Ameur-Zaïmeche (director has seen his previous two films Bled Number One and Dernier Maquis shown on the Croisette) will once again go in front and behind the camera in Les Chants de Mandrin - a French/Belgian/Spanish co-production that started shooting this week.
Now that all bets are off on Terrence Malick showing up on the Lido, and Wong Kar-wai's The Grand Master appears to be on the same no-show list (the fest have announced that Andrew Lau's The Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen has their second opening night flick celebrating the anniversary of Bruce Lee’s 70th birthday).
I don't think the title of head programmer for any festival is an easy job, but I'd argue that Marco Müller has it "easy" this year. With so many of the world's best auteurs having not been ready to deliver at the Cannes deadline, the 67th edition of the Venice Film Festival (which will run 1st to 11th September 2010) is going to be loaded in premium titles. With many items having already been mentioned and speculated on before, here is an updated predictions list with a good helping of new names.
Infusing last year's Cannes with such unique films as Greece's Dogtooth, Henri-Georges Clouzot's Inferno and the biking in the birthday suit comedy The Misfortunates, the all encompassing heavyweight French unit MK2 is on one of those odd winning streaks – managing to find/rep films that are celebrated at not only the major heavyweight film fests, but the “second tier” noteworthy fests as well – such as the Rotterdams and the Locarnos of this world we brought about Alamar (To the Sea) and Nothing Personal.
I spent all of last week divulging some of films that I expect to be in Cannes this year, and Screen Daily happened to do the same. There are a good number of films that are mentioned of both sites' lists, but I mention about twenty films that the trade makes no mention of, and of course they have got a long list as well of films that I either passed on as potential selections or I was totally oblivious as to their existence.