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MY BLUEBERRY NIGHTS, by Wong Kar Wai

FESTIVAL CELEBRATES ITS 60 YEARS WITH ICONS AND DIVERSITY

Cannes Film Festival gets to its 60th edition with a selection of 22 features in competition. Between May 16 and 27, another great movie festival will act for diversity suggestions. Even so, five of the selected films are American productions, three are French and most of them were made in co-production or with the participation of French production companies.

Cannes reflects an unbeatable French position, to stimulate authors and to give attention to other cultures. And these are the cinema models that try to prove vitality and their capacity to be contagious.

The French festival, one of the most important in the world, celebrates a long resistance work, with the utter urgency of preserving an endangered species in the cinema universe: the movie-goer.

And the first movie-goer reverence goes, thus, to unanimity.

Wong Kar Wai has his new MY BLUEBERRY NIGHTS as opening film. And the closing, when we will get to know the awarded this year, will have the new film by Canadian Denys Arcand, L’ÂGE DES TÉNÈBRES, out of competition.

The list of competitors to the Golden Palm have other famous names, who concentrate awards in previous festivals. The complete list follows:

Turkish-German Fatih Akin with AUF DER ANDEREN SEITE (The Edge Of Heaven) 2h02 – In 2004 he was granted the Golden Bear at the Berlinale with “Head One”.

French Catherine Breillat with UNE VIEILLE MAÎTRESSE.

The fashionable American brothers Joel & Ethan Coen with NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN.

American David Fincher with ZODIAC.

Also American, James Gray, with WE OWN THE NIGHT. He got a Golden Lion in Venice 94 for “Little Odessa”.

The French Christophe Honoré with LES CHANSONS D’AMOUR.

The Japanese Naomi Kawase, the only woman in the selection, with MOGARI NO MORI (The Mourning Forest).

The Korean Kim Ki-duk with SOOM (Breath) He is the filmmaker who charmed the audiences with “Empty Houses”, presented in Venice 2004.

The Serb-French Emir Kusturica, who’d rather say he is a filmmaker with no land since the end of Yugoslavia, is back to competition with PROMISE ME THIS. Kusturica got the Golden Palm twice: with “When Father Was Away on Business”, in 1985 and “Underground” in 1995. “Do You Remember Dolly Bell?”, in 1981, got the critics award at the São Paulo International Film Festival in 1982 and Golden Lion in Venice in 1981 as a first film director.

Another Korean in the list is Lee Chang-dong with SECRET SUNSHINE – In 2002 he got the critics award in Venice with OASIS.

The Romanian Cristian Mungiu shows 4 LUNI, 3 SAPTAMINI SI 2 ZILE (4 Months, 3 Weeks And 2 Days). He was assistant director for Radu Mihaileanu in the daring dark humor comedy about the Holocaust “Train de Vie”.

The French from Marseille Raphaël Nadjari with TEHILIM.

Mexican Carlos Reygadas with STELLET LICHT. He was revealed at the same festival in 2002 with “Japon”, Câmera D’Or award for first film director. With “Batalla en el Cielo” he was also part of the selection of the 27th São Paulo IFF.

The first feature of the couple Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud, she is Iranian and he is French, is PERSEPOLIS.
American Julian Schnabel, also famous for his innovative paintings, with LE SCAPHANDRE ET LE PAPILLON.


The always shocking Austrian Ulrich Seidl with IMPORT EXPORT.

The Russian master Alexander Sokurov with ALEXANDRA.

American Quentin Tarantino with DEATH PROOF. He won the Golden Palm in 1994 with “Pulp Fiction”.

The admirable Hungarian Béla Tarr with THE MAN FROM LONDON.

The American Gus van Sant with PARANOID PARK. He has also already got the Golden Palm and the Best Director Award in Cannes with “Elephant”).

The Russian (Siberian) Andreï Zviaguintsev with IZGNANIE (The Banishment). He is the director of “The Return”, Golden Lion in Venice 2003.

The jury deciding the awards at the 60th Cannes Festival will be presided by British director Stephen Frears. His colleagues, mostly actors and actresses, will be the actress from Hong Kong Maggie Cheung, Australian actress Toni Collette, Portuguese-French actress and director Maria de Medeiros, Canadian actress and director Sarah Polley, Italian director Marco Bellocchio, Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk, French actor Michel Piccoli and the director from Mauritania Abderrahmane Sissako.

Besides the films in competition, attention will have to be shared with the following films selected for the special presentations:
Sicko, by American Michael Moore;
Ocean´s Thirteen, by American Steven Soderbergh;
A Mighty Heart, by British Michael Winterbottom
Boxes, by the British-French Jane Birkin;
Roman de Gare, by French Claude Lelouch;
Centochiodi, by Italian master Ermanno Olmi
and Ulzhan, by German Volker Schlöndorff, who has still been celebrated by the Golden Palm he got in 1979 for “The Tin Drum”.

For further information:
www.festival-cannes.org

English version: Laura Rebessi