A hand­ful of pre-announce­ments fore­tell a robust Cannes slate

The next few weeks will bring a series of antic­i­pa­tion-goos­ing announce­ments from the Cannes Film Fes­ti­val, its open­ing night a lit­tle under two short months away. We’ll soon get word on which world cin­e­ma titan will sit as the Pres­i­dent of the Com­pe­ti­tion Jury, line-ups for the side­bar sec­tions, and the grand unveil­ing of the offi­cial selec­tion for this year’s full slate — though we’ve already got­ten some dribs and drabs of news on that front.

The past week or so has brought a hand­ful of pre-announce­ments for picks that will play on the Croisette this year, fore­telling a robust slate in this post-COVID-pro­duc­tion-bot­tle­neck era. The pub­lic has got­ten advance notice on a pair of big-tick­et block­busters like­ly to open the fes­tiv­i­ties as well as a cou­ple auteur projects tipped for the main Com­pe­ti­tion sec­tion, com­pound­ing excite­ment as incom­ing press fig­ure out their flights and lodging.

The open­ing night Gala slot has his­tor­i­cal­ly gone to a title with some star pow­er behind it, putting Baz Luhrmann​‘s already-con­firmed Elvis biopic (it wasn’t so long ago that the Aus­tralian film­mak­er set things off in style with his The Great Gats­by adap­ta­tion) in com­fort­able stand­ing. Though fes­ti­val direc­tor Thier­ry Fre­maux has also reached out to the A list in invit­ing the long-delayed sequel Top Gun: Mav­er­ick, bring­ing Tom Cruise to the south of France. As is often the case with pop­corn Hol­ly­wood imports, these will most like­ly screen out of Com­pe­ti­tion, and be inel­i­gi­ble for awards.

Not so with the new film from George Miller, Three Thou­sand Years of Long­ing, which casts Til­da Swin­ton as a schol­ar and Idris Elba as the djinn appear­ing in her Istan­bul hotel room to offer her three wish­es. That’s a smart-mon­ey bet for the main sec­tion, as is the lat­est from the Dar­d­ennes broth­ers, the immi­grant dra­ma Tori and Loki­ta. (The elder­ly white film­mak­ers’ take on the strug­gles faced by a pair of young African migrants liv­ing in Bel­gium will sure­ly reignite the same race dis­course the accom­pa­nied Young Ahmed, their film about a young Mus­lim fundamentalist.)

The main ques­tion remain­ing in light of this trick­le of news is what else will play along­side these ear­ly-com­ers. New films from David Cro­nen­berg, Park Chan-wook, Ruben Östlund, and Kel­ly Reichardt are all said to be in the can — will they be ready for the world come May?