Updated List: Forecasting The Director’s Fortnight and Critic’s Week Picks

With the Un Certain Regard category pretty much complete, we can now focus our attention on next week’s announcements for the sidebar sections of the Director’s Fortnight and Critic’s Week. I’ve listed a whopping 26 films and I’m confident that several will show up in the approximate 30 or so feature films with many first-time works that will make up both sections (put together). The Critic’s Week will see the arrival of Isabelle Huppert once again this year, in Marc Fitoussi’s Copacabana.

22nd of May – Koen Mortier
While everything around him is burning, Sam tries his best to help. He drags a woman outside against her will. She is screaming, struggling to get back inside to save her child. But Sam is already back on the scene, trying to rescue other victims, all of them just as helpless as he is…

All Good Children – Alicia Duffy
Based on Sam Taylor’s novel The Republic of Trees, All Good Children centres on Dara and Eoin, two young Irish children of 11 and 12, who have to go and live at their aunt’s house in France, following their mother’s suicide. Eoin soon tries to run away…

Copacabana – Marc Fitoussi
Boldly unconventional and cheerful, that’s how one could describe Babou. Never having cared much about social conventions, she is suddenly faced with the realization that her own daughter is ashamed of her and therefore refuses to invite her to her wedding.

The Essence of Killing – Jerzy Skolimowski 
Written by Jerzy Skolimowski and Eva Piaskowska, this follows the story of a Taliban member who lives in Afghanistan, kills three American soldiers and then is taken captive by the Americans. He is transferred to Europe for interrogation but manages to escape from his captors and becomes an escaped convict on a continent he does not know.

Fantasia Lusitana – João Canijo
This a documentary about Lisbon during WWII, when the country’s capital became the frontier between Europe and the American continent for nearly 100,000 people escaping the Nazi regime.

Fuga Mortis – Kirill Mikhanovsky
In modern-day Havana, a city where everything is for sale, an adolescent hustler is willing to beg, steal, or do just about anything else to get his sister off the streets.

Gigola – Laurence Charpentier
Based on Laure Charpentier’s erotic novel “Gigola,” this explores the world of prostitutes in the ’60s. Argento plays George, a young woman who loses herself in the nightlife of 1960s-era Paris after the suicide of her female lover, and eventually becomes a gigolo catering to women…

In Your Hands (Sous ton Emprise) – Lola Doillon
This centres on the abduction of a renowned surgeon by a man who holds her responsible for his wife’s death. A psychological battle begins between the kidnapper and his victim, but during the captivity, their relationship gradually develops into mutual affection (aided by the Stockholm syndrome).

La vida util – Federico Veiroj 
This is about a film buff who loses his job at the local cinematheque.

Memoria – Henning Carlsen & Ricardo Del Rio
Based on the adaptation of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s short novel “Memoria de mis putas tristes” and scripted by Carlsen and Jean Claude Carriere, this looks at a journalist who decides to celebrate his 90th birthday buying the services of a young prostitute, with whom he falls in love, for the first time in his life…

Moral Sciences — Diego Lerman
Ciencias Morales is set in 1982’s Buenos Aires, close to the end of the military dictatorship. María Teresa (20) is a monitor at a secondary school. She started working when it was still summer and Mr. Biasutto (50), the chief monitor, revealed the attitude she should adopt with students, for it was not easy to get to what he called ‘the exact point’ for the best surveillance.

Morgen – Marian Crisan
Written by Crisan, this tells the story of a man living by the Romanian-Hungarian border who likes to fish but whose catch one day is a Kurdish immigrant…

Neds – Peter Mullan 
A.k.a Non-Educated Delinquents, this is set in the late 1970s in Glasgow…

Norwegian Wood – Tran Anh Hung
Based on Haruki Murakami’s famed Japanese novel Norwegian Wood, the melancholy tune and sentiment of this classic Beatles song seems to have taken the life of Toru Watanabe (Kenichi Matsuyama), who is similarly uncertain as to how he should view his relationships.

Our Grand Despair – Seyfi Teoman
Ender and Cetin, two men in their late thirties, have been close friends since high school. After being away for many years, Cetin returns to Ankara, moves in with Ender, and as such, the two realize their childhood dream. While on holiday in Turkey, Fikret, their close friend who lives abroad, has a car accident in which his parents are killed.

Post Mortem – Pablo Larrain
Alfredo Castro plays Mario, 55, works in a morgue typing autopsy reports. In the midst of the 1973 Chilean coup, he fantasizes about his neighbor, a cabaret dancer, Nancy, who mysteriously disappears on September the 11th. 

Prey (Proie) – Antoine Blossier

In his stepfamily’s countryside retreat, Nathan knew that the traditional autumn family reunion was going to be particularly stormy. Claire, his wife, had to announce her recent pregnancy and tough decisions would need to be made to prevent the family’s pesticides business from closing down.

Principles of Life – Constantin Popescu
Written by Razvan Radulescu and Alexandru Baciu, this is a contemporary, drama set during a 24-hour period that features a father disconnected from his family, especially from his son.

Promises Written in Water — Vincent Gallo
The film is about a beautiful young girl who is terminally ill. She decides not to go to the hospital or have treatment but to wait until the pain becomes unbearable – and then to end her life. Her one fear is what is going to happen to her body when she is dead. She wants to be cremated..

Le Quattro Volte – Michelangelo Frammartino
The Four Times works in the non-defined field between documentary and fiction, and can be understood in three different ways: as a science fiction film (without special effects), as an ethnographic documentary on some parts of the Calabrian Apennine, or as an essay about the human soul.

Shit Year – Cam Archer
A story about a woman who has given up her passion, only to find that she really can’t stand herself, or others, without it. Colleen West (Ellen Barkin), a once renowned actress, comes unhinged as she confronts retirement and life at the twilight of her career. Haunted, she plummets into a hallucinatory affair with Harvey (Luke Grimes), a much younger actor who she met doing a small play…

Svinalangorna – Pernilla August 
Based on Susanna Alakoski’s August-prize winning novel, Svinalängorna tells of Leena, a 34 year-old woman, living in Stockholm with her husband and two daughters. When she receives a phone call informing her of her mother’s death in Ystad, her troubled past as a young girl, raised by Finnish/Swedish alcoholic parents, comes back to haunt her…

The Tree – Julie Bertucelli
Adapted from Judy Pascoe’s novel Our Father Who Art in a Tree, this tells the story of a family in mourning after the death of their father. Dawn (Charlotte Gainsbourg) and Peter live together with their children in a suburban neighborhood in Australia…

Two Gates of Sleep – Alistair Banks Griffin
When Jack’s mother turns up dead at the edge of a field near his rural home, he and his brother set out on an arduous journey to fulfill her last wish…

Where the Boys Are (Short Film) – Bertrand Bonello 

Womb – Benedek Fliegauf
The futuristic drama follows Rebecca (Green) who once she returns to her grandfather’s house, she meets her childhood sweetheart Thomas again (Matt Smith). Thomas leaves his girlfriend Rose and their love picks up where it left off, until Thomas dies in a car accident…