“We are happy to be able to welcome Ukrainian filmmakers”, rejoiced this Thursday on franceinfo Thierry Frémaux, general delegate of the Cannes Film Festival who has just revealed his selection. The biggest festival of the 7th art in the world will, as often, have a geopolitical resonance with the presence of the Ukrainian filmmaker Sergei Loznitsa and the Russian Kirill Serebrennikov who now lives in Berlin. “We will think a lot” to Ukraine, asserts Thierry Frémaux.
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franceinfo: Is the presence of Russian director Kirill Serebrennikov symbolic?
Thierry Fremaux: It’s almost a story in history since he was one of the dissidents to Vladimir Putin. He was under house arrest. He did not want to leave Russia for fear of never being able to return.
“And following the war in Ukraine, he decided to leave Russia. He indeed passed through Paris. He now lives in Berlin. He will also open the festival.”
Thierry Fremauxat franceinfo
He is a man of the theater, from the Avignon Festival. It is important to have this film which, for once, is not a dissident film or a controversial film. But it is important to have him in full freedom and within, of course, the world geopolitical situation which is particular. He will be there at a time when we are also happy to be able to welcome Ukrainian filmmakers who will allow us, in vivo and in a practical way, to think about Ukraine. We will think about it a lot, but there will be films and films that evoke the history of this particular country.
There will be in particular the Ukrainian filmmaker Sergei Loznitsa who has been in competition several times at Cannes…
Yes, it’s a filmmaker who also made a film called Donbass, which already showed Russian or Russian-speaking abuses in this part of the country. And then, he is also a famous documentary filmmaker. Last year he came up with a film called Babi Yar about the Babi Yar massacre.
We have the first film by a young Ukrainian filmmaker who tells the story of a soldier and an intelligence girl who, in the Donbass, waged war against the Russians and who was kidnapped, tortured and who returns .
Thierry Fremauxat franceinfo
What is coming back from war? William Wyler, with The Best Years of Our Lives, had already dealt with this. The cinema has done a lot. And this film, it’s as if it had been shot three weeks, a month ago. That is to say, we have the impression that we are there and that we live with this young heroine who has difficulty telling what she has experienced. How to recount the war and how to make those who have not experienced it understand? We are all a bit in this case and the cinema is there to try to help us understand.
How many directors at Cannes are present this year? Is parity respected?
The important thing is the trends. This is not a situation of a given year and the trend is nevertheless for there to be more and more female directors in the world of cinema in general and at Cannes in particular. You shouldn’t read the selection alone, but we have above all young female directors, a new generation of female directors who come from North Africa, for example Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia. So, on this question, the cinema is changing slowly, of course, but there were 90 years of cinema history without female directors and today there are more and more of them.