68th Cannes Film Festival Official Selection: Carol, Natalie Portman and Amy Winehouse Will Hit the Fest (Updated)

The list of films for the 68th Cannes Film Festival came with the expected and the snubbed, as it usually does, with new films from Todd Haynes, Gus van Sant and Denis Villeneuve among the In Competition films. Cannes favorites Nanni Morreti, Paolo Sorrentino and Kore-eda Hirokazu also found a place to compete for this year’s Palme D’or. Only one first-time filmmaker made the cut this year: Hungarian director Lazló Nemes with Son of Saul, a Holocaust drama about an Auschwitz prisoner who devises a plan to save his adopted son. Suffering a case of the snubs are Sean Penn’s The Last Face, Jeff Nichols’ Midnight Special and Cary Fukunaga’s Beasts of No Nation, highlighting a competition heavy on European films this year. In total, 17 films were announced to the competition and 14 in the Un Certain Regard section. As usual, films will be added to the lineup in the coming days.

The follow-up to the press conference held on 16th April, the Festival de Cannes has completed its Official Selection with the inclusion of the following films:

IN COMPETITION
Chronic by Michel Franco
Valley of love by Guillaume Nicloux

UN CERTAIN REGARD
Alias Maria by José Luis Rugeles Gracia
Taklub by Brillante Mendoza
Lamb by Yared Zeleke – 1st film first entry of Ethiopia in Official Selection
Cemetery of Splendour by Apichatpong Weerasethakul
AN by Naomi Kawase, will be presented in Opening of Un Certain Regard

SPECIAL SCREENING
Une histoire de fou (Don’t Tell me the Boy was Mad) by Robert Guédiguian

MIDNIGHT SCREENING
Love by Gaspar Noé

IN COMPETITION

UN CERTAIN REGARD

OUT OF COMPETITION

MIDNIGHT SCREENINGS

SPECIAL SCREENINGS

The announcement of the 2015 Official Selection will begin with the short films In Competition and the Cinéfondation Selection, in the run-up to the press conference for the 68th Festival de Cannes, to be held on Thursday 16th April.

Following their deliberations, the Cinéfondation and Short Films Jury, presided by Abderrahmane Sissako, will decide on the best films both from the Short Films Competition and the Cinéfondation.

THE 2015 SHORT FILMS COMPETITION 

This year, the selection committee received 4,550 short films – 1,000 more than in 2014 – from over 100 countries.

The 2015 Short Films Competition comprises nine films (seven works of fiction and two animations), mostly from Asia and Europe, with one representative of Latin America and one from Oceania.

These films are all in the running for the 2015 Short Film Palme d’or, to be awarded by Abderrahmane Sissako, President of the Jury, at the official prize-giving ceremony of the 68th Festival de Cannes on 24th May.

SHORT FILMS IN COMPETITION:

THE 2015 CINÉFONDATION SELECTION 

To mark its 18th year, the Cinéfondation Selection has chosen 18 films (14 works of fiction and four animations), from among the 1,600 works submitted this year by film schools from all four corners of the globe. 16 countries from four continents are represented.

Over a third of the films selected come from schools taking part for the first time, and it is also the first time that a Spanish film school has seen one of its films reach the selection stage. There is a strong showing from Europe once again, with 11 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 22nd May in the salle Buñuel.

THE CINÉFONDATION SELECTION:

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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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