The event’s organizers announced during a press conference Thursday that films by Wes Anderson, Todd Haynes and Ken Loach will compete for the Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.
Returning winners Wim Wenders, Hirokazu Kore-eda, Nuri Bilge Ceylan and Nanny Moretti will also compete for the festival’s top prize.
But Martin Scorsese won’t be competing in the festival, which opens May 16 and runs through May 27. Instead, his eagerly awaited movie “Killers of the Flower Moon,” starring Leonardo DiCaprio and about the killing of Osage Indians in Oklahoma in the 1920s, will appear out of competition. Cannes artistic director Thierry Frémaux said during Thursday’s press conference that the festival wanted to play “Moonflower Killers” in competition, but Scorsese turned it down.
Wes Anderson’s photo in competition is “Asteroid City,” about an astronaut agreement interrupted by aliens; Todd Haynes’ “May December” will feature a love story about a young man and his larger employer, starring Julianne Moore.
Ken Loach, whose films have focused on working-class life in Britain and has twice won the Palme d’Or, will present “Old Oak” about Syrian refugees. Arriving in an economically depressed English mining town.
A jury led by Swedish director Robin Ostlund will select the winner. Ostlund won the Palme d’Or last year for “Triangle of Sadness,” a satire on the global rich. He also won the 2017 award for “The Square,” a collection from the world of art.
Of the 19 titles in competition, five are directed by women, including Cannes veterans Jessica Hausner and Alice Rohrwasher, and Ramata Tolay C, a French-Senegalese newcomer.
Many of the high profile titles at this year’s event will be featured out of competition. The festival will open with “Jeanne du Barry”, a historical drama about a poor woman who becomes a lover of King Louis XV of France. It stars Johnny Depp in his first major role since winning a defamation trial against his ex-wife Amber Heard.
Other notable films set to premiere at the 76th Cannes Film Festival includeIndiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,Directed by James Mangold — the final film in Harrison Ford’s adventure series about a world-roving professor of archeology — and Pedro Almodovar’s A Strange Way of Life, the Spanish director’s second English-language film. Starring Ethan Hawke and Pedro Pascal, this movie is a Western. A short about the reunion between two successful men.
Wim Wenders, German director who won the 1984 Palme d’Or for “Paris, Texas,” has two films in the official selection. In the main competition, he will show “Perfect Days”, which Fremaux said is about a janitor in Japan driving between jobs listening to rock music. Out of competition, Wenders will show a 3D documentary about Anselm Kiefer, one of Germany’s most respected artists.
More than 2,000 films have been submitted to the festival, Frémaux said, though only 52 were selected on Thursday. Among these, another notable is Steve McQueen’s The Occupied City, about Amsterdam under the Nazis. Frémaux said McQueen, the director of “12 Years a Slave” and “Widows,” had directed a “very radical” film that spanned several hours. But, watching him, added Frémaux, “you will not fall asleep.”
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