Quinzaine des Cinéastes is my favourite sidebar of Cannes Film Festival, it’s in this section that I made the most exciting discoveries throughout the years. Go in with an open mind and be ready for a wild cinematic ride…
Barbie will open this year’s Directors’ Fortnight! This Barbie is performed masterfully by Agnès Jaoui in Sophie Fillières’ magnificent final film, This Life of Mine. Three moments in a woman’s life: a comedy, a tragedy and an epiphany rolled into one. All of these strands are executed with a bang, with the breaks in tone and punchy dialogues that have always been the hallmark of Fillières’ cinema. It is also a terribly moving film, since it is a filmmaker’s very intimate self-portrait, to which Agnès Jaoui lends body and soul.
2. DESERT OF NAMIBIA (Namibia no sabaku) by Yôko Yamanaka
For her second feature, director Yôko Yamanaka has pulled out all the stops. Desert of Namibia follows a young woman with bipolar who burns the candle at both ends. A surprising, unidealised portrait of Gen-Z Tokyo: striking for its incredible energy and irreverence. The film’s highly physical direction is carried off by an extraordinary actress. With hints of Nobuhiro Suwa’s early films.
3. LA PRISONNIÈRE DE BORDEAUX (Visiting Hours) by Patricia Mazuy
A counterpoint to her last feature, Saturn Bowling, Patricia Mazuy has created a film about female eman-cipation and sisterhood against a backdrop of class relations. In the lead roles, Isabelle Huppert and Hafsia Herzi forge an effective and affecting bond, built on a shared desire to put the past behind them and liberate themselves from male domination. No manicheism, no half-heartedness.
The first film from a passionate cinéphile, shot on a shoestring budget, Gazer revisits the codes of the paranoid thriller of the great masters of New Hollywood, with a touch of Cronenberg-esque horror. Shot on magnificent 16mm film stock, the film demonstrates astonishing mastery of directing, storyboarding and editing. We follow a magnetic young woman, played by Ariella Mastroianni who also co-wrote the film.
5. THE OTHER WAY AROUND (Volveréis / Septembre sans attendre) by Jonás Trueba
To celebrate their separation, a couple plans to throw a party. When they tell their friends and family, no one believes them. Jonás Trueba’s latest film is a modern “comedy of remarriage”. Quoting Stanley Cavell and Kierkegaard, The Other Way Around repeats the announcement of the couple’s separation over and over again in order to put the couple’s love to the test. The Other Way Around is a comedy that tenderly suggests that being a couple is also cinema.
6. SISTER MIDNIGHT, by Karan Kandhari
A fantastical punk comedy, a feminist revenge film, and a revamped vampire movie rolled into one, Sister Midnight is an original, funny and macabre tale centred on a rebellious, misanthropic character. We follow the trials and tribulations of Uma – a young, newly-married woman – who discovers the realities of married life in a Bombay slum, and whose thirst for vengeance will not be abated
7. CHRISTMAS EVE IN MILLER’S POINT by Tyler Taormina
There will be at least one Christmas film at Cannes this year. For his third feature, Taormina revels in the joy of ceremony: in this case, a Christmas Eve get-together for a middle-class Italian-American family. This is the portrait of a microcosm, and a kind of farewell to adolescence. Producer and actor Michael Cera plays an unlikely policeman straight out of Supergrave or Twin Peaks. Francesca Scorsese and Sawyer Spielberg also feature in the film.
CINERRATICA 