Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight sidebar announced the selection for its 48th annual edition, unveiling an impressive, if slightly smaller-than-usual lineup — 18 features in all — that suggests the renewed vigor and continuing ascendance of the parallel section under the auspices of artistic director Edouard Waintrop, Variety reports.
Compensating for a total absence of Italian films in official competition, the lineup will spotlight a trio of films from a multi-generational and multi-faceted range of Italo auteurs: Marco Bellocchio’s “Sweet Dreams,” Paolo Virzi’s “Like Crazy” and Claudio Giovannesi’s “Fiore.”
“Sweet Dreams” will open the section, which runs from May 12 to 22, marking another coup for Waintrop after a strong 2015 edition: Bellocchio was widely expected to present his latest in Cannes’ official selection and might not have considered the Fortnight sidebar as an option before its major revamping three years ago.
Waintrop opened the press conference with a tearful homage to leading Israeli filmmaker and actress Ronit Elkabetz, who just died at age 51 after a long battle with cancer. Waintrop said he was extremely saddened and shocked upon learning of Elkabetz’s death. The artistic director said had been honored to present Elkabetz’s “Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem,” which she co-wrote and co-directed with her brother Shlomi Amsalem.
A brace of features will carry the North American flag: Paul Schrader’s “Dog Eat Dog,” which closes Directors’ Fortnight; Nathan Morlando’s “Mean Dreams”; Canadian helmer Kim Nguyen’s “Two Lovers and a Bear”; and Laura Poitras’ Julian Assange-focused documentary “Risk.” “I haven’t been able to open a computer ever since I watched this documentary, although the same thing happened to me after I watched ‘Citizenfour,’ ” Waintrop said.
Beyond Schrader and Bellocchio, this year’s Directors’ Fortnight will also showcase another big name for cognoscenti, “Neruda,” from Pablo Larrain, who is currently directing Nathalie Portman in “Jacky,” and one of the biggest examples of a breakout Latin American director this decade. The hugely eclectic gamut of this year’s lineup in films’ origins, scales, styles and prospective audiences is a forceful suggestions of how traditional arthouse has broadened its range amd ambitions in the last few years.
As per tradition, Directors’ Fortnight also showcases an adult-skewed animated feature, “My Life as a Courgette,” Claude Barras’ debut which is based on Gilles Paris’ novel and penned by Celine Sciamma, whose “Girlhood” opened the section two years earlier.
Gaul will be repped by several films, including “Tour de France,” Rachid Djaidani’s follow-up to his 2012 Directors’ Fortnight sensation “Hold Back,” and “The Invisible Ones” director Sebastien Lifshitz’s documentary “Les vies de Therese.”
Waintrop singled out another under-the-radar French film, Sacha Wolff debut “Mercenaire,” explaining that the rugby drama “speaks about sports as well as colonial relationships.”
He also had kind words for late “Lulu in the Nude” director Solveig Anspach, who passed away last August, but insisted that they had selected the Icelandic-French helmer’s final feature, “L’effet aquatique,” on its own merits: “It’s not an homage. We got carried away by the Icelandic wind. It was a coup de coeur. It was one our favorites among the French movies we saw this year,” Waintrop said.
