Like a little Cannes festival in Lyon

Thomas Vinterberg, Vigo Mortensen and Mads Mikkelsen during the opening ceremony of the Lumière festival in Lyon.

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• The Lumière festival opened on Saturday in Lyon.

• A showcase for heritage films and an unmissable event for the big names in cinema, this year it offers a selection of selected films that could not be shown on the Croisette.

A showcase for classics rebroadcast on the big screen, a meeting with big names in cinema and, this year, a window on a private Cannes selection of Croisette by the coronavirus: the Lumière festival opened on Saturday in Lyon.

"The death of cinema, we do not believe it at all and we are full" to think so, declared Thierry Frémaux, director of the Lumière Institute of Lyon and general delegate of the Cannes festival, at the opening of the meeting. -you Lyonnais that he pilots.

"The film industry is still alive"

On their arrival, the invited stars were delighted, like the Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen, who “wanted” to come to Lyon: “it's a great way to show the world that the film industry is still there and still is. alive, ”he told reporters.

“We love the cinema like that, the spectacle”, added the American Oliver Stone: “People react at the same time as you, it's moving”.

This year the festival pays tribute to Belgian filmmakers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, double winners of the Palme d'Or, by awarding them the 12th Prix Lumière.

For a week, it will also celebrate French dialogue writer and screenwriter Michel Audiard - who would have turned 100 this year - with a retrospective of his films in restored copies.

Window on Cannes

In this year turned upside down by the health crisis, the great peculiarity of Lumière is an exceptional window offered to the “Official Cannes 2020 Selection”.

The most prestigious of international festivals could not be held on the Croisette, but 56 films received this distinction.

Twenty-three of them are offered a catch-up session in Lyon, where they will be screened in the presence of their teams, as well as part of “Cannes Classics”, dedicated to film classics.

These films range from

, the latest cartoon by Gorô Miyazaki, the son of the founder of the Japanese studios Ghibli, to

, social satire on the place of alcohol by Danish Thomas Vinterberg (

) or

, a family drama. around a father and his son which marks the passage to the direction of the American-Danish actor Viggo Mortensen.

The Lyon festival, chaired by director Bertrand Tavernier, was launched in 2009 by the Institut Lumière.

Its award has recognized the careers of big names such as Clint Eastwood, Jane Fonda, Wong Kar-wai and Catherine Deneuve.

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