Ter­rence Malick’s lat­est film is now called A Hid­den Life

Back in Jan­u­ary 2017, we ran an item express­ing our excite­ment at the news that Ter­rence Mal­ick​’s World War Two epic, then known as Rade­gund, was at long last com­ing togeth­er. There have not been too many devel­op­ments since then, but now we final­ly have word on a poten­tial pre­mière date.

Accord­ing to a report in Indiewire, Rade­gund is expect­ed to open under the new title of A Hid­den Life in a com­pe­ti­tion slot at the Cannes Film Fes­ti­val, the main line-up for which is set to be announced two weeks from now.

A tweet from French cin­e­ma indus­try insid­er Cédric Suc­ci­val­li alleges that Mal­ick has got his spot all sewn up, along with Jim Jar­musch​‘s zom­bie com­e­dy The Dead Don’t Die and Pedro Almod­ó­var​‘s auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal char­ac­ter study Pain and Glo­ry.

Suc­ci­val­li also throws out a hand­ful of odds-on selec­tions that have yet to be con­firmed: Céline Sci­amma​‘s les­bian romance Por­trait of a Lady on Fire; a new fea­ture from actor-turned-direc­tor Mati Diop; the lat­est effort from Russ­ian up-and-com­er Kan­temir Bal­agov; the Dar­d­enne broth­ers’ ter­ror­ism dra­ma Ahmed; Ken Loach​’s newest slice of social real­ism Sor­ry We Missed You; and Roman­ian mas­ter Cor­neliu Porum­boiu​‘s thriller The Passenger.

After two years on the shelf, per­haps a refresh­er on Malick’s film is in order: set in 1940s Aus­tria, A Hid­den Life tells the sto­ry of con­sci­en­tious objec­tor Franz Jäger­stät­ter, who refused to take part in the Nazi war effort, inspir­ing many but ulti­mate­ly fac­ing severe pun­ish­ment for his disobedience.

August Diehl plays the famed paci­fist, while Matthias Schoe­naerts and Michael Nyqvist sup­port as the mil­i­tary men infu­ri­at­ed by his lack of loy­al­ty to the Third Reich. It all sounds great to us – it’s a new Ter­rence Mal­ick film! – but as ever with this direc­tor, you can nev­er be sure quite what to expect.

A Hid­den Life has yet to set a release date in the US or UK. The Cannes Offi­cial Selec­tion announce­ment has been set for 18 April.