2016 Cannes Film Festival: News and Details

The 69th Cannes Film Festival, the preeminent film festival in the world, will be May 11-22, 2016. Speculation is always rampant as to what will end up In Competition and the press conference announcing the lineup should be mid-April. Check back here for up to date information on this year’s fest.

Announcements and Dates:

Main Slate (In Competition and Out) – Thursday, April 14th

Critics’ Week – Monday, April 18th

Directors’ Fortnight – Tuesday, April 19th

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The 69th Festival International du Film de Cannes will launch with a screening of Woody Allen’s new film, Café Society, on Wednesday 11 May in the Palais des Festivals’s Grand Théâtre Lumière as an Official Selection Out of Competition title. It’s a record-breaking coup for the New York director who has already opened the Festival twice, in 2002 with Hollywood Ending, and again in 2011 with Midnight in Paris.

The film tells the story of a young man who arrives in Hollywood during the 1930s hoping to work in the film industry, falls in love, and finds himself swept up in the vibrant café society that defined the spirit of the age.

Café Society features two rising stars from Hollywood’s up-and-coming generation, Kristen Stewart and Jesse Eisenberg alongside a stellar cast of acclaimed actors including Blake Lively, Parker Posey and Steve Carell. Stewart climbed the Red Carpet Steps at Cannes in 2012 for On the Road by Walter Salles and then in 2014 for Olivier Assayas’s Clouds of Sils Maria, which earned her a César. Jesse Eisenberg starred in Louder than Bombs by Joachim Trier, In Competition last year.

Woody Allen also joined forces with Vittorio Storaro for the film. The eminent director of photography was a member of the Feature Film jury in 1991 and is a three-time Oscar winner for Apocalypse Now by Francis Ford Coppola in 1980, Reds by Warren Beatty in 1982, and The Last Emperor by Bernardo Bertolucci in 1988.

From Manhattan in 1979 to Irrational Man in 2015, this will be the fourteenth Out of Competition selection at Cannes for the American director, screenwriter, actor, writer and comedian. Woody Allen was born in New York on 1 December 1935 into a Jewish family of Russian-Austrian descent. A prolific film-maker for the past forty years, directing virtually a film a year since the 1970s, he is also a jazz clarinetist. His career in film began in 1965 with What’s New Pussycat? which he both wrote and acted in. Then came his directorial debut – What’s Up Tiger Lily? – in 1966. He soon began to star in his own films, going on to win four Oscars (for Annie Hall in 1978, Hannah and Her Sisters in 1987 and Midnight in Paris in 2012). He has been nominated twenty times for the famous award, which he has never turned up to collect. Manhattan, Match Point, Take the Money and Run, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, The Purple Rose of Cairo and Deconstructing Harry number among his other successes.

Café Society was produced by Letty Aronson (Gravier Productions), Stephen Tenenbaum and Edward Walson, as a co-production with Helen Robin (Perdido Productions). Executive producers were Ronald L. Chez, Adam B. Stern and Marc I. Stern. The film was sold by FilmNation Entertainment and distributed on French territory by Mars Films.

In France, its release in cinemas is scheduled to coincide with the official opening of the Festival de Cannes on Wednesday 11 May, 2016.

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Confirmed Films
Money Monster (Foster) – Out of Competition
The Last Face (Penn) – In Competition
Loving (Nichols) – In Competition
Personal Shopper (Assayas) – In Competition
The BFG (Spielberg) – Out of Competition

Strong Possibilities (In Competition)
Weightless and/or Voyage of Time (Malick)
Julieta (Almodóvar)
It’s Only the End of the World (Dolan)
The Unknown Girl (Dardennes)
Rester vertical (Guiraudie)
On the Milky Road (Kusturica)
Réparer les vivants (Quillévéré)
Family Photos (Mungiu)
American Honey (Arnold)
Elle (Verhoeven)
The Handmaiden (Park Chan-wook)
The Untamed (Escalante)
Neruda (Larraín)
The Neon Demon (Winding Refn)
Orpheline (des Pallières)

Unlikely to Appear
Silence (Scorsese)
Zama (Martel)
The Lost City of Z (Gray)
Paris est une fête (Bonello)
The Day They Arrive (formerly Story of Your Life) (Villeneuve)

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Official Poster

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JURIES and PRESIDENTS

Jury President: George Miller, director

[box type=”shadow” align=”aligncenter” class=”” width=””]The 69th Festival de Cannes will be presided by the Australian director, screenwriter and producer, George Miller. Along with his Jury, it will fall to him to award the Palme d’or at the close of the Festival, to be held from 11 to 22 May.

On receiving his invitation from the Festival, George Miller exclaimed, “What an unmitigated delight! To be there in the middle of this storied festival at the unveiling of cinematic treasures from all over the planet. To spend time in passionate discourse with fellow members of the jury. Such an honor. I’ll be there with bells on!”

It was in Cannes last May that Mad Max: Fury Road set out on its fantastic cavalcade across our screens. The film, shown Out of Competition in the Official Selection, marked the return not only of the hero of the legendary saga for the millions of fans of Max Rockatansky, but also the comeback of his creator, George Miller, and of the visionary filmmaking that made him a household name around the world.

The roots of George Miller’s career, alongside those of Peter Weir, Bruce Beresford and Phillip Noyce stretch back to the golden age of Australian cinema from the 1980s. Originally from a small village in Queensland, George Miller wrote and directed Violence in the Cinema, part 1 in 1971. Produced by his friend Byron Kennedy, with whom he founded the Kennedy Miller company, the short film picked up two prizes from the Australian Film Institute. This official recognition encouraged George Miller to pursue a career in film and to make his first feature.

In 1979, Mad Max, inspired by the “outback gothic” genre sweeping Australia at the time, introduced Mel Gibson and was a worldwide smash hit. A superb pas-de-deux with American cinema, this ultra-violent futuristic film brought the action film genre a touch of class with its masterly combination of Road Movie, Western and Science-Fiction elements. A legendary saga was born which in turn gave rise to Mad Max 2: the Road Warrior in 1981, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome in 1985 and Mad Max: Fury Road in 2015.

Throughout his career, George Miller has constantly experimented with a variety of genres, brilliantly reconciling mass audience expectations and the highest artistic standards. In 1983, along with John Landis, Steven Spielberg and Joe Dante, he directed the final segment of Twilight Zone: The Movie. Then came The Witches of Eastwick in 1987 and the intimate drama Lorenzo’s Oil in 1992, starring Susan Sarandon and Nick Nolte, which picked up Oscar nominations for Best Screenplay and Best Actress.

In 1995, he adapted and produced Babe, directed by Chris Noonan, which picked up seven Oscar nominations including Best Film and Best Adaptation. In 2006, his first animated film Happy Feet was a huge box office hit and garnered the Oscar for Best Animated Feature. Happy Feet 2 took up the story in 2011.

In 2015, 30 years after the last Mad Max, the 4th chapter of the post-apocalyptic epic, complete with feminist and anti-totalitarian overtones, once again took cinemas by storm and has been the talk of the press and the festival circuit ever since. With ten nominations for the 2016 Oscars, including Best Film and Best Director, and won six. It also scooped up no fewer than nine prizes at the Critics Choice Awards, including that of Best Director.

The 70-year-old Miller has won international acclaim for these spectacular and jubilant creations, as well as for his eclecticism, inventiveness and sheer audacity. His nomination marks a no-holds-barred celebration of genre cinema. But above all, the 2016 Festival de Cannes is all set to welcome a big-hearted film lover and a great human being.[/box]

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Jury for International Critics’ Week
Valérie Donzelli (President)
Alice Winocour
Nadav Lapid
David Robert Mitchell
Santiago Mitre

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Japanese director Naomi Kawase, whose film Sweet Bean opened Un Certain Regard last year, will preside over the Cinéfondation and Short Films Jury.

THE 2016 SHORT FILMS COMPETITION

This year, the selection committee received 5,008 short films – 458 more than in 2015.

The 2016 Short Films Competition comprises ten films, mostly from Europe and Latin America, with one representative from Asia and one from Africa.

These films are all in the running for the 2016 Short Film Palme d’or, to be awarded by Naomi Kawase, President of the Jury, at the official award ceremony of the 69th Festival de Cannes on 22th May.

THE SHORT FILMS COMPETITION

THE 2016 CINÉFONDATION SELECTION

To mark its 19th year, the Cinéfondation Selection has chosen 18 films (14 works of fiction and 4 animations), from among the 2,300 works submitted this year by film schools from all over the world. Fifteen countries from three continents are represented.

Seven of the films selected come from schools taking part for the first time, and it is also the first time that a film school from Bosnia and Herzegovina and one from Venezuela have seen one of their films reach the selection stage. More than half of this edition’s movies are directed by women, with 10 out of the 18 films selected.

The three Cinéfondation prizes will be awarded at a ceremony preceding the screening of the prize-winning films on Friday 20th May in the Buñuel Theatre.

THE CINÉFONDATION SELECTION

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Maître de cérémonie: Laurent Lafitte

[box type=”shadow” align=”aligncenter” class=”” width=””]On the invitation of the Festival de Cannes, the actor Laurent Lafitte has agreed to be Master of Ceremonies throughout the 69th Festival, to be held from 11th to 22nd May under the presidency of Australian director George Miller.

The actor and comedian will host the Opening Ceremony on Wednesday 11th May and the prize giving during the Closing Ceremony on Sunday 22nd May.

A pensionnaire of the Comédie-Française since 2012, Laurent Lafitte began his career in the 1990s. After a triumphant one-man-show entitled “Laurent Lafitte, comme son nom l’indique”, he embarked on a career in film and theatre. In 2011, he was Master of Ceremony for the 25th Nuit des Molières.

He has excelled in a range of registers from comedy (The Other Side of the Tracks, 16 ans… ou presque, Papa ou maman, etc.), to drama and arthouse film (Little White Lies, Bright Days Ahead, Tristesse Club, Boomerang).

Having appeared in Love Punch in 2013 alongside Pierce Brosnan and Emma Thompson, he has just finished filming Elle by Dutch director Paul Verhoeven and is currently working on Albert Dupontel’s latest film Au revoir là-haut.

Lafitte will also star with Uma Thurman in the cast of Marjane Satrapi’s next film – an adaptation of novel by Romain Puértolas: “The Extraordinary Journey of the Fakir who got Trapped in an IKEA Wardrobe”. Laurent Lafitte succeeds Lambert Wilson who emceed in Cannes in 2014 and 2015. The ceremonies are produced and broadcast on free-to-air Canal+.[/box]

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Finnish director Aki Kaurismaki will receive the Carrosse d’Or, the Golden Coach prize during the opening ceremony of the Directors’ Fortnight sidebar.

“Your stories are inspired fables that tell of the forgotten,” organizers said in an announcement. They called his films “often melancholic but never overwhelming,” and “made with “precision and grandeur, poetry and even burlesque.” “For the languor and the insolence of your movies, for their healthy and quiet subversion, we want to honor you during the biggest film event in the world,” said a letter signed by board members including Stephane Brize, Thomas Cailley, Laurent Cantet, Catherine Corsini, Pascale Ferran, Thomas Lilti and Celine Sciamma, among others.

Previous winners have included Clint Eastwood, Nanni Moretti, David Cronenberg and Jim Jarmusch.
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55th La Semaine de la Critique

The oldest among the parallel sections of the Cannes Film Festival, La Semaine de la Critique will celebrate its 55^th edition by putting the spotlight on the films and talents discovered since its 50^thanniversary. In collaboration with the Parisian agency les bons faiseurs, La Semaine chose the image which better reflects this 50+5 edition: the magnificent actress Jessica Chastain in a scene from Take Shelter, second feature film by Jeff Nichols where her performance in one of her first leading roles was particularly remarked. Winner of the Nespresso Grand Prize at the 50^th edition of La Semaine, Jeff Nichols, whose promising and very personal universe was already acknowledged, became a prominent talent with such films as Mud, in the 2012 Official Competition in Cannes, then withMidnight Special, competing for the Golden Bear at the 2016 Berlinale.

In this picture taken from Jeff Nichols’ film, the actress seems to both cunningly and serenely gauge the ground covered since the 50^th edition, from Terrence Malick to Kathryn Bigelow, not to mention Christopher Nolan, J.C. Chandor or Ridley Scott.

The splendid career path of these two artists in the past 5 years marvellously illustrates what La Semaine de la Critique mainly stands for: taking up the challenge of new film and discovering emerging talents worldwide since their very first artwork.

La Semaine de la Critique will be held in Cannes from May 12^th to the 20^th. Valérie Donzelli will preside over a jury exceptionally composed this year of 5 talents revealed by La Semaine: Alice Winocour, Nadav Lapid, David Robert Mitchell and Santiago Mitre. They will bestow the NespressoGrand Prize, the France 4 Visionary Award and the Leica Cine Discovery Prize for best short film.

The Selection will this year be announced on the 18^th of April.

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Erik Anderson

Erik Anderson is the founder/owner and Editor-in-Chief of AwardsWatch and has always loved all things Oscar, having watched the Academy Awards since he was in single digits; making lists, rankings and predictions throughout the show. This led him down the path to obsessing about awards. Much later, he found himself in film school and the film forums of GoldDerby, and then migrated over to the former Oscarwatch (now AwardsDaily), before breaking off to create AwardsWatch in 2013.

He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Hollywood Critics Association (HCA) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.

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