the official poster unveiled puts Akira Kurosawa in the spotlight

The Cannes Film Festival has unveiled the official poster for its 77th edition. A poetic image from a masterpiece by the great Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa, “Rhapsody in August”, presented at Cannes in 1991.

It is a barely veiled call for unity in a tense geopolitical context that the Cannes Film Festival, scheduled for May 14 to 25, 2024, is launching through the official poster for its next edition, unveiled Friday April 19 in late afternoon. And it is also a tribute to the Japanese Akira Kurosawa since the image is taken from a scene from the film Rhapsody in Augustthe penultimate feature film by the great master of the 7th art released in 1991.

Then aged 81, the filmmaker of The Legend of Great Judo, Rashômon, The Seven Samurai, Dersu Uzala Or Dodes’kaden y reminded of the importance of coming together and seeking harmony in all things.

In this film presented out of competition at the Cannes Film Festival in 1991, a grandmother victim of the bombing of Nagasaki on August 9, 1945 transmits to her grandchildren and her American nephew her faith in love and integrity as a defense against war. With as much tenderness as meditation.

“In a fragile world that constantly questions otherness, the Cannes Festival reaffirms a conviction: cinema is a universal sanctuary of expression and sharing. A place where our humanity is written as much as our freedom“, write the organizers of the high mass of the 7th art in a press release.

After the photos of Catherine Deneuve last year, of Spike Lee in 2021, and of Jean-Paul Belmondo and Anna Karina in 2018, the festival returns this year to an emblematic film scene with strong symbolic value.