61st Cannes Film Festival - Final

This is the official program for this year’s festival that will take place from May 14 to 25, 2008.

The Competition

Official Selection


Opening Film: Blindness, Fernando Meirelles, Brazil, Canada, Japan (check the trailer here and the movie site is here).

Adoration, Atom Egoyan, Canada (Cyberspace... hmm!)
Changeling, Clint Eastwood, USA (Starring Angelina Jolie, seems interesting)
Che (aka The Argentine and Guerilla), Steven Sodergergh, Spain, USA and France (a four-hour biopic starring Benicio del Toro)
Delta, Kornel Mundruczo, Germany and Hungary (a free adaptation from Shakespeare's Hamlet and Euripide's Electra... trailer is here).
Entre Les Murs (The Class), Laurent Cantet, France
Er Shi Si Cheng Ji (24 City), Jia Zhangke, China (Starring Joan Chen)
Il Divo, Paolo Sorrentino, Italy and France (a portrait of Giulio Andreotti played by Toni Servillo!...)
La Frontiére de L’Aube (The Frontier of Dawn), Philippe Garrel, France and Italy
Gomorra (Gomorrah), Matteo Garrone, Italy (violent five stories)
Leonera (Lion's Den), Pablo Trapero, Argentina and South Korea (seems very interesting check trailer here).
Linha de Passe (Line of Passage), Daniela Thomas and Walter Salles, Brazil
My Magic, Eric Khoo, Singapore (his first Tamil film, inspired by the life of fire-eater Francis Bosco)
La Mujer Sin Cabeza (The Headless Woman), Lucrecia Martel, Argentina, France, Italy and Spain (story sounds intriguing - she directed La Niña Santa - coproduced by Almodovar's El Deseo!)
The Palermo Shooting, Wim Wenders, Germany and Italy (stars Campino, in real life a singer in the successful German band "Die Toten Hosen, also Giovanna Mezzogiorno!! and Mila Jojovich)
Serbis, Brillante Mendoza, Philippines
Le Silence de Lorna (The Silence of Lorna), Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, Belgium, Italy and France
Synecdoche, New York*, Charlie Kaufman, USA and France (Kaufman directorial debut - he wrote Being John Malkovich, starring Philip Seymour Hoffman)
Two Lovers, James Gray, USA (Starring Gwyneth Paltrow and Joaquin Phoenix, movie scenes here)
ÜÇ Maymun (Three Monkeys or Daydreams), Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Turkey, France and Italy (stoory is interesting)
Un Conte de Noël (A Christmas Tale), Amaud Desplechin, France (Catherine Deneuve, Chiara Mastroianni, Mathieu Almaric)
Waltz with Bashir, Ari Folman, Israel, France and Germany (first animated documentary...)

Feature Film Jury
Sean PENN, President (American actor, director, screenwriter)
Sergio CASTELLITTO (Italian actor, director, screenwriter)
Natalie PORTMAN (Israeli-American actress)
Alfonso CUARON (Mexican director)
Apichatpong WEERASETHAKUL (Thai director)
Alexandra Maria LARA (German actress)
Rachid BOUCHAREB (French director)
Jeanne BALIBAR (French actress)
Marjane SATRAPI (Irania author-director)

Un Certain Regard

Opening Film: Hunger*, Steve McQueen, UK

Afterschool*, Antonio Campos, USA
Los Bastardos, Amat Escalante, Mexico, France and USA
De Ofrivilliga* (Involuntary), Ruben Östlund, Sweden
A Festa da Menina Morta* (The Dead Girl’s Feast), Matheus Nachtergaele, Brazil and Portugal
Je Veux Voir, Joana Hadjthomas and Khahil Joreige, France and Lebanon (with Catherine Deneuve)
Johnny Mad Dog, Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire, France, Belgium and Liberia
Milh Hadha Al-Bahr* (Salt of This Sea), Annemarie Jacir, Palestine, France, Switzerland, Belgium and Spain
O’Horten, Bent Hamer, Norway, France and Germany
Soi Cowboy, Thomas Clay, Thailand and UK
Ting Che* (Parking) Chung Mong-Hong, Taiwan
Tokyo!, Bong Joo HO, Miche Gondry and Leos Carax, France, South Korea, Germany and Japan (a trilogy: Interior Design by Gondry, Merde by Carax and Sharing Tokyo by Bong)
Tokyo Sonata, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Japan
Tulpan*, Sergey Dvortsevoy, Germany, Kazakhstan, Switzerland, Russia and Poland
Tyson, James Toback, USA (documentary)
Versailles*, Pierre Schoeller, France
La Vie Moderne (The Modern Life), Raymmond Depardon, France (documentary)
Wendy and Lucy, Kelly Reichardt, USA (with Michelle William - story about a girl and her dog)
Wolke 9 (Cloud 9), Andreas Dresen, Germany
Yi Ban Haishui, Yi Ban Huoyan (Ocean Flame or Part Ocean Part Flame), Liu Fen Dou, China

Un Certain Regard Jury
Fatih AKIN, President (German director)

Caméra d'or Jury
Bruno DUMONT, President (French director)

Out of Competition

The Good, The Bad, The Weird, Kim Jee-woon, South Korea (the 30's in the Mandchurian desert, seems good)
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of The Crystal Skull, Steven Spielberg, USA (Cate Blanchett is here)
Kun Fu Panda, Mark Osborne and John Stevenson, USA (Latest Dreamworks animmation with Angelina Jolie voice...)
Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Woody Allen, USA and Spain

Festival Closing Film: What Just Happened?, Barry Levinson, USA (with Robert De Niro)

Midnight Screenings
Maradona, Emir Kusturica, Spain and France (documentary)
Surveillance, Jennifer Lynch, USA and Germany (yes is the daughter of David Lynch - with Julia Ormond, trailer here)
The Chaser*, Na Hong-Jin, South Korea (trailer here)

Special Screenings
Ashes of Time Redux, Wong Kar-wai, China (a reworking of his martial arts film 12 years after its release-must be seen for me)
C’est Dur D’Etre Aime par des Cons (It's Hard Being Loved by Jerks)*, Daniel Leconte, France
Chelsea On The Rocks (or Chelsea Hotel), Abel Ferrara, USA (Documentary)
Of Time and City, Terence Davies, UK (documentary about Liverpool)
Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, Marina Zenovich , USA (documentary - Polanski pov)
Sanguepazzo (Crazy Blood), Marco Tulio Giordana, Italy and France (set in 1945 dark story - with Monica Bellucci!)

The Jury President’s Screening
The Third Wave, Alison Thompson, USA (documentary)

*In competition for Caméra d’Or

There is one documentary participanting in the Cannes Classics that also will be in competition for the Caméra d’Or: No Subtitles Necessary: Laszlo & Vilmos* by James Chressanthis, USA.

There are many good news here, as there are new movies by great directors like Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Eric Khoo, Atom Egoyan, Amat Escalante, and many others.

According to today’s press release these are the figures of the 2008 edition.
54 films representing 31 countries with 22 films in competition
19 films in the Un Certain Regard section
53 world premiers
9 first films
8 directors participating for the first time in the official selection competition

Finally today the complete information about the movies is available in their site. In the first left column you will find the links for the fest and the main parallel sections.