This year’s Official Selection features new works from Jim Jarmusch, Bong Joon-ho and Jessica Hausner.
After last year’s decidedly un-starry (but still very strong) line-up, the stars will be out in full force when the 72nd Cannes Film Festival gets underway on 14 May.
This morning President Pierre Lescure and General Delegate Thierry Frémaux announced the 2019 Official Selection in Paris. Among the big names set to unveil new works on the Côte d’Azur next month are Jim Jarmusch, double Palme d’Or winner Ken Loach and sometime Cannes golden boy Xavier Dolan, who’ll be hoping to get his hands on the top prize for the first time.
In 2018, 82 woman marched up the red carpet in protest against the lack of gender equality at Cannes and other major film festivals, prompting many to sign the 5050×2020 pledge. There are no fewer than 13 female filmmakers across the Official Selection at this year’s Cannes, but only four will compete for the Palme d’Or – a slight uptake on previous editions but still some way off parity.
There are a few notable omissions, with Quentin Tarantino missing out on a competition slot despite his Once Upon a Time in Hollywood reportedly being ready. There’s no room for Greta Gerwig either, whose Little Women was also rumoured to be in contention, or James Gray’s Ad Astra, which is still unfinished at the time of writing.
Here is the Official Selection in full…
The Dead Don’t Die (Jim Jarmusch) – Opening Film
Parasite (Bong Joon-ho)
Glory and Gloria (Pedro Almodóvar)
The Traitor (Marco Bellocchio)
The Wild Goose Lake (Diao Yinan)
Matthias & Maxime (Xavier Dolan)
Roubaix, a Light (Arnaud Desplechin)
Atlantique (Mati Diop)
Les Misérables (Ladj Ly)
A Hidden Life (Terrence Malick)
Little Joe (Jessica Hausner)
Sorry We Missed You (Ken Loach)
Young Ahmed (Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne)
Nighthawk (Kleber Mendonça Filho)
The Whistlers (Corneliu Porumboiu)
Frankie (Ira Sachs)
Portrait of a Lady on Fire (Céline Sciamma)
It Must Be Heaven (Elia Suleiman)
Sibyl (Justine Triet)
The Best Years of a Life (Claude Lelouch)
Rocket Man (Dexter Fletcher)
To Old to Die Young (Nicolas Winding Refn)
Diego Maradona (Asif Kapadia)
La Belle Époque (Nicolas Bedos)
Joan of Arc (Bruno Dumont)
The Climb (Michael Covino)
A Brother’s Love (Monia Chokri)
The Swallows of Kabul (Zabou Breitman, Eléa Gobé Mévellec)
Invisible Life (Karim Aïnouz)
A Sun That Never Sets (Olivier Laxe)
Chamber 212 (Christophe Honoré)
Port Authority (Danielle Lessovitz)
Papicha (Mounia Meddour)
Adam (Maryam Touzani)
Zhuo Ren Mi Mi (Midi Z)
Liberté (Albert Serra)
Bull (Annie Silverstein)
Summer of Changsha (Zu Feng)
Evge (Nariman Aliev)
Que Sea Ley (Juan Solanas)
Beanpole (Kantemir Balagov)
Share (Pippa Bianco)
Family Romace, LLC (Werner Herzog)
Tommaso (Abel Ferrara)
The Gangster, The Cop, The Devil (Lee Won-Tae)
We’ll be reporting live from the Cannes Film Festival from 14-25 May. Follow us on Twitter for all the latest updates.
Published 18 Apr 2019
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