2013 Cannes Film Festival Predictions: Paul Greengrass’ Barca

#100. Paul Greengrass’ Barca

Gist: Known for his unsettling realism (Bloody Sunday, United 93 (out of comp – Cannes 2006) and a shaky camera aesthetic in blockbuster form (Bourne Ultimatum), having not touched the docu form in a very long time, this Greengrass side project is a portrait of football club FC Barcelona (‘Barça’), focusing specifically on a journey that led the franchise to win every major event during a four-year period.

Prediction: Out of Competition. At last year’s Cannes Film Festival it was announced that the project was in pre-production, that Film Nation were selling the rights and we haven’t heard of peep about Barca since – so this effectively makes this our hail mary prediction out of our top 100. At that exact time that the above mentioned trade bit was announced, Greengrass began lensing on Captain Phillips which is currently listed as in post-production and will be released in October. Therefore seeing that the majority of game footage was already captured, and that they employed editor Chris King (who worked mostly with stock footage for Senna) the completion of the doc depends on the approach that Greengrass plans to employ. It surely won’t be straight up such Zidane, a 21st century portrait – a Cannes entry from a couple of years back.