49th Critic’s Week Selections: Quentin Dupieux’s Rubber and Marc Fitoussi’s Copacabana Make the Cut

Armadillo – Janus Metz (Denmark)
Bedevilled – Cheol So Jang (South Korea)
Belle épine – Rebecca Zlotowski (France)
Bi, dung so ! – Phan Dang Di (Vietnam – France – Germany)
The Myth of the American Sleepover – David Robert Mitchell (U.S.A.)
Sandcastle – Boo Junfeng (Singapore)
Sound of Noise – Ola Simonsson & Johannes Stjärne Nilsson (Sweden – France)

A heavy focus on French films and a trio of Asian filmmakers are amongst the regions selected for this year’s Semaine de la Critique (a.k.a Critics’ Week). Their initial release of a firm ten films selected may eventually include one more in the “Godfathers” screening (which see a chosen director with plenty of clout present a new film from a newbie filmmaker). As I previously mentioned here and here, Marc Fitoussi’s Copacabana with Isabelle Huppert and Quentin Dupieux’s unique road movie Rubber will receive Special screening status and the section’s opening night film is Michel Leclerc’s Le Nom des gens. 

Among the more interesting feature filmmaking debuts from the list of seven mentioned above, we have scribe Rebecca Zlotowski’s directing debut with the pairing of some young French talents in Léa Seydoux and Anaïs Demoustier, there is David Robert Mitchell’s SXSW entry that gets a second life via this section and another Swedish-French production is hitting the section this year, with what appears to be an awfully unique project from Ola Simonsson & Johannes Stjärne Nilsson (see pic above). Each film is paired with a short film from the list below.

Short Films
“A distração de Ivan,” directed by Cavi Borges & Gustavo Melo (Brazil)
“Berik,” directed by Daniel Joseph Borgman (Denmark)
“The Boy Who Wanted to Be a Lion,” directed by Alois Di Leo (U.K.)
“Deeper Than Yesterday,” directed by Ariel Kleiman (Australia)
“Love Patate,” directed by Gilles Cuvelier (France)
“Native Son,” directed by Scott Graham (U.K.)
“Vasco,” directed by Sébastien Laudenbach (France)