Who will take the steps at the 77th Cannes Film Festival? The event already has its president of the jury, Greta Gerwig, director of Barbie, but rumors abound, like Francis Ford Coppola, before the announcement of the official selection on Thursday. This edition, from May 14 to 25, is eagerly awaited after the impact of the 2023 Palme d’Or, Anatomy of a Fall by Justine Triet. “The unanimous response we had proves that 2023 was a very great year,” confirms Thierry Frémaux, general delegate of the Cannes Film Festival in the American magazine Variety.
End of the suspense, Thursday, at 11 a.m., with the press conference in Paris of the strong man of the biggest world cinema event. In the box of certainties, there is already the preview, out of competition, of Furiosa, new part of the Mad Max franchise by George Miller. Red carpet in sight for the mega-stars of this blockbuster Anya Taylor-Joy and Chris Hemsworth.
And so it’s done: Kevin Costner, returning to the western with Horizon, An American Saga, has won his ticket, out of competition. The opening, out of competition, goes to Quentin Dupieux, specialist in the absurd, with The second act which notably features Léa Seydoux.
Camille Cottin will be the mistress of the opening and closing ceremonies, an actress revealed by the series Ten percent (Call my agent in English) which opened the doors to Hollywood for her. Filmmaker Rodrigo Sorogoyen will chair the Critics’ Week jury, director Xavier Dolan that of the Un Certain Regard jury.
For the rest, the predictions are going well. Will we see Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis in Cannes? Superlatives abound for this monster film, with a budget of $100 million, starring Adam Driver and Forest Whitaker. “Francis Ford Coppola built the legend of Cannes and it would be an honor to welcome him again,” slips Thierry Frémaux in Variety. The Festival is in fact the garden of this 85-year-old cinema monument, which won the Palmes d’Or for Secret Conversation in 1974 and Apocalypse Now in 1979.
Talking about American films means talking about the impact of strikes in Hollywood. “Many productions initially planned for 2024 will be released in 2025,” underlines the general delegate of the Festival. The United States will still be very present at Cannes this year.”
Bets are also off for David Cronenberg with Les Linceuls, worn by Diane Kruger and Vincent Cassel. Exiled Russian filmmaker Kirill Serebrennikov stirs up conversations with two options, adapted from French books, Limonov by Emmanuel Carrère and The Disappearance of Josef Mengele, by Olivier Guez, about the doctor who tortured Auschwitz. Having just won an Oscar, Emma Stone, in Kinds of Kindness by Yorgos Lanthimos, would not be out of place in the picture.
The new adaptation of the sulphurous Emmanuelle, by Audrey Diwan with Noémie Merlant, would inevitably cause a lot of talk, right in the middle of
Marcello Mastroianni evoked through his daughter Chiara, in a film alongside his mother Catherine Deneuve? This is the pitch of Marcello Mio by Christophe Honoré.
Asked by Variety about the presence of Israeli and/or Palestinian films in the official selection, Thierry Frémaux replied that “nothing prohibits it”. “Israeli and Palestinian directors, like intellectuals from these two countries in general, are traditionally in favor of dialogue and those I know call for an end to the conflict and the opening of negotiations,” continues the official.
The Festival is not a bubble cut off from the upheavals of the world. In 2022, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had, to everyone’s surprise, spoken via video at the opening ceremony, a few months after the start of the Russian invasion of his country.