3 x German participation
Iris Productions; Les films Pelléas / Festival de Cannes
from left: "A Hidden Life", "La Gomera", "Sibyl"
No German filmmakers in the race for the Golden Palm? That does not mean much this year. With "A Hidden Life" is a German-language film in the competition, shot by Terrence Malick. Eight years after his palatial triumph with "Tree of Life" Malick returns to Cannes with the story of the Austrian conscientious objector Franz Jägerstätter (played by August Diehl), who was executed during the Second World War. Two sad reunions are also connected with it: Bruno Ganz and Michael Nyqvist can be seen here in final roles.
Komplizen Film, the production company of Janine Jackowski, Jonas Dornbach and Maren Ade, has become a regular in Cannes. After "Toni Erdmann", "Western" and "In My Room", they are now launching "La Gomera" by Corneliu Porumboiu, the great rogue of the new Romanian cinema. To conclude from the previous works Porumboius, the rogue comedy about a man who learns the domestic whistling language on the eponymous island, with which he wants to help a buddy at the prison break, is likely to count the films with the most surprising twists.
Speaking of "Toni Erdmann": Its star Sandra Hüller can also be seen again in Cannes - in a supporting role in Justine Triet's "Sibyl" (competition). The Frenchwoman Triet had recommended "Victoria - men and other mishaps" against the stupid German title as a director for clever relationship comedies. In "Sibyl" she now lets a psychotherapist (Virginie Efira), who once had literary ambitions, pick up on her old dream again. Hüller seems to have taken the shoot under French direction: "Proxima" by Alice Winocour is already her next collaboration with a director.
3 x French directors
Arte France Cinéma / Canal Plus internation; Lilies Films / Hold Up Films / Festival de Cannes
From the left: "Atlantique", "Portrait de la jeune fille en feu", "Une fille facile"
Almost single-handedly, France is pushing up the still glorious female quota in the competition. Three out of four directors are French. Although Mati Diop is the debutante among them, she has attracted the most attention in advance: She is the first black filmmaker to make it to the competition. At least as curious as her biography but should make her work as an actress (including Claire Denis) and director of short films that show a tendency to experiment. After her own short film "Atlantiques" Diop has now filmed her eponymous feature film in Senegal, the home of her father - and there tries to capture the circumstances that move people to flee to Europe.
Although she had only contributed the script, Céline Sciamma was greeted with "Cé-line! Cé-line!" Chants in 2016 at the premiere of the animated film "My Life as Zucchini" in Cannes. Anyone who knows their films can understand this: With her uniquely empathic way of telling about growing up, the 38-year-old has developed into a brand - as a director ("Mädchenbande") as well as a scriptwriter ("With seventeen"). ). With her fourth feature length film, "Portrait de la jeune fille en feu," she enters the competition for the first time and picks up on a historical subject matter: an extraordinary relationship develops between a comtesse and the painter to whom she is portrayed before her wedding.
Although she already wins for her films stars like Natalie Portman and Lily Rose Depp, Rebecca Zlotowski comes to the status of an outsider in French cinema. Something in their sensuous as well as distanced way of staging seems to go against the grain of many. After her criminally misjudged psycho-historical drama "Planetarium" shows her new film "Une fille facile" again far away from the "sélection officielle" in the side row "Quinzaine des réalisateurs" - while the coming-of-age movie plays in Cannes ,
3x horror
Festival de Cannes
From left: "The Dead Do not Die", "Zombi Child", "The Lighthouse"
Excursions to genre cinema are among the most beautiful surprises in Jim Jarmusch's oeuvre. Already in "Only Lovers Left Alive" hid behind the vampire story a wonderful reflection on aging as a hipster. From his zombie comedy "The Dead Do not Die" , which opened the festival on Tuesday night, you should therefore, apart from a crazy Star squad - including Bill Murray, Tilda Swinton, Adam Driver, Selena Gomez and Iggy Pop - with nothing expect to be seated. From the 13th of June the film will also be shown in German cinemas.
The new film by Bertrand Bonello also revolves around zombies or at least an undead. His last work, the controversial terrorist exploration "Nocturama", had initially run in the competition, but was then because of dreaded correspondence with the attacks of Paris and Nice out of the program. As Persona semi-non grata, Bonello is now found in the "Quinzaine" sub-row again. His provocative appetite does not seem to have detracted from this: the story of his new movie "Zombi Child" about a group of schoolgirls in which the dispute of a Haitian plantation worker causes chaos sounds wildly unrestrained.
Among the most acclaimed horror films of recent years, there were an extraordinary number of debut films, including The Babadook and The Witch. Robert Eggers was responsible for the latter, an exceptionally sensual witch film. Now he can prove with "The Lighthouse" (also Quinzaine) that he is not a one-hit-wonder. Support him Robert Pattinson, Willem Dafoe, a plot about strangely fallen out of time lighthouse keeper and shooting on black and white 35-millimeter film, which he should have at least celluloid fetishist Quentin Tarantino as a fan on his side, with his Charles Manson film "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" comes to Cannes.
3 x recurring
3B Productions / Festival de Cannes
From left: "Too Old To The Young", "Beanpole", "Jeanne"
Also this year, there are no films from Netflix in Cannes to see, but a series of Amazon. One can only understand this if one knows that the festival maintains a not unlike mafia understanding of loyalty. Nicolas Winding Refn ("Drive"), for example, is the 2011 Nico Winding Refn ("Drive") LA-Noir special screening series "Too Old to the Young", and because everything is already in trouble, there is not to see the first episodes of the 10-divider, but parts 3 and 4.
When the Russian Kantemir Balagov showed his feverish debut film "Tesnota" 2017 in Cannes, we prophesied very confident that he would soon be among the mainstays of the festival, so impressive was a mixture of coming-of-age, abduction drama and political snapshot succeeded. Luckily Balagov did not shame us: With "Beanpole", a drama about two women fighting for survival in Leningrad shortly after the end of the occupation, he is back in the series "Un Certain Regard".
In Bruno Dumont's unique project, simply turning his own social-realistic film oeuvre into a farce again, a work-side strand has emerged: He also re-filmed French history as a farce. After "Jeannette", the metal musical about the childhood of Joan of Arc, he takes on "Jeanne" ("Un Certain Regard") now the youth of the national icon. Headbanging in front of the stake not excluded!
3 x Chinese cinema
Festival de Cannes; Kim Hee-Chul / EPA / DPA
From left: "Nan Fang Che Zhan De Ju Hui", "Liu Yu Tian", Zhang Yimou
At the Berlinale 2014, Diao Yi'nan with his neo-noir "Fireworks in broad daylight" praised both "Boyhood" and "Grand Budapest Hotel" and took the Golden Bear home. He also makes his debut in the Cannes competition with a genre film: In "Nan Fang Che Zhan De Ju Hui" ("Wild Goose Lake") he lets a young girl and a gang leader, both fleeing their fate, meet each other.
With a thriller, the Chinese cinema is also represented in the side series "Un Certain Regard". Actor Zu Feng shows his directorial debut "Liu Yu Tian" ("Summer of Changsha"), in which a commissioner, while working on a bizarre murder case, begins an amour fou with a surgeon who is supposed to help him with the investigation. In the male lead role: In China already several times for his acting excellent Zu Feng himself.
Despite all the curiosity about Chinese films, one should not forget one that is not shown: "One Second," the new movie by Zhang Yimou. Originally, the meta-drama was a film shoot, in which the Cultural Revolution theme is invited in 2019 in the competition of the Berlinale. Due to lack of clearances by the Chinese authorities, the film was temporarily blocked for Berlin, which was often interpreted as censorship. More time - for reworking or additional bureaucratic processes - seems to have made no difference: The fact that "One Second" now also does not run in Cannes, is skeptical whether the film will ever be seen.