Highlighted by the presence of Jim Jarmusch (who will be receiving a special award called the Carrosse d’Or), the 40th year of the Director's Fortnight doesn't look as strong on paper as the previous edition, but the quality of this year's fair will be better determined in ten days or so. Containing a good amount of French productions, the section offers many first time efforts from filmmakers who get to tell their children that they took part in an event that showcases auteur cinema from the greats.
A common meeting place for auteur cinema, a special film was designed to recall the history of the section with testimonies from a who's who of favorite directors in Todd Haynes, Jacques Rozier, Costa Gavras, Michael Raeburn, Ken Loach, Alain Tanner, Carlos Diegues, Werner Herzog, Theo Angelopoulos, André Téchiné, Chantal Akerman, the Taviani brothers, Jim Jarmusch, Spike Lee, Yousry Nasrallah, Idrissa Ouedraogo, Atom Egoyan, Michael Haneke, Peter Sellars, Naomi Kawase, Manoel de Oliveira, the Dardenne brothers, Stephen Frears, Sofia Coppola, Eric Khoo, Kim Rossi Stuart, Lisandro Alonso, Christophe Honoré, Bong Joon-Ho, William Friedkin and Jacques Nolot.
In the same spirit as the Sundance labs, Cannes has for the past couple of years made an effort to develop developing talent by putting the filmmakers in the spotlight. This year 15 lucky such folks from around the world will be on hand during the 60th festival to promote their projects in development. Here are the lucky few.
IONCINEMA.com’s Chief Film Critic Nicholas Bell reviewed the entire competition and more. Here is a comprehensive guide to all the feature films across all...