“One Fine Morning”
It’s not really a proper Cannes Film Festival if adored French filmmaker Mia Hansen-Løve isn’t there. Last year, Hansen-Løve had “Bergman Island” playing in competition, and this year she returns to the Director’s Fortnight with “One Fine Morning” starring Léa Seydoux, and Melvil Poupaud. The simple story centers on a single mother who reconnects with an old flame who also happens to be married.
“Scarlet”
Italian filmmaker Pietro Marcello had made plenty of films before his breakout, but 2019’s “Martin Eden,” which premiered at TIFF and NYFF, really changed the game for him and made him break out internationally in a big way. His latest, loosely based on “Scarlet Sails” by Alexander Grin, stars Raphaël Thierry, Juliette Jouan, Louis Garrel, Noémie Lvovsky, Ernst Umhauer, François Négret, and Yolande Moreau. The magical realist tale centers on a lonely young girl who meets a sorceress one summer who promises that scarlet sails will one day take her away from her village.
“Nostalgia”
Based on the Ermanno Rea novel of the same name, this film follows Felice (Pierfrancesco Favino), a gentleman who after 40 years away returns to the neighborhood in which he was born, where he rediscovers the places, rules of the city, and a past that haunts him. The film, which is the only Italian title in the running for the Palme d’Or, is directed by Mario Martone, making his fourth appearance at Cannes.
“Close”
Leo and Remi are thirteen years old and are best friends. As adolescence looms, their friendship is thrown into turmoil. Leo doesn’t understand what has happened and seeks insight and comfort from Remi’s mother as he tries to reconcile his friendship with Remi. “Close” stars Émilie Dequenne, Eden Dambrine, and Gustav De Waele and is directed by Lukas Dhont.
“Forever Young”
“Les Amandiers” opens in Paris in the 1980s and follows a young troupe of comedians who have just been admitted to the prestigious theater school Les Amandiers. As a sort of coming-of-age film, the group of twenty-somethings set out in their lives as they learn, act, love, live, and experience tragedy. This isn’t the first film for Valeria Bruni Tedeschi to be screened at Cannes. On her previous visit to the festival, she was the only woman director to have a film in competition.
That’s just the tip of the iceberg. Other films to look out for are Russian filmmaker Kirill Serebrennikov’s “Tchaikovsky’s Wife,” Romanian mainstay Cristian Mungiu’s “R.M.N.,” French director Michel Hazanavicius’ Cannes filmmaking/zombie opener “Final Cut,” director Thomas M. Wright’s “The Stranger” starring Joel Edgerton, French surrealist Quentin Dupieux’s latest oddity, “Smoking Makes You Cough,” director Ethan Coen’s solo doc outing, “Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind,” the South Korean thriller “Hunt” from director Lee Jung-Jae, Ukrainian filmmaker Sergei Loznitsa’s “The Natural History of Destruction,” young American filmmaker Owen Kline’s “Funny Pages” and many more.
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