The Dead Don’t Die to open the 72nd Cannes Film… | Little White Lies

Festivals

The Dead Don’t Die to open the 72nd Cannes Film Festival

10 Apr 2019

Words by Adam Woodward

Three uniformed security guards, one Black, one elderly White, and one younger White.
Three uniformed security guards, one Black, one elderly White, and one younger White.
Jim Jarmusch’s star-stud­ded zom­bie com­e­dy will receive its world pre­mière on 14 May.

A month out from the 72nd Cannes Film Fes­ti­val, we still have only a vague pic­ture of what the offi­cial pro­gramme will look like. While we recent­ly made a few edu­cat­ed guess­es, Cannes top brass Pierre Les­cure and Thier­ry Fré­maux have been keep­ing things very close to their chests, with the only major news so far being that Net­flix will once again be shutout from the festival.

Now, how­ev­er, Vari­ety is report­ing that the fes­ti­val has select­ed its open­ing film: Jim Jarmusch’s zom­bie hor­ror-com­e­dy The Dead Don’t Die. The Amer­i­can filmmaker’s pre­vi­ous fea­ture, Pater­son, com­pet­ed for the Palme d’Or back in 2016, and he’ll be vying for the atten­tion of Jury Pres­i­dent Ale­jan­dro González Iñár­ritu this time around with the film tak­ing one of up to 20 com­pe­ti­tion slots.

The film opens in France on 14 May, the same day as its Cannes pre­mière, before being released State­side on 14 June. It fol­lows the res­i­dents of Cen­ter­ville, USA – chief among them, Adam Dri­ver, Bill Mur­ray, Chloë Sevi­gny and Til­da Swin­ton – who finds them­selves in a fight for sur­vival when the dead start ris­ing from their graves.

Round­ing out the star-stud­ded cast list is Sele­na Gomez, Steve Busce­mi, Rosie Perez, Dan­ny Glover, Caleb Landry Jones, Iggy Pop, Tom Watts, most of whom will pre­sum­ably be in atten­dance. One per­son who may not be mak­ing the trip to the Cote d’Azur is Dri­ver, as he’s cur­rent­ly act­ing on Broad­way (although it seems he may have cleared a few days in his schedule).

Cannes and Jar­musch go way back, the direc­tor hav­ing won the Cam­era d’Or for his debut fea­ture, Stranger Than Par­adise, back in 1984. Since then he’s pre­sent­ed many films at the fes­ti­val, includ­ing Dead Man, Ghost Dog: Way of the Samu­rai, Bro­ken Flow­ers and Only Lovers Left Alive.

The full Cannes line­up will be con­firmed on 18 April. Fol­low us on Twit­ter @LWLies for more. Watch the trail­er for The Dead Don’t Die here.

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