The Director’s Fort­night and Critic’s Week side­bars bol­ster a packed Cannes

Last week set the inter­na­tion­al art­house cir­cuit abuzz with the reveal of the Cannes Film Festival’s pro­gram of Offi­cial Selec­tion titles, encom­pass­ing both the upper­most-lev­el Com­pe­ti­tion and the sec­ond-most-pres­ti­gious Un Cer­tain Regard sec­tions, but that was only the begin­ning. A few strag­gler picks will be added in the days to come, but today brings a wind­fall of addi­tions through the side­bars play­ing just a short jaunt from the Palais des Fes­ti­vals down the beach-adja­cent Boule­vard de Croisette.

The Director’s Fort­night pro­gram­mers unloaded their full line­up this morn­ing on Twit­ter, with an empha­sis on up-and-com­ers under the radar as well as first-timers. The slate fea­tures an inter­na­tion­al array of six debut fea­tures: Thien An Pham’s Inside the Yel­low Cocoon Shell, Ilya Povolotsky’s Grace, Zarrar Kahn’s In Flames, West­on Razooli’s Rid­dle of Fire, Zihan Geng’s A Song Sung Blue, and Joan­na Arnow’s The Feel­ing That the Time for Doing Some­thing Has Passed. Hav­ing not seen any of these films, your hum­ble news reporter is nonethe­less oblig­at­ed (in part by jour­nal­is­tic pro­to­col) to declare Arnow’s the best of the bunch, and to dis­close that that’s because I shot a few lines of dia­logue for one scene last summer.

The Fort­night attracts the most atten­tion for the known names, how­ev­er, and they’ve got a hand­ful of big­gies this year. The absurd­ly pro­lif­ic Hong Sang-soo will close out the sec­tion with In Our Day, his sec­ond new fea­ture of the year, which should leave plen­ty of time for a third or per­haps fourth as the fall fes­ti­val sea­son ramps up. Sean Price Williams, go-to cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er for the Safdie broth­ers and Alex Ross Per­ry, isn’t tech­ni­cal­ly mak­ing his fea­ture direct­ing debut with the report­ed­ly rib­ald road pic­ture Sweet East — he co-direct­ed the lit­tle-seen Eyes Find Eyes in 2011 — but it rep­re­sents a re-arrival all the same. French wiz­ard of whim­sy Michel Gondry will show his com­e­dy The Book of Solu­tions, rumored to be a faint­ly auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal work about a film­mak­er bat­tling his demons. And Por­tuguese leg­end Manoel de Oliveira will make an appear­ance from beyond the grave, his 1993 film Abraham’s Val­ley to be played as a Spe­cial Screening.

Rid­ing high after launch­ing the run­away suc­cess of After­sun last year, the Critic’s Week pro­gram­mers also pulled back the cur­tain on their 2023 selec­tions, an eclec­tic mix of pos­si­ble break­outs. From Brazil, Lil­lah Halla’s queer preg­nan­cy dra­ma Pow­er Alley; from South Korea, the som­nam­bu­lant hor­ror flick Sleep direct­ed by Bong Joon-ho’s for­mer prot­gege Jason Yu; from Malaysia, Aman­da Eu’s dark com­ing-of-age genre-ben­der Tiger Stripes; from France, Iris Kaltenbäck’s baby-snatch­ing psy­chothriller Le Ravissse­ment; from Ser­bia, Vladimir Perišić’s polit­i­cal dra­ma Lost Coun­try, set dur­ing the country’s 1996 anti-Miloše­vić stu­dent protests; from Jor­dan, Amjad Al Rasheed’s fem­i­nist char­ac­ter study Inshal­lah a Boy; and from Bel­gium, Palo­ma Sermon-Daï’s ​“hybrid dra­ma” Il Pleut Dans La Mai­son, in which a pair of teen sib­lings while away an ennui-strick­en sum­mer while left alone by their mother.

Antic­i­pa­tion among cinephiles has now kicked into the rabid reg­is­ter, with only a few short weeks sep­a­rat­ing us all from the del­uge of pre­mieres that comes with each Cannes Film Fes­ti­val. As a pre­view of what we’ll spend the next twelve months talk­ing about, it offers a peek into the future, and the rest of 2023 looks mighty bright.

The 2023 Cannes Film Fes­ti­val runs from 16 to 27 May.