By Last year was a… tricky year for movies, with the iconic Cannes Film Festival hitting snares like everything else in the world. With reluctance to adopt a digital platform for last year’s Festival, as the pandemic has started to reign in with the rollout of vaccines and lockdowns loosen, the 2021 Cannes Film Festival will be in full (socially-distanced) swing this year, with the full lineup announced, featuring the premieres of some of the biggest names in international cinema around.
In Competition:
Annette (Leos Carax)
The French Dispatch (Wes Anderson)
Benedetta (Paul Verhoeven)
A Hero (Asghar Farhadi)
Tout S’est Bien Passe (Francois Ozon)
Tre Piani (Nanni Moretti)
Titane (Julia Ducournau)
Red Rocket (Sean Baker)
Petrov’s Flu (Kirill Serebrennikov)
France (Bruno Dumont)
Nitram (Justin Kurzel)
Memoria (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
Lingui (Mahamat-Saleh Haroun)
Paris 13th District (Jacques Audiard)
The Restless (Joachim Lafosse)
La Fracture (Catherine Corsini)
The Worst Person in the World (Joachim Trier)
Compartment No. 6 (Juho Kuosmanen)
Casablanca Beats (Nabil Ayouch)
Ahed’s Knee (Nadav Lapid)
Drive My Car (Ryusuke Hamaguchi)
Bergman Island (Mia Hansen-Løve)
The Story of My Wife (Ildikó Enyedi)
Flag Day (Sean Penn)
Out of Competition
De Son Vivant (Emmanuelle Bercot)
Emergency Declaration (Han Jae-Rim)
The Velvet Underground (Todd Haynes)
Stillwater (Tom McCarthy)
Aline, The Voice of Love (Valerie Lemercier)
Bac Nord (Cedric Jimenez)
Midnight Screening
Bloody Oranges (Jean-Christophe Meurisse)
Cannes Premieres
Evolution (Kornél Mundruczo)
Deception (Arnaud Desplechin)
Cow (Andrea Arnold)
Love Songs for Tough Guys (Samuel Benchetrit)
Mothering Sunday (Eva Husson)
Hold Me Tight (Mathieu Amalric)
In Front of Your Face (Hong Sang-soo)
Val (Ting Poo and Leo Scott)
Special Screenings
H6 (Yé Yé)
Cahiers Noirs (Black Notebooks) (Shlomi Elkabetz)
Mariner of the Mountains (Karim Aïnouz)
Jane Par Charlotte (Charlotte Gainsbourg)
JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass (Oliver Stone)
Babi Yar. Context (Sergei Loznitsa)
The Year of the Everlasting Storm (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, David Lowery, Jafar Panahi, Laura Poitras, Dominga Sotomayor, Anthony Chen, and Malik Vitthal)
Un Certain Regard
Un Monde (Laura Wandel)
The Innocents (Eskil Vogt)
After Yang (Kogonada)
Commitment Hasan (Hasan Semih)
Lamb (Valdimar Jóhannsson)
Bonne Mère (Hafsia Herzi)
Delo (House Arrest) (Alexey German Jr.)
La Civil (Teodara Ana Mihai)
Noche de Fuego (Tatiana Huezo)
Blue Bayou (Justin Chon)
Moneyboys (C.B Yi)
Freda (Gessica Géneus)
Women Do Cry (Mina Mileva and Vesela Kazakova)
Unclenching the Fists (Kira Kovalenko)
Let There Be Morning (Eran Kolirin)
Rehana Maryam Noor (Abdullah Mohammad Saad)
With the 2021 Cannes Festival running from July 6th-17th in just over a month, it’s exciting to have such a gargantuan force in the film world back in action after a year without the big screen. For many, the biggest name will be Wes Anderson, whose delayed feature The French Dispatch will premiere after missing 2020’s Cannes, and I can’t wait to see whatever it may be he’s cooked up with his cast of regulars.
New work from Mia Hansen-Løve is exciting; I’m a big fan of her 2014 film Eden. Also, after being utterly mesmerized by Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s 5+ hour long Happy Hour, I will watch the man direct anything.
There’s sure to be something for everyone, all tastes represented. With many films to be scooped up for distribution, hopefully making access easy, we’ll have to wait and see in July what rises to the top of the festival circuit.
Source: The Film Stage