PARIS — Sean Penn is a contender for the highest prize at this yr’s Cannes Movie Competition, to be held from July 6 to 17, the organizers introduced Thursday. In “Flag Day,” the actor-director performs a con man.
Penn — who was final on the competitors as a director in 2016 with “The Final Face” — will likely be up towards a bunch of different headliners for the Palme d’Or: Wes Anderson, whose “The French Dispatch” stars Timothée Chalamet; Nanni Moretti of Italy; Paul Verhoeven of the Netherlands; Leos Carax and François Ozon of France; and Asghar Farhadi of Iran, who directed the Oscar-winning “A Separation.”
This yr’s competition was delayed from its traditional timing in Could due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Final yr’s version was canceled. The 2021 version may have 24 motion pictures in rivalry for the Palme d’Or, greater than traditional, stated Thierry Frémaux, the competition’s inventive director, at a information convention.
The pandemic itself is prone to be a significant protagonist on the competition.
Except absolutely vaccinated or presenting proof of immunity, competition attendants must undergo a saliva take a look at each 48 hours at a lab close to the primary competition venue to ensure they haven’t caught the virus, organizers stated.
Frémaux stated that of the greater than 2,000 motion pictures submitted to the competition, some had been shot in lockdown and on cellphones, and a few had characters sporting masks. “In 20 years, youthful generations watching these motion pictures will suppose, ‘Why are they sporting masks?’” he stated. “Cinema will bear the traces of this. It’s going to keep in mind this second.”
Julien Gester, the co-culture editor of the French day by day newspaper Libération, stated the movies by Penn and Anderson would carry “status and Hollywood glamour” to the Croisette, the seafront drag the place the competition takes place.
He recalled that when Penn was in Cannes for “The Final Face” — a love story about two humanitarian staff in Africa, starring Charlize Theron and Javier Bardem — the film was heckled and booed on the screening and “was fully massacred by the critics.” (In its overview of “The Final Face,” The Occasions wrote: “As nicely which means as this film is, it is usually a turgid, muddled one.”)
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Gester additionally famous that there have been seven French movies on this yr’s competitors — practically a 3rd of the total lineup — of which three had been directed by girls.
In whole, there are 4 movies by girls within the competitors. The competition has come underneath fireplace lately for the dearth of feminine contestants; the one lady ever to have gained the Palme d’Or is Jane Campion, for her 1993 movie “The Piano.”
Outdoors of the competitors for the Palme d’Or, the competition may even current Oliver Stone’s investigation into the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, “JFK Revisited: Via the Trying Glass,” and the primary film directed by the actress Charlotte Gainsbourg, about her mom, the actress and singer Jane Birkin.
As for Netflix productions, there’ll but once more be none on this yr’s competition lineup, Frémaux stated on the information convention.
Cannes calls for that each one competitors titles be launched in French film theaters, as a part of a regulatory system supposed to protect France’s movie trade and hold its cinemas alive. Streaming providers then have to attend as much as three years earlier than they’ll add motion pictures which have had a theatrical launch to their libraries.
Requested in regards to the subject, Frémaux stated there have been doubtlessly two Netflix productions that he would have favored to current at Cannes this yr, exterior of the official competitors, however Netflix refused. “We remorse this absence, this angle,” he stated.