Film Movement have made their second Cannes pick-up. Jury Prize winning A Screaming Man (receiving a release next April) is joined by Olivier Masset-Depasse's prize-winning Illegal - the only picture that has been selected for both premium European film festivals: Cannes (Director's Fortnight) and Venice (Venice Days) section.
Romanian cinema at 58th San Sebastian Festival will be represented by Principles of Life (Principii de viață). Constantin Popescu's sophomore feature has been selected to compete in the Zabaltegi-New Directors Section. The film examines the rapport between father and son, and in a nutshell is about the generation gaps and the inability to communicate.
I wrote that role for Ben [Mendelsohn], and Ben is an incredibly powerful character in life. He’s very charismatic. He’s powerful and he commands attention. And so this evolved even further with my conversations with him that while other characters in the film may cover themselves in tattoos and muscles, Pope wouldn’t need any of that.
Hands down, Ivgy's And on the Third Day is the best Israeli film of 2010. With several connecting stories of men being cruel towards women (physically, sexually, and psychologically), with a concluding apocalypse, this is a Magnolia-type picture minus the frogs.
If the Main Competition suffered because of the lack of film output from last year (Venice and TIFF have already seen the benefits), next year's edition of the Cannes film festival is already shaping up to be a fantastic year with names like Pedro, Von Trier, Dardennes, Cronenberg, PTA and Salles in the possible line-up. For those who made a case about there not being much female representation -- they'll be pleased to see that the latest works from Andrea Arnold and Lynne Ramsay should be in the line-up --- and although I didn't add him to the list below, we could also see Steve McQueen's latest project in the fest. Here are a list of 20 projects I think will be in the fest next year.