets.
12:46 mark – UCR selections:
Border – Ali Abbasi (Sweden) Sofia – Meyem Benm’Barek * Little Tickles – Andréa Bescond & Eric Métayer * Long Day’s Journey Into Night – Bi Gan Manto – Nandita Das Sextape – Antoine Desrosières Girl – Lukas Dhont (Belgium) * Angel Face – Vanessa Filho (France) * Euphoria – Valeria Golino Friend – Wanuri Kahiu (Kenya) My Favorite Fabric – Gaya Jiji (Syria) * The Harvesters – Etienne Kallos (South Africa) * In My Room – Ulrich Köhler The Angel – Luis Ortega (Argentina) The Gentle Indifference of the World – Adilkhan Yerzhanov (Kazakhstan)
Eric Lavallée is the founder, CEO, editor-in-chief, film journalist and critic at IONCINEMA.com (founded in 2000). Eric is a regular at Sundance, Cannes and TIFF. He has a BFA in Film Studies at the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema. In 2013 he served as a Narrative Competition Jury Member at the SXSW Film Festival. He was an associate producer on Mark Jackson's This Teacher (2018 LA Film Festival, 2018 BFI London). In 2022 he served as a New Flesh Comp for Best First Feature at the 2022 Fantasia Intl. Film Festival. Current top films for 2022 include Tár (Todd Field), All That Breathes (Shaunak Sen), Aftersun (Charlotte Wells).
