69th Cannes Film Festival

FIPRESCI Honors Thierry Frémaux
During the award ceremony of the Cannes FIPRESCI prizes in the Ambassadeur salon on Saturday, May 21st, Alin Tasciyan, president of FIPRESCI, presented to Thierry Frémaux, the General Delegate of the Cannes Film Festival, a special award to thank him and the Festival for 70 years of hospitality and cooperation, from 1946 to nowadays. The plate was engraved with the wording: “For keeping cinema in our memories as the art of our times”. Thierry Frémaux said that this first prize of the evening he would like very much.

Festival de Cannes’ 69th edition ran from 11 to 22 May, once again setting the standard for the art of cinema by the quality of its selections, as well as hosting the largest film market in the world.

FIPRESCI has had a notable presence at the festival since the beginning. Farrebique, a film submitted by critics to the first edition in 1946 and which shared the first International Critic’s Prize with Brief Encounter by David Lean, was screened in this year’s Cannes Classics section. Upon the occasion of the 70th anniversary of this fecund collaboration, an honorary plaque was presented to Mr. Thierry Fremaux, the General Delegate of Festival de Cannes for his contribution to the art of cinema during the award ceremony shared by FIPRESCI and the Ecumenical Jury.

The 69th edition opened with Woody Allen’s Cafe Society on 11 May.  Festival de Cannes did not have a special closing film this year, instead, the winner of the Golden Palm Ken Loach’s I, Daniel Black was shown following the award ceremony on Sunday 22th May. The Competition jury was presided over by George Miller, who won the Grand Prix of FIPRESCI with Mad Max Fury Road. He was joined by Hungarian director Laszlo Nemes, another of last year’s FIPRESCI award winners.

Twenty-one films competed for the Palme D’Or, while eighteen were screened in Un Certain Regard. High-profile directors, some of whom had already won the Palme D’Or and/or Grand Prix du Jury, such as Ken Loach, Dardenne Brothers, Bruno Dumont, Cristian Mungiu, Jim Jarmusch, Asghar Farhadi, Park Chan Wook and Brillante Mendoza premiered their new films in the main Competition.

Only three woman directors, Maren Ade (Toni Erdmann), Andrea Arnold (American Honey) and Nicole Garcia (From the Land of the Moon) were selected for the competition. Jodie Foster’s Money Monster was shown out of competition. Women directors remained a small minority considering all the sections of the Festival de Cannes, including the new projects submitted to the Marche du Film.

55th La Semaine de la Critique traditionally selected only seven first or second promising features for the competition. 2010 FIPRESCI winner Oliver Laxe (Todos Vos Sodes Capitans) received the Nespresso Grand Prize for Mimosas.

Eighteen titles selected for the 48th Quinzaine des Realisateurs also included films by high-profile directors like Marco Bellocchio (Sweet Dreams), Alejandro Jodorowsky (Endless Poetry), Paul Schrader (Dog Eat Dog), Pablo Larrain (Neruda), Joachim Lafosse (After Love), Laura Poitras (Risk) and Solveig Anspach (The Together Project) – who won the main prize of the section, posthumously.

69th Festival de Cannes was generally appreciated by the critics for the high level of its program, especially the line up for the Golden Palm. (Alin Tasciyan, edited by Rita Di Santo)

Cannes Film Festival: www.festival-cannes.org