Cannes Film Festival 2021 kicks off: from films to stars, here’s what to expect

After a year of hiatus due to the pandemic, the Cannes Film Festival starts again in presence with a review full of not very mainstream and very elite titles and a series of novelties that enter, in fact, in the history of the Croisette: it is the first time that a black director, Spike Lee, to whom the poster of this edition is also dedicated, presides over the international jury; it is the first time that the Festival openly embraces the environmental cause through the birth of a new “green” section, and it is the first time that the number of jurors exceeds that of jurors.

“For our part, we feminize the teams, the organs, the selection committees,” she told Republic the artistic director of Cannes Thierry fremaux, in perfect harmony with the trend of the times. At the event, starting from 6 to 17 July, 24 titles take part in the competition, of which 7 are French. It starts from Annette, the dark musical directed by Leos Carax with Marion Cotillard and Adam Driver, and continues with great themes and great faces.

Everything went well, the new film by Francois Ozon, talks about euthanasia inspired by the book by Emmanuelle Bernheim, with Sophie Marceau as a daughter who helps her stroke-stricken father die in Switzerland; France, by Bruno Dumont, is the story of a TV journalist played by Léa Seydoux and how the stardom is fleeting; Flag Day, the latest film by Sean Penn, is the true story of a daughter struggling with the problems caused by a cheating father; while Red Rocket by Sean Baker tells, in a comic key, the character of Mikey Saber. Great waiting for The French Dispatch, Wes Anderson’s film set in a newspaper office in a fictional French city with a stellar cast ranging from Timothée Chalamet to Benicio del Toro, from Francesc McDormand to Tilda Swinton; for Three floors by Nanni Moretti, who waited patiently two years before showing his work, the first not based on a screenplay written by him but from the famous novel by Eshkol Nevo, to the public; Benedetta di Paul Verhoeven, adaptation of Judith C. Brown’s book on Benedetta Carlini, a lesbian nun who lived in 17th-century Italy; Ouistreham, the film directed by writer Emmanuel Carrère with Juliette Binoche in the role of a cleaning lady on the Ferry Boat opening the Fortnight; and the documentary Jane by Charlotte, in which Charlotte Gainsbourg interviews her mother Jane Birkin.

Italy, as well as with Moretti, also beats thanks to Marco Bellocchio, which in Cannes, in addition to previewing Marx can wait, the beautiful documentary dedicated to the tragic death of his twin brother Camillo in the 1960s, will also collect the prestigious Palm of Honor, prize awarded, in the 74 years of the Festival, only five times: to Clint Eastwood, Agnés Varda, Francis Ford Coppola, Bernardo Bertolucci and Manoel de Oliveira. For the rest, even without the great Hollywood blockbusters and Netflix, which does not yield to the request for an obligatory passage in the room indicated by Fremaux as an indispensable criterion for being able to present its films at Cannes, the 2021 Festival tries to tackle the pandemic by prohibiting hugs on the top of the Montée des Marches and authorizing the stars to remove the mask only at the time of the photocall. The vaccination center inside the Palais represents, in the will of the organizers, an additional security to allow all participants, from producers to journalists, to enjoy the show in peace, without giving up controls at the entrance to the screening rooms and the obligation of the green pass or the test to be repeated every forty-eight hours. The holidays, for the moment, have not arrived, but it is certain that French cinema is doing its best to restart.