(Cannes) Airs of Hollywood Boulevard on the Croisette, the race for the Palme d’Or and a renewal that could come from the directors: the 76e Cannes Film Festival opens next Tuesday.
Entangled in a screenwriters’ strike that brought filming to a halt in the United States, the 7e art will have its eyes on the Palais des Festivals from May 16 to 27.
Because, one year after creating the event with Elvis And Top Gun: MaverickCannes, where a hundred films will be shown in all sections, confirms his idyll with Hollywood.
Cinema legends like Harrison Ford will climb the stairs: at the age of 80, the actor finds the Indiana Jones archaeologist costume for the fifth part of the saga imagined by Georges Lucas and brought to the screen by Steven Spielberg.
Coming from one of the biggest American studios, Warner, the new president of the festival, Iris Knobloch, will have the opportunity to greet many other Hollywood stars.
Among them: Martin Scorsese, who came to present his latest film with his favorite actors Robert De Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio, actor Michael Douglas (Wall Street, Basic Instinct) who will receive an honorary Palme d’or, or the very prominent Pedro Pascal, hero of the series The Last of Uswhich shares with Ethan Hawke the poster of a gay romance with western sauce, an unclassifiable short film by Pedro Almodovar.
The new generation is not forgotten: Brie Larson, alias Captain Marveljoined the Palme d’Or jury at the age of 33, alongside Paul Dano (Little Miss Sunshine, The Fabelmans), and pop star The Weeknd will set the red carpet on fire for his series The Idolwith Lily-Rose Depp.
The major studios have responded to the call of the Côte d’Azur, a platform including with the presence of Apple, which will therefore release its films, like that of Scorsese, first in theaters. The Netflix giant continues to ignore this rule, which is strictly applied in competition.
Record number of female directors
A total of 21 films are in the running to succeed the 2022 Palme d’Or, Without filter. Its director, the Swedish Ruben Östlund, chairs the jury this year.
Filmmakers like the Italian Nanni Moretti, the Turkish Nuri Bilge Ceylan, the Japanese Hirokazu Kore-Eda or the German Wim Wenders are looking for a second Palme, while at 86, the Briton Ken Loach attempts a hat-trick historical.
In a cinema industry dominated by men and whose efforts are not yet sufficient to achieve parity, the official competition selected a record number of seven female directors.
The latter remain very much in the minority, but the arrival of these artists, who are younger than their male counterparts, contributes to the renewal of the festival and sends a signal to the entire industry.
Like Ramata-Toulaye Sy, a 36-year-old Franco-Senegalese director, propelled into the race for the Palme d’Or with her very first feature film, Banel and Adama.
Figureheads of this renewal, the filmmakers Julia Ducournau (Palme d’or in 2021 with Titanium) and Audrey Diwan (Lion d’Or the same year with The event) respectively integrate the jury of the official competition and that of Critics’ Week.
As for the opening film, Jeanne du Barryhe promises not to leave indifferent.
Its director, Maïwenn, is the subject of a complaint from journalist Edwy Plenel, whom she allegedly attacked in a restaurant.
She stages herself there as the favorite of King Louis XV, played by Johnny Depp, the star of Pirates of the Caribbeanpersona non grata on American sets since accusations of domestic violence and then mutual accusations of defamation with his former wife Amber Heard.
At the end of a highly publicized judicial soap opera, and without justice having pronounced on the possible violence, Depp attempted a return through Cannes, on the evening of the opening ceremony, May 16.
The next day, the presentation in competition of the film The return by Catherine Corsini could also make waves: her public funding was withdrawn from her for not having declared, as the law provides, the filming of an explicitly sexual, but simulated scene, involving an actress under 16 years old.