Cannes Film Festival celebrates 70 years anniversary with glamour
The who’s who of the motion picture business sets out for the small French Mediterranean resort town of Cannes next week to take part in the world’s most prestigious film festival in its 70th year. Jake Gyllenhaal, Tilda Swinton, Joaquin Phoenix and Robert Pattinson are among the stars headed to the Cote d’Azur town for […]
The who’s who of the motion picture business sets out for the small French Mediterranean resort town of Cannes next week to take part in the world’s most prestigious film festival in its 70th year.
Jake Gyllenhaal, Tilda Swinton, Joaquin Phoenix and Robert Pattinson are among the stars headed to the Cote d’Azur town for gala screenings of their latest movies at the festival, which the US director Quentin Tarantino calls the "cinematic Olympics."
A total of 49 movies from 29 countries are be shown across the 11-day festival, with 19 of those films battling it out for the festival’s top honours, the Palme d’Or for best picture, one of the most iconic prizes in the world of cinema.
To mark the 70th anniversary, this year’s Palme d’Or will be encrusted with 167 diamonds along with an array of lavish parties along the Croisette, the palm-lined beach-front boulevard dotted with wedding cake hotels that cuts through the heart of Cannes.
A film by French director Arnaud Desplechin about an actor whose life is thrown off course after an old lover turns up, is to open the festival.
The movie, "Les Fantomes d’Ismael" ("Ismael’s Ghosts"), stars leading members of French cinema – Marion Cotillard, Louis Garrel and Mathieu Amalric.
The 70th Cannes festival is also likely to be one of the most political ever, with screenings of films about climate change, AIDS, animal rights, North Korea, the sex trade and the refugee crisis.
"We’re not political, but the filmmakers are political," Cannes director Thierry Fremaux said when he unveiled the 2017 programme last month.
Unlike other film festivals, Cannes likes to stand somewhat aloof from the political issues of the day.
But this year’s festival is being held against the backdrop of Britain’s plans to exit the European Union, an unpredictable White House under Donald Trump and Emmanuel Macron’s victory over the far-right candidate Marine Le Pen for the French presidency.
The Cannes programme includes "Happy End," a story about refugees by Austrian director Michael Haneke, as well as a special screening of US director Eugene Jarecki’s "Promised Land."
In his film, Jarecki attempts to explain Donald Trump’s victory last year with a picture of contemporary America through the life of Elvis Presley.
Cannes organizers have ramped up security in the wake of terrorist attacks across Europe, including incidents in France, Belgium, Germany and Britain.
But given that the film festival is one of the world’s most glamorous events, it seems unlikely that uncertain political times will deter top stars from appearing on the festival’s famed red carpet.
This is also set to include Nicole Kidman, Kirsten Dunst and Colin Farrell, who star in US director Sofia Coppola’s "The Beguiled."
Coppola is one of 12 female directors to be screened in Cannes this year. The festival has regularly come under fire for the relatively small number of movies it includes in its official programme from female film-makers.
A further three US films join Coppola’s in the race for the Palme d’Or, including Noah Baumbach’s "The Meyerowitz Stories," a film about an estranged family starring veteran US actor Dustin Hoffman; and US director Todd Haynes’s "Wonderstruck," starring Julianne Moore and Michelle Williams.
A strong contingent of eastern European directors join this year’s line-up, led by Ukraine’s Sergei Loznitsa and Russia’s Andrey Zvyagintsev, whose last film about corruption in his homeland angered the Kremlin’s cultural bureaucrats.
Cannes celebrates movie-making and the cult of celebrity with considerable flair just as summer dawns on the French Riviera. It is little wonder, then, that almost everyone in the world of cinema – from Gary Cooper, Kirk Douglas through to Brigitte Bardot and Jean Cocteau – has at one point or another found the lure of Cannes irresistible.
Though the relevance of the Venice and Berlin festivals has suffered from the growing importance of the Toronto and Sundance festivals, Cannes still retains the overwhelming power to drive global film trends and to create cinematic buzz.
"Cinema has a heart and it beats very clearly once year in no other place other than in Cannes," said German director and Palm d’Or winner Wim Wenders once said. (DPA)