In a few days, the curtain will rise on the 78th edition of the Cannes Film Festival, which again promises to be a big meeting of world cinema. This year again, the official competition combines confirmed filmmakers, several former winners, and new voices whose works will be carefully scrutinized on the Croisette. Through the twenty-two selected films, the themes are dark, introspective, sometimes political, often intimate.
Among the significant elements of this selection, we find the return in competition of several major figures of contemporary author’s cinema. Julia Ducournau thus returned to Cannes after winning the Palme d’Or in 2021 with Titanium. She then became the second woman director to obtain this distinction, after Jane Campion in 1993. Her new film, Alphacontinues to explore the margins and the corporality, through the character of a rebellious teenager. His return arouses a lively expectation, so much Titanium had marked the spirits.
Other regulars of the festival, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne present Young peoplein which they approach the fate of five teenage girls hosted in a maternal house. The Belgian brothers, who have already won two golden palms (Rosetta1999 and The child2005), are regularly present in Cannes and even received an exceptional prize from the 75th anniversary in 2022. Their loyalty to the festival is accompanied by a thematic consistency: their social and humanist cinema remains deeply rooted in reality.
Wes Anderson, also very attached to the Croisette, returns with The Phoenician Schemea spy film with a darker tone than its previous opus. He had already opened the festival in 2021 with The French Dispatchalso presented in competition. This year, it seems to operate a more dramatic turn, exploring betrayal and family tensions.
Jafar Panahi, a major Iranian filmmaker, is a regular at the festival despite political obstacles. His latest film A simple accident takes a particular resonance in a context where he continues to turn clandestinely. Panahi won several prizes over the years: in 1995, he obtained the gold camera for The white balloon ; In 2003, he received the Prize for the jury ofA certain look For Blood and gold ; And in 2018, he was awarded the prize for the best scenario for Three faces. Panahi remains a figure in resistance from Iranian cinema, filming the absurd and the tragic of a hindered daily life.
The Iranian filmmaker Saeed Roustaee has established himself as one of the greatest talents of his generation from his first feature film, Life and A Day (2016), overwhelming family chronicle on a siblings torn by poverty and unsaid. The film, multiplied in Iran, revealed a young author with a tense style and the acute sense of social drama. Three years later, he signed Tehran’s law (2019), a thriller against a background of drugs, to the explosive staging, which confirmed its talent while installing an implacable criticism of Iranian institutions. In 2022, Leila and her brotherspresented in competition in Cannes, again explored the weight of family and social structures, in an ample and overwhelming story. This film, censored in Iran, earned him international recognition. His new feature film, Mother and Childthis time addresses mourning and resilience, through the gaze of a single mother. But as always with Roustaee, the intimate dialogue with politics, and the individual tragedy refers to the state of a pressure society.
Among the Arab filmmakers, the Franco-Tunisian Hafsia Herzi reunited the official competition for the first time with The little last. Revealed as an actress in The seed and the mule From Abdellatif Kechiche, she has been pursuing an assertive director for a few years. His previous film, Good motherhad been presented to a certain look in 2021 and won the overall prize. His entry into the main competition constitutes an additional recognition for this singular voice of French cinema.
Another highly anticipated Arab film, The Eagles of the Republic From Tarik Saleh, Suédo-Égyptian director. He had marked Cannes in 2022 with Boy from Heavenawarded the scenario prize. This time, he is interested in an Egyptian actor, forced to accept a role in an ambiguous political context. The metaphorical scope of history, against a background of censorship and compromise, promises to be powerful.
The Spanish director Dominik Moll, whose The night of 12 had had great critical success, this time explores behind the scenes of the French police police in File 137. As for Oliver Laxe, he moves his mystical universe in North Africa with Sirata film centered on a paternal quest.
Finally, several directors access the main competition for the first time: Mascha Schilinski, Hayakawa Chie, Kleber Mendonça Filho (who had presented Bacurau with a certain look), or Ari Aster, who leaves his horrific registers to tackle political tensions in a small town during the pandemic.
Thus is a competition marked by loyalties, the returned returns, but also the emergence of new looks.
Here is the list of all the films in competition, with their synopsis:
- Sentimental value – Joachim Trier
Agnès and Nora see their father land after many years of absence. Renowned director, he offers Nora, theater actress, to play in her next film, but she refuses with distrust. He then proposed his role to a young Hollywood star, reviving the embers of painful family souvenirs …
- The Phoenician Scheme – Wes Anderson
A dark spy story that follows a tense-daughter relationship in a family business. The twists and turns revolve around betrayal and moral choices.
In May 2020, during the Pandemic of COVID-19, in Eddington at the New Mexico, the local Sheriff Joe Cross opposed the mayor Ted Garcia. This will trigger a real powder maker in the small town.
- Young people -Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne
Jessica, Perla, Julie, Ariane and Naïma are hosted in a maternal house that helps them in their life as a young mother. Five teenagers who hope to reach a better life for themselves and for their child.
- ALPHA – Julia Ducournau
Alpha, 13, is an agitated teenager who lives alone with her mother. Their world collapses the day she returns from school with a tattoo on her arm.
In 1987 in Tokyo, Fuki, an 11 -year -old sensitive and whimsical girl faced her father’s incurable disease and a mother exhausted by work, while crossing adults in the grip of their own dramas.
- The History of Sound – Oliver Hermanus
During the First World War, two young men undertook to record the life, voices and music of their American compatriots.
- The little last – Hafsia Herzi
When Fatima leaves her united suburban family to study philosophy in Paris, she finds herself torn between her religious education and the freedom of student life.
A father, accompanied by his son, goes in search of his disappeared daughter in North Africa.
- NEW WAVE – Richard Linklater
This is the story of Godard turning Out of breathtold in the style and mind of Godard turning Out of breath.
- Two prosecutors – Sergei Loznitsa
1937: When a letter from a prisoner escapes destruction, the idealistic prosecutor Kornev discovers the corruption of the NKVD. His quest for justice in Stalinist USSR becomes a perilous journey at the heart of a system that devours his own.
A writer, incarcerated for an act as crazy as they are impregnated, meeting young prisoners. Once free, she retains with them an unwavering bond of friendship that no one can really understand.
- O Secreto agent (the secret agent) – Kleber Mendonça Filho
In 1977, a technology expert flees a mysterious past and returned to his hometown of Recife to find peace. But the city is not the refuge he hoped for.
- File 137 – Dominik Moll
The 137 file seems commonplace for Stéphanie, investigator at IGPN. But an unforeseen element turns the case upset and transform this file issue into a disturbing revelation.
- A simple accident – Jafar Panahi
This film explores the unforeseen consequences launched by a minor accident, asking questions about the chain of events that binds individuals in critical situations
- The Mastermind – Kelly Reichardt
In 1970, Mooney and two accomplices entered a museum in broad daylight to fly four paintings. Keeping the works is more complicated than stealing them, and Mooney begins an endless run.
- The Eagles of the Republic – Tarik Saleh
The most popular actor in Egypt, George Fahmy, underwent pressures to play the main role in a film. He will reluctantly accept.
- Sound of Falling – Mascha Schilinski
In an isolated German farm, several generations of women, separated by the decades but united by the trauma, try to lift the veil on the secrets buried between these walls plagued by time.
- Romería – Carla Simón
In order to obtain a civil status document for her higher education, Marina, adopted since childhood, must reconnect with part of her real family. Guided by the diary of her mother who never left her, she goes to the Atlantic coast and meets a whole section of her paternal family whom she does not know. Marina’s arrival will bring up the past. By reviving the memory of her parents, she will discover the secrets of this family, the unsaid and the shame …
- Mother and Child,, Zan o Bacheh – Saeed Roustaee
Single mother, Mahnaz juggles between her nurse work and the education of her children. As she prepares her marriage to Hamid, the exclusion of her school son becomes the youngest of her worries when an unexpected drama pushes her to fight for what is right.
- Die my love – Lynne Ramsay
In an isolated and forgotten rural region, a mother struggles to remain a healthy of mind when she is suffering from psychosis.
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A woman catappered herself in a future post apocalyptic, where she will seek to repair a man mi robot, mi human, by telling him in a metaphorical way of the sides of Chinese history. She will then have to choose between coming back to the real world or being alone with this bionic being for which she begins to experience feelings.
May the curtain open to this new edition, with its share of promises, emotions and discoveries. May the films of this competition – and all those screened in Cannes this year – make us think, amaze us, to move us or to shake up, but above all relate to each other, in this unique bond that only cinema can weave. Very good festival to all, and above all … that the films are big!
Neïla Driss
