A critic is trying to understand Cannes’ 2024 lineup, without anyone seeing it

Reviews will have to wait until the Cannes Film Festival begins on May 14, but it’s not too early for a critic to comment on this year’s lineup — or what it looks like on paper, at least, and what the selection might say about the film. The state of things.

At the end of the press conference, festival director Thierry Fremaux indicated that last year’s edition would be difficult at the top. The two big winners of the 2023 competition, “Anatomy of a Fall” and “Zone of Interest,” went on to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture, along with Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon.” The festival has made strides towards achieving gender equality, with women directing nearly a third of participating films. Complicating matters further, Hollywood has since been hit by two strikes that have halted production, delaying films that studios would otherwise have sent to Cannes.

However, judging by the titles revealed today, the festival has no shortage of American films heading to the Croisette. Two blockbuster titles have already been announced: “Horizon, an American Saga” (the first half of Kevin Costner’s epic two-part Western) and “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga,” a prequel to George Miller’s post-apocalyptic film series, which has been released 2015. Mad Max: Fury Road also launched at Cannes (as did its standalone film Three Thousand Years of Longing, but that’s best left aside).

Now, Cannes officially confirms that Francis Ford Coppola’s urban planning drama Megalopolis will be in competition — just one of nine or ten English-language films in a section that typically leans more international (that’s about half the section, but not all of it). (Americans). Canadian director David Cronenberg, who is four years younger than Coppola at 81, will bring The Shrouds, a high-concept look at grief in which the director, who has never shied away from confronting death, is said to have been inspired by the loss of his wife. . (diverseNewspaper reporters heard that octogenarian Mike Leigh had also been invited, although his “hard facts” did not appear in the initial announcement.)

Returning to official selection for the first time since 1990 (not counting the director’s two-week disappointment of 2016’s “Dog Eat Dog”), Paul Schrader is set to screen “Oh, Canada,” a film that nods to several collaborations The previous one (starring Richard Gere and based on the novel “Foregone” by Russell Banks, who died last year, and whose novel “Affliction” was previously adapted by Schrader). It’s not clear what the language of Palme-winning Jacques Audiard’s Emilia Pérez film might be: the film, which stars Zoe Saldana and Selena Gomez, is described as a musical set in the middle of a Mexican cartel. If these directors seem a bit seasoned, that’s not unusual for Cannes, which tends to make the mistake of inviting established auteurs over emerging talent.

That’s what’s so encouraging about the inclusion of names like Andrea Arnold (whose song “Bird” sounds a lot like her previous film, “Fish Tank”) and Sean Baker (whose “Anora” almost nothing is known), who represent a younger generation From Art – House Sounds. The remaining English-language films (these are films by directors working outside their native language) include The Apprentice, a scripted look at the early career of car dealer Donald Trump directed by Ali Abbasi, director of Holy Spider, and Kinds of Kindness, directed by Yorgos Lanthimos. ”, which the Greek director shot in the wake of “Poor Things” with some of the same actors (starrer Emma Stone and Willem Dafoe). Fremaux likened French director Coralie Farget’s extremely gory film “The Substance” to recent Palme winner “Titane”, while Russian director Kirill Serebrennikov (“Tchaikovsky’s Wife”) will return with “Limonov: The Ballad,” a portrait of the dissident Soviet poet starring English actor Ben Whishaw in the title role.

Obviously, most of these films were made outside the system affected by American labor strikes, and success at Cannes could help filmmakers find opportunities from the English-speaking world. This is an important part of the Cannes dynamic, even if the more traditional model – French producers discovering international talent and financing their next project – tends to align more closely with those who are invited back. Scratch the surface of most of the films selected by Cannes and you’ll find a French connection (direction diverse It was recalled more than 20 years ago.)

English may be the lingua franca for much of the international film community, but the Chinese market continues to grow, while Hollywood worries about its future. Which is what makes it particularly surprising that Cannes has added so few new Asian authors to its ranks over the past decade — and only one is in contention: Chinese master Jia Zhangke’s film Caught by the Tides, starring his wife and muse Zhao Tao. (Find others in Un Certain Regard and other sidebars.)

This is not to rule out Indian director Payal Kapadia, Abbasi or Serebrennikov, but the result remains: the festival’s leading role in identifying great works from China, Japan, Thailand, Korea and other countries has suffered greatly since the days when Pierre Ricent was exploring the world. region. One need only scan the important Asian voices that have appeared at other festivals to recognize whatever slips through the cracks.

Another area where Cannes clearly lags is in its support of female directors. Down from last year’s record high — a far cry from the “50/50 x 2020” claimed by Agnès Varda, Ava DuVernay and 80 other women on the palace steps in 2018 — the number of women in competition dropped from seven to four this year. In addition to Arnold and Farget, there are Indian director Payal Kapadia (“All We Imagine As Light”) and French director Agatha Redinger (“Wild Diamond”).

Sure, Fremaux could still make some late additions, but he was stubbornly resistant to the idea of ​​“lowering the bar” for the sake of inclusion—a backwards way of thinking about reevaluating the male-centric standards by which cinematic work is too often done. to rule. Inviting “Barbie” director Greta Gerwig to chair the jury (an inspired choice!) does not solve the problem of imbalance in the program, although juries at the world’s leading festivals seem to be embracing diversity wherever they find it, and awarding their top prizes to “Barbie.” “. Female filmmakers have become more prominent in recent years.

Cannes represents the tip of the mountain among these institutions, and part of the selection committee’s job is to scour the world in search of original and exciting voices. Given their location, they have first choice – filmmakers regularly decline invitations from other festivals in the hope of securing a spot at Cannes – but programmers should recognize it when they see it. To be sure, these conclusions are based on statistics alone (we won’t see the films until mid-May), but if every other major festival can find a balance, one wonders why Cannes’ selections look so lopsided on paper.