Announced today was the addition of seven new films to the Cannes Film Festival lineup including Cemetery of Splendour, the latest from Palme d’Or winner Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Naomi Kawase’s AN,1 and the first film from Ethiopia to find inclusion in the Official Selection, Yarad Zeleke’s Lamb. Of particular note has been the announcement of another Midnight Film, Gaspar Noe’s Love (3D), a “sexual melodrama” that Noe has claimed will “give guys a hard-on and make girls cry”. One can only hope that this pornographic love-story from the master of aural/visual assault and all things uncomfortable will somehow slink into the program of this year’s Sydney Film Festival.
Also announced earlier this week were the official jury, which will be headed up by Joel and Ethan Coen this year. Joining them are Pedro Almodóvar’s muse Rossy de Palma (Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!, Woman on the Edge of a Nervous Breakdown), French Actor/Director/Screenwriter/Author/Bond-Girl Sophie Marceau (The World is Not Enough), star of stage and screen Sienna Miller (Foxcatcher, American Sniper), Mali-born musician Rokia Traoré, cult Spanish director Guillermo del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth, Hellboy), contemporary cinema’s ‘it’ boy Xavier Dolan (Mommy, Tom at the Farm), and 4:3 favourite Jake Gyllenhaal (Nightcrawler, Enemy). It’s an eclectic and prolific jury, filled with interesting individuals who all operate in different areas in the film industry and will surely deliver an interesting decision at the end of the festival.
Finally, last week saw the announcement of the Directors’ Fortnight program, that will this year feature the premieres of Miguel Gomes’s Arabian Nights, a six-and-a-half hour film in three parts retelling the infamous One-Thousand and One Nights, Takashi Miike’s Yakuza Apocalypse: The Great War of the Underworld, a Yakuza vs. Vampires fantasy-horror crossover flick, and Phillipe Garrel’s In the Shadow of Women,2 the latest from a director whose film The Virgin’s Bed played in Cannes inaugural Directors’ Fortnight in 1969. It’s an eclectic mix of films, some of which are sure to find their way out here in our slew of upcoming film festivals in Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane.
Full List of Additions (as of 24th April, 2015)
Directors’ Fortnight
A Perfect Day (dir. Fernando León de Aranoa)
Arabian Nights (dir. Miguel Gomes)
Beyond My Grandfather Allende (dir. Marcia Tambutti)
Dope (dir. Rick Famuyiwa)
Embrace of the Serpent (dir. Ciro Guerra)
Fatima (dir. Philippe Faucon)
Green Room (dir. Jeremy Saulnier)
In the Shadow of Women (dir. Philippe Garrel)
Les Cowboys (dir. Thomas Bidegain)
Much Loved (dir. Nabil Ayouch)
Mustang (dir. Deniz Gamze Ergüven)
My Golden Days (dir. Arnaud Desplechin)
Peace to Us in Our Dreams (dir. Sharunas Bartas)
Songs My Brothers Taught Me (dir. Chloé Zhao)
The Brand New Testament (dir. Jaco Van Dormael)
The Here After (dir. Magnus von Horn)
Yakuza Apocalypse : The Great War of the Underworld (dir. Takashi Miike)
In Competition
Cronic (dir. Michel Franco)
The Valley of love (dir. Guillaume Nicloux)
Un Certain Regard
Alias Maria (dir. José Luis Rugeles Gracia)
AN (dir. Naomi Kawase)
Cemetery of Splendour (dir. Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
Lamb (dir. Yared Zeleke)
Taklub (dir. Brillante Mendoza)
Special Screening
Une histoire de fou (Don’t Tell me the Boy was Mad) (dir. Robert Guédiguian)
Midnight Screening
Love (Dir. Gaspar Noé)