Metropolis 117 EN

CANNES IN DIFFICULT TIMES

— Him: When something isn’t serious, we say it’s like a movie. Why do you think movies aren’t taken seriously?
— Her: Maybe because we only go to the movies when everything is going well?
— Him: So you think we should go when everything is going badly?
— Her: Why not?
The dialogue is spoken and immortalised by actors Anouk Aimée and Jean-Louis Trintignant in Claude Lelouch’s film “A Man and a Woman” (“Un homme et une femme”), which won the Palme d’Or in 1966. Six decades later, the Cannes Film Festival recaptures the moment and frames this pair, embraced in a scene from the film, as a way of celebrating union, closeness, understanding, comprehension, and encounter through cinema.

The official selection features new films by the following filmmakers: Iranian Jafar Panahi, Brazilian Kléber Mendonça Filho, Italian Mario Margone, Danish Joachim Trier, French Julia Ducournau, Americans Wes Anderson, Ari Aster, Richard Linklater, and Belgians Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne.

In other sections and moments of the program, the festival will be marked by the screening of the first films made by American actresses Scarlett Johansson and Kristen Stewart, a tribute to Robert De Niro, and the ever-media-friendly presence of Tom Cruise at the world premiere of the new film in the classic series “Mission: Impossible”.

The festival is once again generous to Portuguese cinema, making room for the second feature films by Pedro Pinho and Pedro Cabeleira, “O Riso e Faca” and “Entroncamento”, which will be screened in Un Certain Regard and in the independent parallel section ACID, respectively. Short films are well represented with two new films by Gabriel Abrantes, “Argumentos a Favor do Amor” and Inês Nunes “A Solidão dos Lagartos” in the official competition, and an animation by Laura Anahory “O Pássaro de Dentro”, in the Cinef selection dedicated to school cinema.

It may not seem like much, but it’s all we can fit into this preview of a festival that invites viewers to go to the cinema when almost everything around us is going… badly!

Tiago Alves