Quentin Tarantino’s ‘Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood,’ is going to Cannes
After much debate as to whether it would be ready in time, Quentin Tarantino’s 9th film Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood is now officially in competition at the Cannes Film Festival.
The film will be presented in 35mm and clocks in at 2 hours and 45 minutes. It tells the story of a faded television actor (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his stunt double (Brad Pitt) strive to achieve fame and success in the film industry during the final years of Hollywood’s Golden Age in 1969 Los Angeles. It also dabbles into the Charles Manson family massacre with Margot Robbie playing actress Sharon Tate.
Tarantino’s wasn’t the only the film added today. We’ll also see the new film by Abdellatif Kechiche – Mektoub, My Love: Intermezzo, which comes in at four hours long. Set your schedules accordingly. New films by Gaspar Noé, Gael García Bernal and Patricio Guzmán have also been added. See the full list below with comments by Thierry Frémaux, the artistic director of the Cannes Film Festival.
In Competition
Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood by Quentin Tarantino (2 hrs 45)
“We were afraid the film would not be ready, as it wouldn’t be ready until late July, but Quentin Tarantino, who has not left the editing room in four months, is a real, loyal and punctual child of Cannes! Like for Inglourious Basterds, he’ll definitely be there – 25 years after the Palme d’or for Pulp Fiction – with a finished film screened in 35mm and his cast in tow (Leonardo DiCaprio, Margot Robbie, Brad Pitt). His film is a love letter to the Hollywood of his childhood, a rock music tour of 1969, and an ode to cinema as a whole. Sony/Columbia will release the film stateside on July 26th.
In addition to thanking Quentin and his crew for spending days and nights in the editing room, the Festival wants to give special thanks to the teams at Sony Pictures, who made all of this possible.”
Mektoub, My Love: Intermezzo by Abdellatif Kechiche (4 hrs)
“I saw the film last Thursday, as it was still being edited, and definitely right in the middle of edits! But it is going to be finished and the director says it will be four hours long. And screened at the end of the Festival so the DCP has time to get there. French-Tunisian director Abdellatif Kechiche returns to Cannes with the Intermezzo of Mektoub, My Love, six years after his Palme d’or with La Vie d’Adèle (Blue Is the Warmest Color). The groundwork for this saga storytelling and extraordinary portrait of French youth in the 90s was laid in his Canto Uno, and it will be a pleasure to see its cast again.”
Midnight Screening
Lux Æterna by Gaspar Noé (50 min)
“Two actresses, Béatrice Dalle and Charlotte Gainsbourg, are on a film set telling stories about witches – but that’s not all. Lux Æterna is also an essay on cinema, the love of film, and on-set hysterics. It’s a brilliant fast-paced medium-length film for Gaspar Noé’s return – an unexpected one until recently – to the Official Selection, for a film that the Selection Committee watched at the last minute and which will be shown in a Midnight Screening as hyped as it is mysterious.”
Un Certain Regard
La famosa invasione degli orsi in Sicilia by Lorenzo Mattotti (1 hr 22)
“Adapted from Dino Buzzati’s children’s book, this animated film by illustrator and comic book author Lorenzo Mattotti is a visual extravaganza, whose graphic ingenuity and colour work will delight much wider audiences than the fans of the Italian master. With Italian voices by Toni Servillo, Antonio Albanese, and Andrea Camilleri, and French voices by Leïla Bekthi, Arthur Dupont, and Jean-Claude Carrière. Like the other Un Certain Regard film in animation Les Hirondelles de Kaboul (The Swallows of Kabul) by Zabou Breitman and Eléa Gobbé-Mevellec, La famosa invasione degli orsi in Sicilia will also be competing next June at the acclaimed Annecy International Animated Film Festival.”
Odnazhdy v Trubchevske by Larissa Sadilova (1h30)
“Russian filmmaker Larissa Sadilova, who already directed six features, hadn’t shot a film in several years. She is back with this “chronicle from the village of Troubtchevsk”, evoking the feelings of love in the contemporary Russian countryside, shooting characters played by her formidable actors with refined direction and a gentle eye. Women aspirations, their patience, the courage that has to be displayed towards an always illusory emancipation, desire, frustration, and a certain sense of immemorial fatalism are all examined, acutely and without weight. It will be the first time the Festival de Cannes welcomes Larissa Sadilova.”
Special Screenings
Chicuarotes by Gael García Bernal (1 hr 35)
“A full-fledged member of Mexico’s exceptionally talented generation, a first-rate actor in films by Iñárritu and Cuarón, Gael García Bernal, along with Diego Luna, is a devotee of Cannes, where he was on the Jury in 2014. Chicuarotes is the actor’s second feature film where he takes a deep dive into Mexican society with a story about teenagers that is an affectionate portrayal, continuing in Mexican cinema’s tradition to pay homage to its eternal country, film after film.”
La Cordillera de los sueños by Patricio Guzmán (1 hr 24)
“Patricio Guzmán left Chile more than 40 years ago when the military dictatorship took over the democratically-elected government, but he never stopped thinking about a country, a culture, and a place on the map that he never forgot. After covering the North in Nostalgia for the Light and the South in The Pearl Button, his shots get up-close with what he calls “the vast revealing backbone of Chile’s past and recent history.” La Cordillera de los sueños is a visual poem, an historical inquiry, a cinematographic essay, and magnificent personal exercise in soul-searching.”
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.
- 2024 Camerimage Film Festival: Danish Oscar Entry ‘The Girl With the Needle’ Wins Golden Frog - November 23, 2024
- 2025 Oscar Predictions: BEST PICTURE and BEST DIRECTOR (November) - November 22, 2024
- 2025 Oscar Predictions: SUPPORTING ACTOR (November) - November 21, 2024
2024 Camerimage Film Festival: Danish Oscar Entry ‘The Girl With the Needle’ Wins Golden Frog 
Interview: ‘Gladiator II’ Cinematographer John Mathieson on Reuniting with Ridley Scott and Continuing the Legacy and Lore 
Interview: Alan Menken and Glenn Slater on Creating the Songs and Score for ‘Spellbound’ and the “Perfectly” Cast Rachel Zegler 
2025 Oscar Predictions: BEST PICTURE and BEST DIRECTOR (November)