Spotlight on the Riviera: Cannes rolls out red carpet for 78th film festival

The 78th edition of the Cannes International Film Festival opens on May 13 on the French Riviera, with 22 films featured in this year’s main competition.

The festival will run from May 13 to May 24, and will open with Leave One Day, a film by French director Amélie Bonnin, Caliber.Az reports, citing foreign media.

During the opening ceremony, American actor Robert De Niro will be honoured with the prestigious Honorary Palme d'Or.

This year, the main competition jury is chaired by French actress Juliette Binoche. The jury also includes filmmakers Hong Sang-soo, Carlos Reygadas, Payal Kapadia, and Dieudo Hamadi; actor Jeremy Strong; actresses Halle Berry and Alba Rohrwacher; and author Leïla Slimani.

Among the entries vying for the top prize is Wes Anderson’s new film The Phoenician Scheme, which centres on family and family values and stars Bill Murray, Benicio del Toro, and Michael Cera. Other contenders include New Wave by Richard Linklater, a film about the making of Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless; and Eddington by Ari Aster, set against the backdrop of a pandemic and a conflict between a mayor and a prosecutor, starring Joaquin Phoenix, Pedro Pascal, Emma Stone, Austin Butler, Deirdre O'Connell, and others.

Also in the main competition are Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value; Two Prosecutors by Sergei Loznitsa; Secret Agent by Kleber Mendonça Filho; It was just an accident by Jafar Panahi; Romería by Carla Simón; The Sound of Falling by Masha Shilinsky; Eagles of the Republic by Tarik Saleh; The Genius by Kelly Reichardt; and Dossier 137 by Dominik Moll.

Additional contenders include Freedom by Mario Martone; The Sirat Bridge by Oliver Laxe; The Last One by Hafsia Herzi; A History of Sound by Oliver Hermanus; Renoir by Tia Hayakawa; Alpha by Julia Ducournau; and Young Mothers by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne. Three films were added to the competition lineup after the official program announcement: Die, My Love by Lynne Ramsay, A Woman and a Child by Saeed Roustaee, and Resurrection by Bi Gan.

As part of the “Cannes Premiere” section, the festival will also screen The Disappearance of Josef Mengele by Kirill Serebrennikov; All Her Exes by Michael Angelo Covino; Amrum by Fatih Akin; and more.

This year’s “Un Certain Regard” program includes directorial debuts from Scarlett Johansson (Eleanora the Great) and Harris Dickinson (Urchin).

By Tamilla Hasanova