The first steps of the author Annie Ernaux in the cinema, a drama on terrorism in Paris with Virginie Efira, films from the Maghreb or Ukraine: the 54and Directors’ Fortnight, a competition held during the Cannes Film Festival, presented its selection on Tuesday.
Eleven directors are selected, for a total of 23 films which want to restore “the beauty and the richness of contemporary world cinema”, indicated the general delegate Paolo Moretti, who must hand over at the end of this edition.
It will begin with the presentation of the traditional Carrosse d’or, this year awarded to the American director Kelly Reichardt, who is also present in official competition at Cannes for her new film, Show-Up.
La Quinzaine (from May 18 to 27) will show Annie Ernaux’s first film, which she made at the age of 81 with her son David. The super 8 yearslike the work of the author of Yearspromises to make the link between autobiography and sociopolitical narrative: it was composed from his own family films shot between 1976 and 1981.
The French battalion is well represented, with Mia Hansen-Løve’s latest film (A nice morning, with Melvil Poupaud and Léa Seydoux); that of Philippe Faucon, on the fate of the harkis, 60 years after the independence of Algeria; or the second film by Léa Mysius (The Five Devilswith Adèle Exarchopoulos), screenwriter with Jacques Audiard and Arnaud Desplechin.
The filmmaker Alice Winocour, for her part, tackles the question of terrorism by dealing with an attack perpetrated in the French capital (See Paris againwith Virginie Efira and Grégoire Colin).
Movies from everywhere
In addition to an Asian film which will soon join this selection, but whose title has not been revealed, films from all over the world will be screened, including a first Ukrainian feature film (PAMFIR, by Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk), announced as a “Greek tragedy between social and political parable”. Political questions will be very present, in films as well coming from Latin America (1976by Manuela Martelli, on the dictatorship of Pinochet in Chile) than in the Arab world, from Tunisia to Lebanon.
The opening film is from the Italian director who had adapted Martin Eden, by Jack London, namely Pietro Marcello. His first film shot in French, take offwith Louis Garrel, is according to him “a fable imbued with magical realism”.