Glamorous casting and sulphurous subjects have always gone hand in hand on the Croisette. The first episode of the new series produced by the American channel HBO, The Idol, screened in world premiere Monday, May 22 at the Cannes Film Festival, ticks both boxes. Canadian pop-star The Weeknd, author of hits Blinding Lights And starboy, interpreter a nightclub owner with a troubled past who will try to revive the career of a music star played by Lily-Rose Depp, daughter of Vanessa Paradis and Johnny Depp.
This series, broadcast from June 5 in France on Amazon Prime Video, is produced by Sam Levinson, the creator ofEuphoria. She is presented as “the most sordid love story in all of Hollywood”in the words of HBO, and will be unveiled in Cannes at 10:30 p.m.
An article in “Rolling Stone” sparks controversy. The hasty departure of director Amy Seimetz, who started the series with The Weeknd, sparked the first rumors. His replacement by Sam Levinson has inflated the budget and changed the artistic and creative direction of the series, says the American magazine Rolling Stone, which evokes explicitly sexual content. A controversy that the singer wanted to demine on Instagram by publishing an excerpt from the series that makes fun of the famous magazine.
Two films in competition. Winner of the Grand Jury Prize in 2002 for The man without a pastFinnish director Aki Kaurismäki presents his fifth film in the running for the Palme d’or, Dead leaves, screened at 4:45 p.m. at the Grand Théâtre Lumière. The other feature film of the day is Club Zero, by Jessica Hausner. After Little Joe in 2019, this is the second appearance in competition for the Austrian director, member of the jury in 2021.