Recently a few additional titles were added to the previously released list of films screening at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. Included is a special screening of Lucy Walker’s Countdown to Zero, Pablo Trapero’s Carancho, Jia Zhang Ke’s I Wish I Knew, Andrei Ujica’s The Autobiography of Nicole Ceausescu, Wang Xiaoshuai’s Chongqing Blues and the previously announced additions of Olivier Assayas’s Carlos and Carlos Diegues’s ensemble effort 5xFavella. As you can see, only one of those is currently in the RopeofSilicon database, but as we get closer and closer to the May 12 – 23 festival dates the amount of information I have on each film will grow allowing me to give you additional information as well as assets for each.
One more film added to the festivities is Hungarian director, Kornel Mundruczo’s Tender Son – The Frankenstein Project, which was inspired by Mary Shelley’s original “Frankenstein” novel except with Mudruczo’s film the monster has been replaced by a child returning home from boarding school and centers on his familial struggles. With that in mind, a subtitled behind-the-scenes feature has been found online (via Quiet Earth), and can be viewed just to the right.
Next, we have also learned short films from Kirsten Dunst and James Franco will close the Cannes’ Critics Week sidebar on May 20.
Franco’s short is titled The Clerk’s Tale, based on the poem by Spencer Reece, which can be read right here. The original poem won the Bakeless Prize for poetry and “The New Yorker” ran it as the back cover of the June 16, 2003 issue. The story is described as a study of loneliness as it follows a gay man working at a high-end menswear store. John Kelly and Charles Dance star.
Dunst’s film (pictured right) is titled Bastard and stars Brian Geraghty (The Hurt Locker), Juno Temple, Lukas Haas and Joel David Moore. The short tells the story of a young couple in crisis who find their way to a desert motel where three odd men plan to meet them for questionable reasons.
The line-up of the nine short films competing for the Short Film Palme d’Or can be found here.
Next, one of the fest’s most anticipated features will be Doug Liman’s Fair Game starring Sean Penn and Naomi Watts based on Valerie Plame Wilson’s memoir “Fair Game: My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal by the White House”. The film is hoping to find distribution before it debuts In Competition at Cannes and right now Summit Entertainment is said to be the #1 contender. However, with Penn, Watts and Liman all likely to be on the Croisette, news has now surfaced saying Plame herself may be in Cannes to promote the film as well.
Finally, it should also be mentioned French composer Alexandre Desplat has been selected as the final member of the Jury of the 63rd edition of the Festival de Cannes.
I will have plenty more from all the films before I pack up and head off to France, and be sure I will have updates galore including what I hope will be video diaries throughout the festival. Stay tuned!
