The climb of the steps on Monday, May 20 marked the start of the second half of the Festival. Two highly anticipated films were presented in competition: that of Ali Abbasi, with former superheroes in the cast, such as Sebastian Stan and Maria Bakalova, and that of David Cronenberg, with stars Vincent Cassel and Diane Kruger. Beautiful stars under a rainy sky.
The Cannes Film Festival was political this Monday, May 20, with a film about Donald Trump. The jury, chaired by Greta Gerwig, discovered “The Apprentice”, a highly anticipated feature film six months before the American presidential election. It depicts the early years of Donald Trump, then a real estate entrepreneur, and his relationship with his political mentor, lawyer Roy Cohn, a man closely associated with McCarthyism and the New York mafia. In the role of the former President of the United States, we find Sebastian Stan (“Captain America”) and in that of the lawyer, Jeremy Strong (“Succession”). The film is by a Danish-Iranian, Ali Abbasi, who is taking his first steps in Hollywood after films noticed on the Croisette such as “Border”, winner of the Un Certain Regard prize in 2018, then “Les nuits de Mashhad”.
Two years after “Crimes of the Future”, veteran David Cronenberg, 81 years old, director of “Crash” or “eXistenZ”, returns with his new film “The Shrouds”. Faithful to his themes, this time he is filming with Vincent Cassel and Diane Kruger a story about a machine allowing the living to connect to their deceased loved ones. In this new, partly autobiographical feature film, the filmmaker, who pays tribute to his wife who died seven years ago, imagines a link with the missing person. It’s a real emotional and personal exploration that David Cronenberg offers in Cannes.