Anderson or Linklater will be competing in Cannes

Paris, April 10 - The Cannes Film Festival's main competition in May will feature films by directors Wes Anderson, Richard Linklater, Jafar Panahi and the brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne. Festival director Thierry Frémaux announced today that 20 films, six of which were directed by women, will compete for the Palme d'Or at the 78th edition of the prestigious festival. Another competition category dedicated to innovative filmmakers will feature the road movie Caravan by Czech director Zuzana Kirchnerová.

Anderson will present his comedy The Phoenician Conspiracy at the resort on the French Riviera, starring stars such as Benicio Del Toro, Scarlett Johansson, Benedict Cumberbatch and Tom Hanks. Another American filmmaker, Linklater, will bring his work Nouvelle Vague (New Wave), which deals with the filming of one of the films by French New Wave director Jean-Luc Godard.

The Belgian Dardenne brothers have already won the Palme d'Or twice with Rosetta (1999) and The Child (2005). This year, the authors of socially-oriented films will compete for it with their work Jeunes méres (Young Mothers). Iranian director Panahi, Norwegian Joachim Trier and American horror-oriented filmmaker Ari Aster will also present their works.

Among the six female filmmakers in the main competition is the winner of the Palme d'Or in 2021, Julia Ducournau. The filmmaker, who took home the award for Titan, will now present Alpha, about a boy whose parent contracted HIV.

Czech director Kirchnerová will compete for the award in the Un Certain Regard sub-category with her film about the journey of a mother and her disabled son. She is already well known in Cannes, having presented the then-in-progress Karavan four years ago as part of the Cinéfondation – L’Atelier section, which draws the attention of film professionals to promising films and gives filmmakers the opportunity to advance their projects towards international distribution. She first caught the eye at the festival in 2009, when she won the Student Films section with her film Bába.

Czech film is entering the main program at Cannes after many years. The last work so far was the surrealistic Lekce Faust by Jan Švankmajer in 1994, but the organizers have only selected Věra Chytilová's film Ovoce stromů rajských jime in 1970 for the main competition itself.

"It is an honor for us to present Karavan in Cannes, in a section that highlights authorial voices and sensitive filmmaking approaches. For me personally, Karavan is a film that opens up the topic of parenthood in a way that is not often talked about: without idealization, with doubts, desire and guilt," said Dagmar Sedláčková, the producer of the film, which was shot in a Czech-Slovak-Italian co-production.

The Cannes screening will last from May 13 to 24. The president of the festival jury will be French actress Juliette Binoche, who will be the second woman in a row to head the jury. Last year, it was led by American director Greta Gerwig, who made, among other things, the film Barbie.

Czech press agency | WT.24