Cannes 2010 Predictions (Competition Films): Schnabel, Mullan, Chang-dong

First time filmmakers rarely get the chance to showcase a first film in the main comp – its the sidebars that handle plenty of first works and I think it’ll be the same this year, but even Un Certain Regard section can be stingy on first time efforts (last year only a pair of films made it in that sidebar). Below we have a handful of filmmakers who have previously directed films but have never showcased the most prestigious film fest…example Golden Lion winning Peter Mullan (see pic of his next film). Here are a few more predictions.

Miral – Julian Schnabel
Schnabel won for Best Director for the Diving Bell and the Butterfly – so you know he is just itching to come back with his latest — This is based on Rula Jebreal’s book about the real-life Palestinian woman Hind Husseini, who started the Dar Al-Tifl orphanage in Jerusalem in the wake of the 1948 partition of Palestine and the creation of the state of Israel. Jerusalem, 1948.

Neds – Peter Mullan 
As a player in front of the camera, Mullan won Best Actor in My Name is Joe, so it be nice to see him skip Venice and present a first film as a director at the fest — it could come via Neds, short for Non-Educated Delinquents, which is set in the late 1970s in Glasgow.

Les Petits Mouchoirs – Guillaume Cantet
Hard to believe that as an actor he has only recently been to the fest for Joyeux Noel, so perhaps fter the success of Tell No One might led to an Out of Competition slot for a pic filled with popular French actors. The set up sees a group of friends spend the month of August together at one of their holiday homes on the Cap Ferret.

Poetry – Lee Chang-dong
Peppermint Candy and Secret Sunshine have officially put Lee Chang-dong on the “Cannes” map – I think critics will call Poetry this year’s Bong Joon-ho’s Mother – this is a drama about a lonely woman (Jeong-hie Yun) in her 60s, who is searching for a new meaning at the end of her life.

Potiche – François Ozon
Having presented five features dating back to 1996’s Une robe d’été, Ozon has a stellar cast of French actors which is lwys welcome on the Croisette, plus the film is distinctly French – dealing with the French bourgeois province in 1977. Suzanne (Deneuve) is the submissive wife of rich industrialist Robert Pujol (Luchini), who runs his umbrella factory with an iron hand and turns out to be just as nasty and tyrannical with his workers as he is with his mistress (Viard), children (Renier and Godrèche) and “trophy” wife.

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time – Mike Newell
A possible out-of-comp selection, Universal releases the pic on 14th of May. This is based on the popular game and stars Jake Gyllenhaal.

Restless – Gus Van Sant
Van Sant is a Cannes regular, but this one belongs to Columbia Pictures – so a showing t the fest should be consider a long-shot, too bad since this appears to be small in scale. This is about a teenage boy (Henry Hopper) and girl (Mia Wasikowska) who share a preoccupation with mortality.

The Revenge (Hævnen) – Susanne Bier
Oddly Bier has been to Cannes as a jury member but never presented a film there – it should change this year with this drama that takes place in Sudan’s refugee camps and in a little Danish provincial town. Two Danish families cross paths and an unusual and dangerous friendship develops.

Robin Hood – Ridley Scott
Another pic that has a great shot at a non-comp slot, Universal is releasing the pic this May — this is a revisionist version of the Robin Hood and is based on the premise that Hood was less virtuous and the sheriff more noble than previously depicted. Crowe plays Robin of Loxley in an original story that hews close to historical facts of the period.

More tomorrow – stay tuned!