The 77th Cannes Film Festival opens its doors this Tuesday accompanied by rumors Of new #MeToo scandals.
This is one of the many hot topics that are expected to cross the fortnight, from dark rooms to the red carpet.
Still, Cannes also has a rather tempting selection of films, a year After Justine Triet’s coronation with “Anatomy of a Fall”.
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Cannes film festival
For a week, the press has only been talking about this: the imminent publication of an investigation denouncing big names in French cinema guilty of sexist and/or sexual violence. Some would even be expected on the red carpet of the 77th Cannes Film Festival and their teams in dire straits, in the midst of #MeToo in French cinema following the Depardieu affair and Judith Godrèche’s accusations against directors Benoît Jacquot and Jacques Doillon.
Info or intox ? Still, in an interview given to Paris Match A few days ago, the president of the demonstration Iris Knobloch announced that she was monitoring the situation of “very close“and consider measures”case by case“if a scandal were to break out during the fortnight which opens this Tuesday, May 14 with the screening of Quentin Dupieux’s new film, The Second Actand a Palme d’Or which will be awarded to the legendary Meryl Streep.
News everywhere, from movies to the red carpet
Last year, the Cannes Film Festival was singled out by feminist movements and a petition from French actors was launched due to Johnny Depp’s invitation, a few months after his eventful legal battle with Amber Heard. Is this new rumor about French cinema likely to inflame the atmosphere? “What will sour the atmosphere is the fact that we are talking about it!“, retorted delegate Thierry Frémaux this Monday during a meeting with the press.
“One of your colleagues asked me what has changed the most in the last 20 years“, continued the man who has been in office since 2007. “I answered your questions! Because before, we only talked about cinema. When the festival started, we organizers had only one anxiety: the films. Will they be loved? Are they going to be hated. What will be the winners? We don’t talk about that anymore.”
Still, the news is already catching up with the most publicized festival on the planet. While Judith Godrèche is expected on the Croisette to present Me tooa short film which brings together a thousand victims of sexual violence, the actress and director participated this Monday in Paris in a demonstration demanding the withdrawal of Dominique Boutonnat, the boss of the National Center for Cinematography (CNC), who must be judged for sexual assault next June.
Cannes is also the threat of a strike posed by the demonstration by the precarious employees of the collective “Sous les éclairs de la dèche”, weakened by the reform of unemployment insurance. “No festival can be held without the participation of young workers who come to do short contracts“, pleaded Thierry Frémaux, without guaranteeing that their demands will not impact the festivities. Finally, while the two previous editions were marked by happenings in support of Ukraine, it is difficult not to imagine the conflict at Gaza invites itself on the steps.
A giant, dissidents… and young shoots
Until then, the cinema world has an appointment with a selection that is tempting to say the least. We think of the comeback of the immense Francis Ford Coppola with Megalopolis, a crazy project led by Adam Driver and a host of stars. The reunion of Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos and his muse Emma Stone with Kinds of Kindnessjust a few months after the actress’s coronation at the Oscars for Poor Creatures. Or even to The Apprentice by Ali Abbasi, a hotshot about the golden youth of Donald Trump with Sebastien Stan in the role of the former president, currently on trial in New York.
Very political on paper, the Cannes competition should also be marked by Limonov: The Ballad of Eddie, the adaptation of Emmanuel Carrère’s novel about the Russian dissident of the same name by Kirill Serebrennikov, himself in exile since the invasion of Ukraine. But also by the presence of Mohammad Rasoulof, the Iranian filmmaker who has just announced that he fled his country after being sentenced to five years in prison by the Tehran regime. Filmed in hiding, his new film entitled The Seed of The Sacred Fig will be presented on May 24, on the eve of the winners of the jury chaired by Greta Gerwig, the director of barbie. A real shock of cultures in perspective.
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And French cinema in all this? After the coronation of Justine Triet with Anatomy of a fall last year, all eyes will be on Jacques Audiard and his Emilia Perez, an ambitious musical comedy in which Avatar star Zoe Saldana plays the lawyer of a drug trafficker who dreams of getting out of business… by becoming a woman. Five years later The Great BathGilles Lellouche also chose the musical comedy register with Phew Lovea very big budget romance starring François Civil and Adèle Exarchopoulos.
Of the four directors in the running for the Palme this year, two are French. Coralie Fargeat with The Substancea body horror movie Titanium worn by Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley. And the young Agathe Riedinger, a complete stranger whose Rough diamond paints the portrait of a kid from Fréjus determined to become the French Kim Kardashian. This first film has so much more for the Festival teams that they sent it straight into competition against the heavyweights of the Seventh Art. The kind of beautiful story that would (almost) forget the controversies.
