Is it really time for the Cannes Film Festival? Already?
Incredibly, it is.
And with only one day down in the prestigious film festival, there has been a surprising amount of heat generated – with a movie star’s comments on the artificial intelligence, the return of a festival favorite and an eerie lack of Hollywood representation.
Grab your nearest croissant and let’s get into it.
Addressing the Robot in the Room…
During a Tuesday press conference held at Cannes with this year’s jury, led by the South Korean auteur Park Chan-wook (whose film “No Other Choice” appeared at the festival last year), jury member Demi Moore was asked about artificial intelligence and weighed in on the subject. Because controversy is just as much a part of the Cannes experience as starlets on the beach or overtly formal screening attire.
“The reality is that to resist, I always feel that against-ness breeds against-ness. AI is here, and so to fight it is, in a sense, to fight something that is a battle that we will lose,” she told reporters. “So to find ways in which we can work with it, I think, is a more valuable path to take.”
Moore continued on the subject: “To your question of ‘Are we doing enough to protect ourselves?’ I don’t know. I don’t know the answer to that. My inclination would be to say probably not. Part of art is about expression. So if we start censoring ourselves, then I think we shut down the very core of our creativity, which is, I think, where we can discover truth and answers.”
Other members of this year’s jury include Belgian filmmaker Laura Wandel, recent Oscar nominee and “Hamnet” director Chloé Zhao and actress Ruth Negga.
… and Gaza
Another obviously hot button topic was also touched upon by the Cannes jury member Paul Laverty, a Scottish screenwriter who wrote the scripts for Palme d’Or winners “The Wind That Shakes the Barley” and “I, Daniel Blake” (both directed by the legendary Ken Loach). As the press conference was winding down, he expressed solidarity with Hollywood stars who have spoken out against Israeli forces’s actions against Palestinians in Gaza.
“Can I just leave one tiny thing?” Laverty asked at the press conference, before telling those gathered, “The Cannes Film Festival has a wonderful poster. Yes, and isn’t it fascinating to see some of them like Susan Sarandon, Javier Bardem, Mark Ruffalo blacklisted because of their views in opposing the murder of women and children in Gaza? Shame on Hollywood people who do that. My respect and total solidarity to them. They’re the best of us, I look up to them.”
He then made a dark joke about hoping that the festival doesn’t get bombed because the stars are on the official posters for Cannes. One of the more striking posters interpolates an image of Sarandon and Geena Davis from Ridley Scott’s masterpiece “Thelma & Louise.”
In February, Sarandon announced that she was fired by her agency “specifically for marching and speaking out about Gaza, for asking for a ceasefire.” Bardem and Ruffalo have been similarly outspoken but still maintain their high-profile Hollywood jobs, with Ruffalo appearing in this summer’s “Spider-Man” movie and Bardem returning for the third “Dune” movie this Christmas, among other projects.
Elsewhere in the press conference, Park Chan-wook asserted that both political art and non-political art are valid works.
“Just because a work of art has a political statement, it should not be considered an enemy of art. At the same time, just because a film is not making a political statement, that film should not be ignored,” Park said, via translation. “Even if we are to make a brilliant political statement, if it’s not expressed artfully enough, it would just be propaganda. So what I want to say is that art and politics are not concepts that are in conflict with each other — as long as they are artistically expressed, they are valuable.”
Did Neon Leave Anything for Anybody Else?
It’s become something of a given that Neon, the independent film company founded in 2017 by Tom Quinn and Tim League, snaps up the buzziest titles of the festival, usually before Cannes even starts. Over the years they acquired the distribution rights to six (!) Palme d’Or winners – “Parasite,” “Titane,” “Triangle of Sadness,” “Anatomy of a Fall” and eventual Academy Awards powerhouse “Anora.” Last year they had the rights to “It Was Just an Accident,” which also won the Palme d’Or.
This year Neon has a staggering amount of movies in competition at Cannes – from South Korean director Na Hong-jin’s hugely anticipated “Hope,” to Romanian auteur Cristian Mungiu’s “Fjord” (starring Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve) to James Gray’s period crime movie “Paper Tiger” to Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda’s sci-fi-ish “Sheep in a Box” and the French fantasy “The Unknown.”
But there are still plenty of titles worth getting excited about that weren’t already snapped up by Neon. In fact, we ran down 12 of the buzziest titles that are still up for grabs. There’s “The Birthday Party,” from Léa Mysius, whose last film as a director was “The Five Devils,” an unsung masterpiece and one of the very best movies of the past few years and who contributed to the screenplay for “Emilia Pérez,” which garnered Mysius an Oscar nomination. Her new movie is based on a novel by Laurent Mauvignier and is in competition.
Additionally, there is the debut feature from “I Love LA” star Jordan Firstman called “Club Kid;” “Close” director Lukas Dhont’s “Coward,” a drama set during World War I; “Dernsie: The Amazing Life of Bruce Dern,” a documentary that features appearances from Dern’s daughter Laura, Quentin Tarantino and Alexander Payne; director Guillaume Canet’s latest team-up with Marion Cotillard called “Karma;” and “Diamond,” a film noir set in Los Angeles that was written, directed and stars Andy Garcia (Vicky Krieps, Brendan Fraser, Rosemare DeWitt, Bill Murray and Dustin Hoffman also appear).
So, yes, there is still plenty on the table after NEON has hit the buffet. Read our article for the full list.
A Largely Hollywood-Free Cannes
Unlike past Cannes Film Festivals, which have seen the premiere of Hollywood films like “Shrek” (yes seriously), “Inglourious Basterds” (in a slightly different configuration than would hit movie screens a few months later) and, more recently, “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning,” which arrived at the festival last year, this year’s line-up is noticeably Hollywood-free.
The decision for the major studios to skip Cannes is even more baffling when you consider the fact that juggernauts like Steven Spielberg’s “Disclosure Day,” Andrew Stanton’s “Toy Story 5” and Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” are just around the corner, all hitting theaters around the world in just a few weeks.
We got into the shocking absence of Hollywood heavy hitters in this week’s Reel to Real column and have come to the conclusion that big Hollywood movies have never been more at risk and that a debut at Cannes has never been riskier. Look no further than “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” which Disney premiered at Cannes a few years ago; after a lukewarm critical reception at the festival it underperformed at the box office. This maybe would have been fine had the movie not cost upwards of $400 million, recouping only $384 million worldwide.
You can see why Hollywood is skittish. But hey, nobody plays it safe quite like Tinseltown.
Guillermo Returns
Guillermo del Toro, who lights up pretty much any film festival he attends with his creative spirit and his love of the craft, returned to Cannes not with a new movie but with a restoration of a beloved favorite – his Oscar-winning fantasy “Pan’s Labyrinth.” The movie, set during the Spanish Civil War and featuring some of the most iconic creature designs in cinema history, is celebrating its 20th anniversary with a new 4K restoration, which del Toro was on hand to present.
“Twenty years ago, making this movie was like going against everything at all times. It was the second worst filmmaking experience of my life, the first one being ‘Mimic’ with the Weinsteins. That was horrible,” del Toro said during his introduction of the film. He described the film as being “very difficult in pre-production, no one wanted to finance it, and in production we had everything that could go wrong, go wrong. If I see you on the Croisette, I’ll tell you. And then, in post-production it was equally difficult.”
The film originally debuted at Cannes in 2006, before going on to being a sleeper hit and surprise Oscar winner, which established del Toro as one of the most visionary filmmakers of his generation, and led to films like “Nightmare Alley,” “Pacific Rim,” the Best Picture-winning “The Shape of Water” and, most recently, “Frankenstein.”
Addressing the bleak political climate that “Pan’s Labyrinth” is being re-released into, del Toro still found optimism.
“I feel and I think, like the girl Ofelia in ‘Pan’s Labyrinth,’ if we can just leave a mark, if we can put our faith against our faith and our strength against our strength, there is hope. And the last thing we can have is to give to one of the two forces: we can give to love, or we can give to fear. Never, never, never give to fear,” del Toro said.
More Cannes!
If you can’t get enough of the Cannes Film Festival (and, really, can you be blamed for such an impulse?), we recommend checking out our Directors Portfolio, with famous directors from this year’s festival sending in their own portraits – everyone from Ron Howard (pictured above) to John Travolta and everyone in between. The photos are absolutely beautiful and, as awards editor Steve Pond said, “these faces are the heart of the Cannes Film Festival.”
Additionally, critic Ben Croll looks back at how the Cannes Film Festival has served as a pipeline from international actors to Hollywood stardom. It’s a fascinating, informative and (most importantly) entertaining look at how performers from around the globe can go from relative obscurity to appearing in the biggest Hollywood blockbusters around.
Just look at Sandra Hüller, who appeared in two of Cannes 2023’s buzziest movies – the eventual Palme d’Or winner “Anatomy of a Fall” and the Oscar-winning “The Zone of Interest,” before co-starring one of the biggest and best movies to come out of Hollywood this year, “Project Hail Mary.”
That’s it for today but we’ll be back tomorrow. Don’t forget to take your croissant!
The post Cannes Day 1: Controversy Abounds, Guillermo del Toro Returns and Directors Strike a Pose appeared first on TheWrap.
