Director Ali Abbasi competes in Cannes with the film Holy spider, the management of the Cannes Film Festival announces today.
The director has previously made the film Border, based on John Ajvide Lindqvist's short story, and is educated at the National Film School in Denmark.
Holy spider is about a family man, Saeed, and follows him on a religious mission - to "cleanse" the holy Iranian city of Mashad from prostitutes.
Triangle of sadness
Ruben Östlund competes with the film Triangle of sadness at the Cannes Film Festival.
The film is a satire about the status and fashion industry that takes place on a boat and an island. In 2020, the recording had to be put on ice for a couple of months due to the pandemic.
The film's star, Woody Harrelson, was unable to fly in from the United States and the intended recordings in Greece had to be postponed to the future.
In 2017, Ruben Östlund received the film world's heaviest prestige award, the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival for the film The square.
This was the first time in 25 years that a Swedish production won the prize - in 1992 the Palme d'Or went to The Good Will under the direction of Bille August with a script by Ingmar Bergman.
Boy from heaven
Tarik Saleh's upcoming film Boy from Heaven takes place, like the previous The Nile Hilton incident, in Cairo at one of the world's largest and oldest universities, Al-Azhar, where a poor boy receives a scholarship and is drawn into major political entanglements with religious overtones.
This time too, Fares Fares plays the main role.
- I wanted to make a film about how knowledge and education can be the difference between life and death.
My grandfather and grandmother were the first in their village to learn to read, and were able to start a modern life.
Thanks to that educational journey, my father was able to become a director, Tarek Saleh said last autumn.
The Cannes Film Festival in France will be held from 17 to 28 May.
The text is updated.