Films by Wes Anderson, Todd Haynes and Ken Loach will compete for the Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, the event’s organizers announced during a press conference on Thursday.
Films by returning winners Wim Wenders, Hirokazu Kore-Eda, Nuri Bilke Ceylan and Nanni Moretti will be in the running for the festival’s first prize.
But Martin Scorsese will not compete at the festival, which runs from May 16 to May 27. Instead, his eagerly-anticipated film “Killers of the Flower Moon” starring Leonardo DiCaprio is about the murder of Osage Indians in Oklahoma in the 1920s. appear out of competition. Thierry Frameaux, artistic director of Cannes, said during a news conference Thursday that the festival wanted “Killers of the Flower Moon” to play in competition, but Scorsese turned him down.
The Wes Anderson film in competition is “Asteroid City,” about a space cadet conference interrupted by aliens; Todd Haynes will show “May December”, a love story about a young man and his senior boss, played by Julianne Moore.
Two-time Palme d’Or winner Ken Loach presents “The Old Oak,” about Syrian refugees, focusing on working-class life in Britain. Arrived in an economically depressed English mining town.
A jury led by Swedish director Ruben Ostlund will choose the winner. Ostlund won the Palme d’Or last year for “Triangle of Tragedy,” a satire of the international tycoon; He also received the 2017 award for “The Square”, a send-up from Art World.
Of the 19 titles in competition, five are directed by women, including Cannes veterans Jessica Hausner and Alice Rohrwacher and French-Senegalese newcomer Ramata-Doule Sy.
This year’s event will feature several high-profile titles out of competition. The festival will open with “Jeanne du Barry,” a period drama about a poor woman who becomes the lover of King Louis XV of France. After winning a defamation lawsuit against his ex-wife Amber Heard, Johnny Depp is taking on his first major role.
Other high-profile films slated to screen at the 76th edition of Cannes are “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” directed by James Mangold — the final film in the Harrison Ford adventure series about a globe-trotting archeology professor — and Pedro Almodovar’s “A Strange Life,” the Spanish director’s second film in English. The film, starring Ethan Hawke and Pedro Pascal, is a short western about a reunion between two winners.
German director Wim Wenders, who won the Palme d’Or in 1984 for “Paris, Texas,” has two films in the official selection. In the main event, he will show “Perfect Days,” which Fremaux said is about a janitor in Japan driving between jobs listening to rock music. Outside the competition, Wenders will show a 3-D documentary about one of Germany’s most revered artists, Anselm Kiefer.
Although only 52 films were selected on Thursday, Frémaux said 2,000 films were submitted to the festival. Notable among them is Steve McQueen’s “Occupied City,” about Amsterdam under the Nazis. Frémaux said McQueen, the director of “12 Years a Slave” and “Widows,” has created a “very intense” film that spans several hours. But, added Frémaux, looking at it, “You will not sleep.”
