Competition
LE OTTO MONTAGNE
directed by CHARLOTTE VANDERMEERSCH & FELIX VAN GROENINGEN
This rich, beautiful and inexpressibly sad film is about the lasting friendship between men who can’t talk about their feelings and about winning and losing at the great game of life, The Guardian says. It is set in the breathtaking and wonderfully photographed Italian Alpine valley of Aosta, which includes the slopes of Mont Blanc and the Matterhorn. But the “eight mountains” of the title refers to the eight highest peaks of Nepal: a mysterious symbol of worldly ambition and conquest
Un Certain Regard
RODEO directed by LOLA QUIVORON
Screen says this vibrant and impressively funky fiction debut, ambitiously attempts to put a lot of heart into a gang movie that mutates quietly and organically into a heist thriller but doesn’t know quite how to fuse these strands.
Cannes Premiere
MARIUPOL 2 co-directed by MANTAS KVEDARAVICIUS and Hanna Bilbrova
It was made by the Lithuanian filmmaker and anthropologist Mantas Kvedaravicius, who was killed, on April 2, during the siege of Mariupol, completed by Kvedaravicius’s partner, Hanna Bilbrova. simply gives us one shot after another, linking them with a poetic jump-cut flow as it attempts to lend visual and emotional coherence to the experience of men, women, and children trapped in a bunker in Ukraine doing their best to ward off the chaos. Each image is vivid, like a photograph, and each is held for 10 seconds, or 30 seconds, or maybe two or four minutes. It is resolute and impersonal in its objectivity.
The team who completed “Mariupolis 2” said they were shocked by the French Air Force display team that had screeched across the sky the previous evening as part of celebrations for the new Tom Cruise blockbuster.
“I was with a friend from Mariupol, a producer. She’s been experiencing the war for eight years,” said Hanna Bilobrova, the girlfriend of Kvedaravicius, who was with him in the eastern Ukraine city up to his death.
“We were on the balcony and heard jets flying and we almost lay down. Bombs didn’t follow. (My friend) began to cry. (She) was very ashamed about her reaction and I said there’s nothing to be ashamed about. We’re still alive.”
HUNT directed by LEE JUNG-JAE
Squid Game actor’s directorial debut is a confusing spy thriller.
Quinzaine des Réalisateurs
OPENING CEREMONY followed by FILM L’ENVOL (SCARLET)
directed by PIETRO MARCELLO
This is basically a classic coming-of-age story, says the Hollywood Reporter about a girl trying to escape her lowly origins, and the pilot who drops out of the sky on “scarlet sails” to hopefully save her.
Miramar
WHEN YOU FINISH SAVING THE WORLD directed by JESSE EISENBERG
Eisenberg’s directorial debut, starring Julianne Moore and Finn Wolfhard, is a well acted, ironic yet sentimental portrayal of a tricky mother-son dynamic.
