Cannes Main Competition: Haroun, Amalric, Weerasethakul and Loznitsa

A film from Chad and a film from the Ukraine are probably the only surprises out of the 16 films mentioned early this morning. Now a French resident, Mahamat-Saleh Haroun comes into the comp with A Screaming Man (Un homme qui Crie), he was at Venice a several years back with Daratt, which won the Grand Special Jury Prize. Sergey Loznitsa docu and fiction filmmaker has been on film per year pace for the past decade – he’ll show up in the comp with You, My Joy.

A Screaming Man (Un homme qui Crie) – Mahamat-Saleh Haroun
Present-day Chad. Adam, sixty something, a former swimming champion, is pool attendant at a smart N’Djamena hotel. When the hotel gets taken over by new Chinese owners, he is forced to give up his job to his son Abdel.

Tournée (Tour) – Mathieu Amalric
This is about American burlesque girls on tour in France…

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives – Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Uncle Boonmee is suffering from kidney failure. As an avid practitioner of Yoga, he is well aware of his body. He knows that he will die in 48 hours. He feels his illness must be related with his bad karma. He has killed too many communists, he says. Boonmee calls his distant relatives to take him back from hospital

You, My Joy – Sergey Loznitsa
The story about a few days in the life of truck driver Georgi seems to be a never-ending nightmare, a spiral of violence and abuses of power. A man goes to work and on his way he is sucked into the everyday madness of his country, losing his health and memory in the process and ends up as a murderer, who calmly lies down to sleep after committing the crime. A dark parable about the situation in deep Russia today….