2015 Directors’ Fortnight: Saulnier’s Green Room & Bidegain’s Les Cowboys Among “Dope” Selections

Takashi Miike (Yakuza Apocalypse: The Great War Of The Underworld), Fernando León de Aranoa (A Perfect Day starring Benicio del Toro, Tim Robbins, and Olga Kurylenko) and Jaco Van Dormael (a top item on our most anticipated foreign films list, The Brand New Testament stars Catherine Deneuve, Benoît Poelvoorde, Yolande Moreau) are some of the veterans filmmakers joining the previously mentioned Philippe Garrel, Miguel Gomes and Arnaud Desplechin as part the 47th edition of the Directors’ Fortnight. Edouard Waintrop’s programming team happen to be the only ones to have selected Sundance Film Festival items this year with Rick Famuyiwa‘s Dope being selected as the closing night film and Chloé Zhao‘s Songs My Brothers Taught Me finds some love as well. Fellow American filmmaker Jeremy Saulnier also joins them — after having launched Blue Ruin in the section a couple of editions back, he now returns with Green Room.

After landing on the Croisette several times over as the screenwriter for A Prophet, Rust and Bone, Our Children, Saint Laurent and Jacques Audiard’s Dheepan (a Main Comp entry) this year, Thomas Bidegain will feature his directorial debut, Les Cowboys which technically becomes John C. Reilly’s third film in Cannes for 2015 (following Main Comp entries The Lobster and The Tale of Tales). In the same mindset of a creative person having films in multiple sections, Deniz Gamze Ergüven’s Mustang is co-written by Alice Winocour who will see her latest directing gig Maryland be showcased in the Un Certain Regard section….and speaking of the UCR, Ciro Guerra (he landed The Wind Journeys in the section back in 2009) sees his third feature, El Abrazo de la Serpiente make the cut.

Closing out the selections we find Sharunas Bartas‘ Peace to Us in Our Dreams, Magnus von Horn‘s The Here After, Nabil Ayouch‘s Much Loved, Philippe Faucon‘s Fatima and docu Allende mi abuelo Allende from Marcia Tambutti. Here are the selections below including the shorts:

OPENER
“In the Shadow of Women” (Philippe Garrel, France)

FEATURE FILMS
“Allende, mi abuelo Allende” (Marcia Tambutti, Chile-Mexico)
“Arabian Nights” (Miguel Gomes, Portugal)
“The Brand New Testament” (Jaco van Dormael, Luxembourg-France-Belgium)
“The Cowboys” (Thomas Bidegain, France)
“Embrace of the Serpent” (Ciro Guerra, Colombia-Venezuela-Argentina)
“Fatima” (Philippe Faucon, France)
“My Golden Years” (Arnaud Desplechin, France)
“Green Room” (Jeremy Saulnier, U.S.)
“The Here After” (Magnus von Horn, France-Poland-Sweden)
“Much Loved” (Nabil Ayouch, Morocco-France)
“Mustang” (Deniz Gamze Erguven, France)
“Peace to Us in Our Dreams” (Sharunas Bartas, Lithuania-France)
“A Perfect Day” (Fernando Leon de Aranoa, Spain)
“Songs My Brothers Taught Me” (Chloe Zhao, U.S.)

SPECIAL SCREENINGS
“Yakuza Apocalypse: The Great War of the Underworld” (Takashi Miike, Japan)

CLOSER
“Dope” (Rick Famuyiwa, U.S.)

SHORT FILMS
Rate Me, dir: Fyzal Boulifa
Quintal, dir: André Novais Oliveira
Quelques Secondes, dir: Nora El Hourch
Pueblo, dir: Elena Lopez Riera
Provas, Exorcismos, dir: Susana Nobre
Pitchoune, dir: Reda Kateb
Kung Fury, dir: David Sandberg
El Pasado Roto, dirs: Martín Morgenfeld & Sebastián Schjaer
Calme Ta Joie, dir: Emmanuel Laskar
Bleu Tonnerre, dir: Jean-Marc E. Roy & Philippe David Gagné
The Exquisite Corpus, dir: