Screen staff preview each of the titles in the Cannes Film Festival parallel strand Directors’ Fortnight, which this year includes films from the late Sophie Fillières, plus Tyler Taormina and Ryan J. Sloan. The festival runs May 14-25.
Christmas Eve In Miller’s Point (US)
Dir. Tyler Taormina
Taormina’s debut feature Ham On Rye made its international premiere at Locarno in 2019, while 2022 saw a Berlinale launch for lockdown-shot Happer’s Comet, a nighttime study of a suburban Long Island community. Making a Cannes debut with his third feature, the US indie filmmaker now presents a multi-generation family gathering for what could be a last holiday in their ancestral home, with a cast including Michael Cera and Eighth Grade breakout Elsie Fisher. Taormina reunites with Ham On Rye co-writer Eric Berger, and together they produce for Los Angeles’ Omnes Films alongside an extensive producer roster including Cera.
Contact Magnify
Desert Of Namibia (Jap)
Dir. Yoko Yamanaka
The second feature from director Yamanaka centres on a 21-year-old woman who has no direction in life and lives with her boyfriend. He cooks and pays the rent to keep her happy, but even this begins to feel like a burden as she deepens her relationship with a self-confident young man. The cast is led by Yumi Kawai, whose credits include Plan 75, which played in Un Certain Regard in 2022, and Venice Horizons 2022 title A Man. Yamanaka’s debut feature Amiko played in the Berlinale’s Forum in 2018.
Contact Rie Hatano, Happinet Phantom Studios
East Of Noon (Neth-Egy-Qatar)
Dir. Hala Elkoussy
The Egyptian artist-turned-filmmaker makes her Croisette debut with the allegorical tale of a musician and a courtesan who use art to rebel against their elders. The project was previously called Sharq 12 and stars newcomers Omar Rozek and Fayza Shama. Director of photography Abdelsalam Moussa is also among the producers, repeating the double role he provided on Elkoussy’s debut feature Cactus Flower, an IFFR premiere in 2017. Marc Thelosen for Rotterdam’s seriousFilm and Lonnie van Brummelen for Amsterdam’s Vriza also produce.
Contact Lonnie van Brummelen, Vriza; Marc Thelosen, seriousFilm
Eat The Night (Fr)
Dirs. Caroline Poggi, Jonathan Vinel
Poggi and Vinel’s debut feature, dystopian sci-fi drama Jessica Forever, played at Toronto and then Berlin in 2018 and 2019 respectively, while their 60-minute film Best Secret Place bowed at Locarno in 2023. The pair — who first collaborated on 2014 short As Long As Shotguns Remain — make their Cannes debut with a Le Havre-shot crime thriller that also incorporates action unfurling in a multiplayer fantasy videogame. Atelier de Production’s Thomas Verhaeghe and Mathieu Verhaeghe (Quentin Dupieux’s Yannick) produce alongside Agat Films — Ex Nihilo, with backing from Arte France Cinéma.
Contact Alya Belgaroui, mk2 Films
Eephus (US-Fr)
Dir. Carson Lund
Lund is in Directors’ Fortnight with two films: he is director of photography on Christmas Eve In Miller’s Point, and has his own feature directing debut Eephus, co-written with Michael Basta (with whom he co-made shorts Wind Through The Cradle and I Fell Silent) and Nate Fisher. The comedy drama — which is named for a low-velocity, high-arcing baseball pitch — sees two Sunday league baseball teams playing one last game on their beloved field prior to demolition, and features the voice of veteran documentarian Frederick Wiseman. Filmmaker collective Omnes Films produces in co-production with France’s Nord-Ouest Films.
Contact Film Constellation
The Falling Sky (Bra-It-Fr)
Dirs. Eryk Rocha, Gabriela Carneiro da Cunha
Rocha is the son of the late Brazilian cinema legend Glauber Rocha, a key figure of the Brazilian New Cinema in the 1960s and ’70s. His new documentary — based on the book of the same name by Davi Kopenawa and Bruce Albert — captures the struggle of 30,000 Indigenous Yanomami, whose forest lands have been invaded by goldminers in Brazil. This is the first film of Cunha’s career but Rocha’s 10th feature. Rocha was previously in Cannes in 2004 with short Quimera and he received the Golden Eye for best documentary in 2016 for Cinema Novo.
Contact Fen Chen, Rediance
Gazer (US)
Dir. Ryan J Sloan
New Jersey-based Sloan continues his working partnership with Ariella Mastroianni, with whom he directed and wrote 2019 short A Message For James. Set on the outskirts of Newark, Gazer sees Sloan solely directing, while jointly writing and producing with Mastroianni, who stars as a young mother with dyschronometria — an inability to perceive time. She takes a job from a mysterious woman with a dark past. The film was shot on 16mm on “a shoestring budget”, according to the Directors’ Fortnight’s own statement.
Contact Memento International
Ghost Cat Anzu (Jap-Fr)
Dirs. Yoko Kuno, Nobuhiro Yamashita
This family animation — adapted from Takashi Imashiro’s manga — follows the turbulent friendship between a girl and a ghost cat, who acts as her guardian when she is sent to live with her monk grandfather in the countryside. Director Yamashita is known for live-action features such as last year’s Let’s Go Karaoke!, and here shot with live actors who were rotoscoped into an animated world overseen by Kuno. Produced by Japan’s Shin-Ei Animation and France’s Miyu Productions, the film has been picked up by Gkids for North America and Toho for Japan.
Contact Charades
Good One (US)
Dir. India Donaldson
Donaldson’s debut from Smudge Films premiered at Sundance, where the coming-of-age tale became the first acquisition by Metrograph Films since the company expanded into theatrical distribution under former A24 executive David Laub. Newcomer Lily Collias stars as a queer 17-year-old on a camping trip with her father (James Le Gros) and his best friend (Danny McCarthy), and navigates a clash of egos between the older male pair. The feature received the $50,000 post-production Polish Film Institute Award and shot in upstate New York over summer 2023.
Contact Visit Films
The Hyperboreans (Chile)
Dirs. Cristobal Leon, Joaquin Cociña
Directors’ Fortnight artistic director Julien Rejl called The Hyperboreans “the oddball of the selection” for its fun blend of stop-motion, puppetry and sci-fi. Named after the race of giants in Greek mythology, the feature follows actress and psychologist Antonia Giesen as she teams up with the filmmakers to reconstruct the life of Miguel Serrano, the former Chilean diplomat, poet and Nazi sympathiser whose writings inspire voices inside the head of one of her patients. Leon & Cociña Films and Globo Rojo Films completed production in 2023.
Contact Luis Renart, Bendita Films Sales
In His Own Image (Fr)
Dir. Thierry de Peretti
Corsican actor-turned-filmmaker de Peretti’s first two features as writer/director — Apaches (2013) and A Violent Life (2017) — premiered respectively in Directors’ Fortnight and Critics’ Week, and then 2021’s Undercover bowed at San Sebastian. Now he’s back in Cannes with this drama adapted from the Jérôme Ferrari novel about a young Corsican photographer (Clara-Maria Laredo) navigating life and love amid the island’s political turmoil from the 1980s to the 2000s. Frédéric Jouve and Marie Lecoq produce for Les Films Velvet in co-production with Arte France Cinéma.
Contact Agathe Mauruc, Pyramide International
Mongrel (Tai-Sing-Fr)
Dirs. Chiang Wei Liang, You Qiao Yin
The feature directing debut of Chiang and You stars Thai actor Wanlop Rungkumjad alongside Taiwan’s Lu Yi-ching, Hong Yu-hung and Kuo Shu-wei. Mongrel centres on an illegal migrant who becomes a caregiver for the elderly and disabled in the mountains of Taiwan. Executive producers include Hou Hsiao-hsien, and producers are Singapore’s E&W Films and Taiwan’s Le Petit Jardin alongside France’s Deuxième Ligne Films. Singapore-born Chiang has been based in Taiwan for a decade; his previous works include Berlinale-winning short Anchorage Prohibited.
Contact Alpha Violet
The Other Way Around (Sp-Fr)
Dir. Jonas Trueba
Spain’s Trueba (son of filmmaker Fernando Trueba and producer Cristina Huete) has premiered features at Karlovy Vary and San Sebastian. He makes his Cannes debut with a comedy drama about a couple throwing a party to celebrate their separation after 15 years together — leaving friends and family perplexed. Los Ilusos — founded by Trueba and producer Javier Lafuente, and named for Trueba’s second feature (aka Wishful Thinkers, 2013) — produces alongside RTVE.
Contact Memento International
Plastic Guns (Fr)
Dir. Jean-Christophe Meurisse
France’s Meurisse played Critics’ Week in 2016 with his second feature, absurdist comedy Apnea, and Midnight Screenings in 2021 with follow-up Bloody Oranges, a savage black comedy that commented on contemporary society. The writer/director returns to Cannes to close Directors’ Fortnight with his fourth feature Plastic Guns. The dark comedy tells of a man on a trip to Denmark, where he is arrested and accused of murdering his wife and three children, and two amateur detectives conducting their own investigation. Bac Films distributes in France.
Contact Charades
Savanna And The Mountain (Port-Urug)
Dir. Paulo Carneiro
This hybrid documentary tells the story of a community in northern Portugal who prevent a UK company from building a lithium mine. The Portuguese filmmaker wrote the project with Uruguayan director Alex Piperno, whose feature Window Boy Would Also Like To Have A Submarine screened at the Berlinale in 2020. Carneiro’s Bam Bam Cinema and Piperno’s La Pobladora produce. The project won the RTP award for best feature-length project at the editing stage at Doclisboa International Film Festival in 2023.
Contact Portugal Film
Sister Midnight (UK)
Dir. Karan Kandhari
Indian filmmaker Kandhari’s feature debut is a Mumbai-set black comedy that unfurls around a smalltown misfit in a newly arranged marriage who attempts to manage an awkward spouse, intrusive neighbours and her own impulses. Radhika Apte, Ashok Pathak and Chhaya Kadam star. Producers are Alastair Clark for Wellington Films, Anna Griffin for Griffin Pictures and Alan McAlex, in co-production with Sweden’s Filmgate Films and Film i Väst, and in association with India’s Suitable Pictures. Backing comes from BFI and Film4.
Contact Protagonist Pictures
Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed (Arg)
Dir. Hernan Rosselli
Produced by Argentina’s Arde Cine and 36 Caballos, this marks Rosselli’s third film after IFFR 2015’s Bright Future selection Mauro and 2018 documentary Casa Del Teatro. The documentary-fiction hybrid centres on the Felpeto family, whose clandestine gambling business is threatened when the police raid the premises and their late father’s secret comes to light. The film received support from the 2022 Gran Canaria Mecas market for almost-finished films, and the 2021 Mar del Plata International Film Festivals work-in-progress section. Funding comes from INCAA and partners in Spain and Portugal.
Contact Quentin Worthington, MPM Premium
This Life Of Mine (Fr)
Dir. Sophie Fillieres
French filmmaker Fillieres (Pardon My French) died unexpectedly last summer shortly after finishing the shoot for her self-penned feature This Life Of Mine. Her family took the reins to complete the film, about a middle-aged woman nicknamed Barbie (actress/filmmaker Agnes Jaoui) who travels to the Scottish Highlands to escape the harsh realities of her life. The comedy drama — which also features Philippe Katerine and Valérie Donzelli in the cast — is produced by France’s Christmas In July.
Contact Estelle De Araujo, The Party Film Sales
To A Land Unknown (UK-Pal-Fr-Gre-Neth-Ger-Qatar-Saudi)
Dir. Mahdi Fleifel
Palestinian-Danish director Fleifel, who studied at the UK’s National Film and Television School, offers his first fiction feature — after the Berlinale award-winning 2013 documentary A World Not Ours and the 2016 short A Man Returned — telling the story of the desperate attempts of two Palestinian cousins who are stranded in Athens while trying to reach Germany. To A Land Unknown includes backing from the UK, France (including CNC’s Aide aux cinémas du monde fund), Germany, Greece, Netherlands, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Palestine. ARTE/ZDF has pre-bought for its territories.
Contact Paul Jullien, Salaud Morisset
Universal Language (Can)
Dir. Matthew Rankin
Rankin scooped the prize for best Canadian first feature film when his freewheeling comedy The Twentieth Century premiered at Toronto in 2019. French- and Persian-language follow-up Universal Language — co-written with Ila Firouzabadi and Pirouz Nemati — promises a “disorienting comedy” unfolding “somewhere between Tehran and Winnipeg”. It interweaves several storylines, including two schoolchildren finding frozen cash and a tour guide leading confused tourists around Winnipeg. Metafilms’ Sylvain Corbeil (Monia Chokri’s The Nature Of Love) produces.
Contact Best Friend Forever
Visiting Hours (Fr)
Dir. Patricia Mazuy
Isabelle Huppert and Hafsia Herzi star as two women who develop an unlikely friendship when their husbands are inmates at the same prison. The film — known as La Prisonnière De Bordeaux in French markets — reteams Mazuy with Huppert following The King’s Daughters (Saint-Cyr), which premiered in Un Certain Regard in 2000 and earned eight nominations at the following year’s César awards. Shot in France’s Nouvelle Acquitaine region, Visiting Hours is produced by Happening and Just The Two Of Us producers Alice Girard and Edouard Weil of Rectangle Productions alongside Xavier Pleche for Picseyes. Arte France Cinéma is on board as co-producer.
Contact Alice Lesort, Les Films du Losang
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