Written by The Location Guide on May 6, 2024. Posted in Awards and Festivals

The Heat of the Cannes Film Festival

The 77th Cannes committee will have reviewed more than 2,000 films submitted this year and it is not always the ones deemed to be ‘good’ that will get an official slot.

 

It’s the gaze of critics and spectators that builds the prestige of films,” explained Festival director Thierry Frémaux. “What guides us isn’t ‘I like’ or ‘I don’t like,’ and even less ‘it’s good’ or ‘it’s not good.’ What guides us is, ‘Should this film be presented at Cannes or not?’ or ‘What does the selection of this film say about the state of world cinema?’ The Official Selection gives, year after year, a strong indication of what cinema has become, its changes, evolutions and what remains immutable. It’s as important to make aesthetic discoveries as it is to show films that will have an audience right away.”

 

That could explain why Francis Ford Coppola’s passion project Megalopolis will premiere in competition on May 17. It has reportedly received mixed reviews among Hollywood buyers but Coppola is a legend, a 1979 Palme D’Or winner for Apocalypse Now and someone, according to Frémaux “who survived all the battles, and yet kept an appetite for life and for cinema that is extraordinarily stimulating. Megalopolis, he added, is a project that Coppola “wanted to achieve for so long and he did it independently, in his own way, as an artist.”

 

It’s the gaze of critics and spectators that builds the prestige of films.

 

Highlights include director Andrea Arnold's return to narrative filmmaking after nearly a decade. Bird was shot in Kent last summer and stars Barry Keoghan. Ali Abbasi, the Iranian-born, Swedish-based director known for 2022's Holy Spider, returns with The Apprentice depicting how a young Donald Trump and lawyer Roy Cohn built Trump’s real estate empire in 1970s and 80s New York.

 

Also competing for the Palme d'Or are David Cronenberg’s The Shrouds, Paolo Sorrentino's Parthenope, Sean Baker’s Anora and Yorgos Lanthimos who returns with his third Emma Stone-starring drama Kinds of Kindness.

 

In keeping with the Festival’s support of American New Wave auteurs (like Scorsese and Coppola), Paul Schrader’s latest Oh, Canada is also in the mix reuniting the American Gigolo director with star Richard Gere.

 

If a film doesn’t come out in theatres it’s different – and if it’s different, it’s being treated differently when it comes to the competition.

 

There are fewer American films than in previous years, a direct result of the strikes in 2023, which delayed productions. Many US productions that were initially planned for 2024 will be released in 2025.

 

Apple made a splash last year by premiering Killers of the Flower Moon but movies that are not given theatrical release are still not being considered.

 

“We favour films that come out in theatres because France is a great country for cinema and must remain a great country for theatrical exhibition,” Frémaux said. “If [a film] doesn’t come out in theatres it’s different – and if it’s different, it’s being treated differently when it comes to the competition.”

 

During the pandemic, we heard a lot of stupid things about the so-called ‘death of cinema.’ But there’s no such thing. It’s more alive than ever.

 

Quentin Dupieux’s comedy The Second Act starring Léa Seydoux will open the Festival, the same day it opens in French cinemas via Diaphana Distribution.

 

George Miller’s Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga gets an out of competition gala screening ahead of its theatrical release on May 22 internationally. The Warner Bros title stars Anya Taylor-Joy and Chris Hemsworth and is the prequel to Mad Max: Fury Road which premiered at Cannes in 2015.

 

Greta Gerwig presides over the main competition jury – the first female American director to do so. She said Cannes had "always been the pinnacle of what the universal language of movies can be". Festival bosses Iris Knobloch and Frémaux said in a joint statement: "This is an obvious choice, since Greta Gerwig so audaciously embodies the renewal of world cinema, for which Cannes is each year both the forerunner and the sounding board." The Barbie director was further described by organisers as "a heroine of our modern times" who "shakes up the status quo" in the cinema world.

 

Xavier Dolan is jury president for the Un Certain Regard sidebar. The Canadian filmmaker and actor has a long track record of premiering his films at Cannes. In 2015 Dolan was a member of the main competition jury at Cannes, chaired by the Coen brothers and his It’s Only the End of the World won the Grand Prix in competition at Cannes in 2019.

 

Also launching is Cannes Immersive, a new programme aiming to position Cannes as a global hub for immersive creations and the emerging artistic use of artificial intelligence.

 

He said, “Even more than making films myself, discovering the work of talented filmmakers has always been at the very heart of both my personal and professional journeys. I see, in this responsibility I’m assigned, the opportunity to focus with the members of the Un Certain Regard jury on an essential aspect of the art of film: stories told truthfully.”

 

Belgian filmmaker Lukas Dhont presides over the Queer Palm jury. The director won the award himself in 2015 with his debut feature Girl as well as picking up the Camera d’Or. Dhont will also mentor the inaugural Queer Palm Lab later this year where five young filmmakers participate in a year-long residency with their first queer feature film. Last year, the Queer Palm was presented to Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Monster.

 

More Hollywood royalty will be celebrated with George Lucas set to receive the Honorary Palme d’Or for “bringing together great entertainment and innovation, mythology and modernity and cinephilia and technology.”

 

Also launching is Cannes Immersive, a new programme aiming to position Cannes as a global hub for immersive creations and the emerging artistic use of artificial intelligence. The new competitive strand will feature eight immersive works plus a curated selection of non-competitive works, "illustrating the synergy between immersive experiences and cinema.”

 

Frémaux concludes, “During the pandemic, we heard a lot of stupid things about the so-called ‘death of cinema.’ But there’s no such thing. It’s more alive than ever.”

 

This article appears in the Cannes issue of our makers magazine which will be widely available at the film festival and Cannes Lion.

Click here to find out more.