20 Friday Lifestyle | Features Friday, April 13, 2018

Films in the running for the top prize at Cannes

rom an African-American detective infil- Le Livre d’image trating the Ku Klux Klan to Kurdish fe- Little has been revealed about this new Fmale fighters battling jihadists, here are film by French-Swiss legend Jean-Luc Go- the movies that will battle it out for the top dard other than this enigmatic synopsis: Palme d’Or prize at next month’s Cannes film “Nothing but silence, nothing but a revolu- festival: tionary song, a story in five chapters like the five fingers of a hand.” Everbody Knows Iranian master Asghar Farhadi will kick off Capernaum the festival with a psychological thriller about Lebanese actress-turned-filmmaker Na- French Director Thierry Fremaux (left) and President of the Cannes Film Festival Pierre Lescure address a family reunion going awry, featuring Span- dine Labaki’s third film is set in a Middle East- a press conference on the official selection of the 71st Cannes Film Festival in Cannes, southern France ish stars Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem. ern town. Her previous film “Where Do We yesterday. — AFP While Farhadi, 45, won an Oscar and the Go Now?” premiered at Cannes in the Un Golden Bear at Berlin for his 2011 break- Certain Regard section in 2010. through film, “A Separation”, he is yet to take ‘Political’ Cannes film festival home the coveted French prize. Burning South Korean auteur Lee Chang-dong’s BlacKkKlansman new mystery drama is drawn from a short makes plea for dissidents US director and activist Spike Lee’s drama story by Japanese master Haruki Murakami, is based on the real-life story of an African- “Barn Burning”. he Cannes film festival made a dramatic Netflix boycott American police officer who infiltrated the Ku show of support for dissident directors in The announcement of the line-up came just Klux Klan in 1978. John David Washington Ash is Purest White TIran and Russia yesterday as it unveiled a hours after streaming giant Netflix dramatically plays him with Adam Driver as his Jewish po- Chinese director Jia Zhangke’s new film is highly political selection that mixed grit and pulled out of the festival after a row with its or- lice partner. The film will open in the US on a story of “violent love” between a mobster glamour. Festival director Thierry Fremaux in- ganizers. The US platform withdrew four films the first anniversary of a white supremacist and a dancer starring Zhao Tao and Liao Fan. cluded films by Iranian director Jafar Panahi which were rumored to be in the running to march in Charlottesville where an anti-racism It is a follow-up to Zhangke’s “Mountains May and his Russian counterpart Kirill Serebren- compete for the Palme d’Or, including Paul activist was killed. Depart”, which competed for the Palme d’Or nikov in the competition for the top Palme d’Or Greengrass’ much-awaited “Norway” about in 2015. prize-even though neither can leave their coun- the 2011 Utoya massacre, in which white su- Under the Silver Lake try. He pleaded with authorities to allow Panahi, premacist Anders Breivik killed 77 people in Four years after giving Cannes audiences Asako 1 & 2 who is under a travel ban, and Serebrennikov, twin attacks. The move was a major blow to the nightmares with his thriller “It Follows”, David In this Japanese drama by Ryusuke Ham- who is under house arrest, to be allowed to fly world’s top film festival, already facing a revolt Robert Mitchell returns with another spine- aguchi, a young woman meets her first love in to the French Riviera resort next month to show by critics furious at a shake-up in the way its chiller, this time about the mysterious murder Osaka. When he disappears without a trace, their new films, “Three Faces” and “Leto”. screenings are organized. Netflix’s withdrawal of a billionaire. she moves on-until his perfect double shows US director Spike Lee’s movie about a black was in retaliation for a new Cannes rule banning up two years later. policeman who manages to infiltrate the Ku movies from the competition that are not first Three Faces Klux Klan, “BlacKkKlansman”, starring Adam released in French cinemas. The platform has Little is known about this portrait of three Les Filles du Soleil Driver of “Star Wars” fame, also made the line- been snagged by a French law stopping movies women by the Iranian dissident Jafar Panahi, Kurdish women fighters stand at the cen- up of 17 often controversial titles. The French being streamed there until three years after who is banned from travel by Tehran. The fes- tre of French actor-director Eva Husson’s new film “Les filles du soleil” (Women of the Sun), their cinematic release. French cinema owners tival has pleaded with the authorities to let the film. Iranian star Golshifteh Farahani plays features Iranian star Golshifteh Farahani-a pin- protested last year at the inclusion of two Net- director, who has faced years of harassment Bahar, the leader of the Yazidi Sun Brigade up for rebellious youth in her homeland-as a flix films, “Okja” and “The Meyerowitz Stories”, and arrest, to fly to Cannes to show his film. battling jihadists. Kurdish female fighter from the Yazidi Sun in the selection. The outcry prompted festival Brigade battling jihadists. Meanwhile, veteran director Fremaux to change the rules. Netflix’s Leto Shoplifters provocateur Jean-Luc Godard returns 50 years chief content officer Ted Sarandos made no at- Russia’s Kirill Serebrennikov is another di- Japanese master Hirokazu Kore-eda, a after he led a revolutionary takeover that halted tempt to hide his irritation with Cannes and rector who may not be able to present his longtime sweetheart of the Cannes jury, re- the festival during the French student and Fremaux in a scathing interview with the trade work at Cannes. Under house arrest over al- turns with a tale of a family of small-time workers protest of 1968. daily Variety on Wednesday. legations of embezzlement, his film focuses on crooks who take in a child they find on the Although Hollywood stars are thinner on the Soviet rock star Viktor Tsoi and the birth of street. ground than usual, Penelope Cruz, Xavier Bar- ‘Disrespectful’ Russian underground music in the 1980s. dem, Marion Cotillard and Andrew Garfield will “We want our films to be on fair ground with Yomeddine walk the red carpet with Driver. And the latest every other filmmaker,” Sarandos said. “There’s At War A Coptic leper and his orphaned ap- “Star Wars” spin-off, “Solo: A Star Wars Story”, a risk in us going in this way and having our As France grapples with mass strikes, prentice leave the confines of their colony will also be screened at the festival, which runs films and filmmakers treated disrespectfully at French director Stephane Brize’s gritty drama for the first time and embark on a journey about factory workers battling to keep their across Egypt to search for what is left of from May 8 to 19. In a year when the movie in- the festival.” “It is not a coincidence that jobs may hit a timely nerve. their families. dustry has been dominated by the #MeToo Thierry also banned selfies this year,” he added, movement, only three women directors made in a biting reference to Fremaux outlawing them Dogman Lazzaro Felice the selection: Lebanon’s Nadine Labaki for on the red carpet. “I don’t know what other ad- Italian director Matteo Garrone’s new Rising star Italian director Alice “Capernaum”, France’s Eva Husson for “Les vances in media Thierry would like to address.” work is not for the faint-hearted. Dubbed an Rohrwacher, already a prize winner at filles du soleil” and Italian Alice Rohrwacher However, Fremaux offered an olive branch to “urban Western”, the film is inspired by the Cannes, is back with a time-travelling story with “Lazzaro Felice”. Netflix, saying “let’s continue to talk” as he gruesome murder by dog groomer and co- which takes in the fascist 1930s. However, the jury that decides the Palme announced the line-up. Despite the row, caine addict Pietro De Negri in the late 1980s. d’Or will be headed by Australian actress Cate Cannes has had no problem accommodating Sorry Angel Blanchett. Four Asian films are in the running, its rival, Amazon, which financed Polish- Cold War The new film by Christophe Honore, the led by “Ash is Purest White” from Chinese cre- British director Pawel Pawlikowski’s “Cold Amazon Studios is pinning its hopes on man behind the charming French musical ator Jia Zhangke and “Shoplifters” by Japan’s War”. Its films are shown in cinemas before this period romance from Oscar-winning Pol- “Love Songs”, is a gay love story when the Hirokazu Kore-eda. A documentary about the they go online and can be streamed individu- ish-British director Pawel Pawlikowski set in AIDS epidemic was at its height. — AFP pope by the German master Wim Wenders ally four months after their release in France. Eastern Europe in the 1950s. “Pope Francis: A Man of His Word”, will also be It is Netflix’s subscription-only model that shown out of competition. falls foul of French rules. — AFP