Eric Lavallée

We've got two indie projects that happen to star Paul Dano that we are keen on seeing this year (perhaps both might be ready in time for TIFF). The first is Kelly Reichardt's Meek's Cutoff and the other, is Dano in toplining So Yong Kim's For Ellen.

Following her debut film, All is Forgiven which also features a fractured family, Le Père de mes enfants (Father of My Children) focuses on how a wife and three daughters cope with the fact that they've unwilling become full fledged card caring members in the loss, grief and mourning departments - and remarkably the screenplay brings them elsewhere.

Those Who Are Left Behind: Hansen-Løve Displays Those Who Really Suffer For Art.

Last year Ken Loach introduced us to Steve Evets in Looking for Eric, and this year, topping this top ten list of New Faces from the Cannes Film Festival is Mark Womack - also a veteran actor for the small screen, but pretty much a beginner on the silver screen. In Route Irish, Womack takes on the angry role of Frankie - a contractor in Iraq who senses that his close friend's death isn't as what officials are claiming it to be. Frankie descends into madness, applies his own code of conduct and sets off on a war path of his own - the perf is raw just like many characters in Loach's films.

Anyone who makes Juillette Binoche cry in my books is not okay. William Shimell didn't really make the actress cry, but he held his own in his screen debut in an Abbas Kiarostami film. Trained to use his pipes for another reason (the actor actually works in the opera), Shimell plays James Miller, an English author whose latest book "Certified Copy" leaves Binoche's character tied up in knots, but it is the film's journey between the two characters after the initial meeting that could be a lesson on how not to love.