As we had mentioned in our predictions piece over the weekend, the competition skews heavily dude-centric this year, with May El-Toukhy‘s Woman Unknown being the only female-directed entry among twenty films, while acquisition prospects are boosted by high-profile titles such as Casey Affleck‘s Company and Werner Herzog‘s Bucking Fastard. Names that were circulating as Lido potentials will have other plans: Mike Leigh, Andrew Haigh, and Simon Stone are heading to Telluride before Toronto, Tom McCarthy and Fernando Meirelles are currently absent, Mexican auteurs Michel Franco and Carlos Reygadas might be looking at the Berlinale next year, and as expected by several awardage pundits the likes of Behemoth!, Digger, The Adventures Of Cliff Booth and The Social Reckoning might be opting for different release strategies. The field of twenty includes five Italian films with Andrea Pallaoro‘s The Echo Chamber having the best chances of visbility outside of Italy, while the French are present with the trio of Stéphane Brizé, Nicolas Pariser and Cèdric Kahn making the grade. Japan had a solid Cannes with three films in comp, Kore-eda and Shinya Tsukamoto are two options for the Golden Lion, while our most anticipated title comes from neighboring master filmmaker Lee Chang-Dong with Possible Love – a Korea Netflix backed title with a runtime of 164 minutes. We should be done with the crazy Ilya Khrzhanovsky project – this Dau nears the four hour mark, and perhaps the biggest surprise of the comp is Iranian filmmaker Ali Asgari making it two Lido films in two years with flying under-the-radar A Bit of Light. Here is the Golden Lion competition of 20:
Ink – Danny Boyle
Company – Casey Affleck
A Bit Of Light – Ali Asgari
Ritorno A Buenos Aires – Marco Bechis
Un Bon Petit Soldat – Stephane Brize
Il Fuoco Che Ti Porti Dentro – Edoardo De Angelis
Woman Unknown – May el-Toukhy
Bucking Fastard – Werner Herzog
A Place To Heal – Cedric Kahn
Dau – Ilya Khrzhanovsky
Look Back – Hirokazu Koreeda
Possible Love – Lee Chang-Dong
Wild Horse Nine – Martin McDonagh
Succederà Questa Notte – Nanni Moretti
Primetime – Lance Oppenheim
The Echo Chamber – Andrea Pallaoro
Un Peu Avant Minuit – Nicolas Pariser
L’Estranea – Paolo Strippoli
Mr. Nelson, Did You Kill People? – Shinya Tsukamoto
Bunker – Florian Zeller
