After two years of Covid disruption, the Cannes Film Festival returns to its traditional May slot for a 75th anniversary edition stacked with celebrated auteurs and Hollywood starpower, including Tom Cruise. The French Riviera gathering, which opens on Tuesday in the shadow of the war in Ukraine, promises to balance nostalgic odes to cinema’s past icons with urgent questions about our troubled times.
The world’s premier showcase for the movies will be hoping for a return to a semblance of normality after the pandemic forced a no-show in 2020 and a scaled-back July gathering the next year. Inevitably, the war raging in Ukraine will loom large over the proceedings, framing the conversation just as it influenced the line-up of films.
There will be no mandatory masks or health passes this year – and no restrictions to partying. Still, the continent’s biggest armed conflict since World War II is likely to ensure cinema’s glitziest showcase opts for unusually sober celebrations even as it marks its diamond jubilee.
For the host country, Cannes marks a welcome lull in an intensily politicised year, sandwiched in between presidential and parliamentary elections – themselves largely overshadowed by the Russian invasion. But there will be no shortage of political material on the big screen, with war, migration, feminist struggles and the climate emergency all high on filmmakers’ agenda.
It’s just as well, because this year’s jury head Vincent Lindon, the French actor known for his politically-charged roles, has already stated his preference for “films that tell us something about the world in which they’re made”.
In the shadow of war
In a sign of…
Source : france24
