Although this year’s Cannes line-up is one of the most commercial in a while, it’s also one that highlights how much cross-cultural collaboration we still have in international cinema, and how borders continue to blend and shift, despite the divisions thrown up by politics, war and pandemic.
There are examples of this cultural synthesis throughout the selection. Competition includes a film by a Denmark-based Iranian filmmaker, about one of the most divisive figures in US politics, in Ali Abbasi’s Donald Trump biopic The Apprentice.
Critics Week has programmed Jonathan Millet’s Ghost Trail, a film from a French director about a Syrian man pursuing war criminals, starring French-Tunisian actor Adam Bessa. Directors Fortnight has Matthew Rankin’s Universal Language, a Persian and French-language film from a Canadian director that is set between Tehran and Winnipeg.
Many of the films in this year’s selection are tales of migrants, and if the characters and story-telling aren’t crossing borders, then the filmmakers and funding most likely are. In other words, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to define films by nationality. And that’s exactly as it should be.
China & India In Competition:
Caught By The Tides, from China’s Jia Zhangke, and All We Imagine As Light, by India’s Payal Kapadia, are the only Asian films in Competition this year. Both films revolve around women and how they navigate changes in society, or lack thereof, in their respective countries.
Jia is a Cannes regular whose last fiction feature, Ash Is Purest White, premiered in Competition in 2018. Kapadia’s film is her fiction debut after A Night Of Knowing Nothing played in Directors Fortnight and won the Golden Eye for best documentary in 2021. India has not had a film in Cannes competition since Shaji N Karun’s Swaham in 1994.
At the press conference to announce the Cannes line-up, festival director Thierry Fremaux said: “India and China are countries that are coming back to us…and we’re very glad about it.” They’re both also countries that have suffered a sharp downturn in terms of freedom of expression in recent years, which somehow makes it even more significant to see them in Competition. China, in particular, almost disappeared from the international festival circuit during the pandemic.
China and India also have a strong showing elsewhere in the official selection and parallel sections. Guan Hu’s Black Dog, which stars Eddie Peng and Jia Zhangke in a rare acting role, has been selected for Un Certain Regard…
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