Top 20 Alternative Picks for Cannes 2012: Raúl Ruiz’s The Night in Front

The Night in Front – Raúl Ruiz

Buzz: Director of well over 100 films, Raúl Ruiz passed away late last number at the age of 70. As you can imagine from his sprawling filmography, the man always had new projects overlapping in their production stages. Many thought his 273-minute Mysteries of Lisbon was a fitting swan song, only to learn that he had two other films well into development at the time of death, one of which (this one) was actually completely finished. While another TV project will surface with his name on it in the next year, this is the last full Ruiz experience we will ever get to discover. Probably.

The Gist: Three ages of an old man, awaiting death, who wanders about a dream city re-living scenes from his youth. It sounds like a more modest incarnation of Mysteries of Lisbon, which itself was a film that Ruiz made predominantly while under the impression that he was about to die. He recovered, but, as we now know, only briefly.