Cannes Festival Lineup: More Films by Women, None by AI and Beaucoup D'Auteurs

 By Carol J. Bream

Just when you’d caught your breath from the Oscars, the next batch of bests looms next month at the Cannes Film Festival, the pre-season kickoff to the next awards season (as evidenced by past Palme D’or winners/Oscar-bait like Parasite, Anatomy of a Fall and Triangle of Sadness).

I was up at 4 a.m. Thursday to watch the online announcement of Cannes films, pumped for my upcoming stint as a first-time attendee. Festival president Iris Knobloch opened with a speech on the power and necessity of art and cinema in an uncertain world, buffeted by wars, destruction and polarization. She also emphasized the importance of showcasing films by women.

Hafsia Herzi and Bastien Bouillon in the film Histoires de la nuit.

And if you consider yourself a binge-watcher, consider that, according to Festival general delegate Thierry Frémaux, selection committees watched 2,541 feature-length film submissions (down from about 2,900 last year but an increase of about 1,000 from a decade ago) from 141 countries. Some 28 per cent of the films selected are by female directors. Women working in the film industry — directors, cinematographers, casting directors and more — are being recognized for their contributions more often, including at this year’s Oscars.

Both Knobloch and Frémaux took time to acknowledge that artificial intelligence is all around us, but that only human-created films will be shown in Cannes.

Frémaux went through a list of about 60 of the hundreds of films to be screened over the course of about 12 days. Naturally, the films in the Palme d’Or competition, 21 so far, were the main attraction.

As per usual, films by auteur directors like Pedro Almodóvar (Bitter Christmas), Asghar Farhadi (Parallel Tales), Steven Soderbergh (John Lennon: The Last Interview), Ron Howard (Avedon), Ryusuke Hamaguchi (All of a Sudden), Lukas Dhont (Coward) and others will be a significant part of the festival.

With more than a quarter of the films to be shown being by female directors, a proportion that is growing as women take a larger role in the film ecosystem, I look forward to:

·     Histoires de la nuit / The Birthday Party (Léa Mysius – co-writer of the 2024 phenom Émilia Pérez),

·     Gentle Monster (Marie Kreutzer, starring Léa Seydoux and Catherine Deneuve),

·     Another Day / Garance (Jeanne Herry),

·     L’objet du délit (Agnès Jaoui),

·     A Woman’s Life (Charline Bourgeois-Taquet),

·     Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma (Jane Schoenbrun),

·     Everytime (Sandra Wollner),

·     Das Geträumte abentuer / L’aventure rêvée (Valeska Grisebach), and several others in Un Certain Regard sidebar, in which seven of the 16 announced this morning are directed by women.

Up-and-coming French actress Eye Haïdara will emcee both the opening and closing ceremonies, giving another prominent role to a woman in this year’s festival.

Out of competition are two “must-sees,” at least for me: part one of two films on Charles de Gaulle, La Bataille de Gaulle: L’âge de fer; and The Electric Kiss /La Vénus électrique (Pierre Salvadori). The latter opens the festival on May 12.

Having lived through the May 1968 riots in the Latin Quarter in Paris as a PhD candidate and witnessing the return of de Gaulle to France after his exile in London, L’âge de fer will touch deep chords in me. The Electric Kiss sounds like a wild ride.

Midnight section screenings include a zombie film, a medical horror film and one that takes place in a gym. Not sure I’ll get to these after a long day of viewing, but who knows.

Korean star director Park Chan-wook is the jury president (following Juliette Binoche in 2025). Honorary Palmes will be awarded to Peter Jackson and Barbra Streisand, “a unicorn” in the words of Iris Knobloch. as well as Daniel Auteuil’s La troisième nuit and Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Kokurojo / Le château d’Arioka as well as John Travolta’s directorial debut Propeller One-Way Night Coach , will be part of the Cannes Premiere series.

 No Canadian films were announced, but perhaps we will see some as the full line-up is released in the days to come.

 The Cannes Film Festival runs from May 12 to May 23.

 Carol J. Bream is a writer living in Gatineau, Quebec, and a former Director of Communications at the Canada Council for the Arts. She will be filing reports from Cannes for Original-Cin.