The 77th Annual Cannes Film Festival has just closed its doors on another successful year of international cinema! What took home the big prizes? What will be the big Oscar players to come out of the fest? Let’s have a look!
The Apprentice
One of the most buzzed-about titles of the Cannes competition (for all the wrong reasons) was Ali Abbasi’s latest, a biopic about Donald Trump set in the 80’s as he is mentored by Roy Kohn. The film drew mixed-to-positive reviews, with some praise for the performances by Sebastian Stan and Jeremy Strong but an awful lot of “why does this need to exist??” type of reactions. Perhaps the most notable aspect of its premiere is that Trump himself lambasted the filmmakers and brought a cease-and-desist lawsuit against them, which is unlikely to do much but might scare away prospective North American distributors. Until a big-name buyer comes calling, I’m probably taking this out of my Oscar predictions for the time being.
Horizon: An American Saga – Part One
Kevin Costner premiered the first part of his epic Western saga out of competition, a long-gestating passion project that Warner Bros. finally gave him the blank check to make. I still think we may be underestimating this film’s chances at the summer box office, as very few other films seem capable of attracting that older audience demographic that Costner has tapped into in recent years with Yellowstone. Will they show up in force for his latest? We’ll have to wait and see, because critics alone aren’t going to elevate this to great heights!
Megalopolis
The other big pre-buzz film of the fest was the epic return of legendary filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola, who self-financed this $100+ million monstrosity that he’s been dying to make for many decades. It’s impossible to tell just from early reactions what this film actually is, as it has drawn a massive range of reactions from “total disaster” to “well-intentioned misfire” to “misunderstood future cult classic”. It’s very likely to be a box office flop, but does that mean the film is not worthy of consideration? I’m certainly intrigued by early word on the film’s quality and will be checking it out for myself whenever it eventually makes its way to the United States.
Emilia Perez
Jacques Audiard is a longtime Cannes favorite, and his latest is a musical crime comedy about a Mexican cartel leader undergoing sex reassignment surgery. This was supposedly one of the big positive surprises of the festival, as critics and audiences alike connected with the characters and the story, as well as its positive social messaging. The film took the Best Actress prize, shared among its four female leads (Adriana Paz, Zoe Saldana, Selena Gomez and Karla Sofia Gascon), with the latter being a potential Best Actress breakout this year if the film proves to be a hit on Netflix.
Kinds of Kindness
It’s barely been two months since the latest Yorgos Lanthimos/Emma Stone collab Poor Things won four Oscars, and now we have another one premiering! This is a bit of a departure from the norm for Yorgos, who departs from screenwriter Tony McNamara to work with fellow Greek Efthimis Filippou on this triptych dark comedy telling three different stories with the same actors playing different roles. This seems to be much more in line with Lanthimos’ earlier works like Dogtooth and The Lobster: not as awards-friendly but nonetheless a quirky good time for those with a taste for his unique style. Jesse Plemons won the Best Actor award for his role(s), and perhaps he, Stone and the screenplay can earn some attention this winter.
The Substance
French filmmaker Coralie Fargeat made waves with her 2017 debut thriller Revenge, and here makes her Cannes debut with this body-horror chiller. Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley star in the tale of a washed-up actress who undergoes a cloning process to create a younger version of herself in order to regain societal relevance. The film was rapturously received by audiences, drawing comparisons to Titane and other great body-horror chillers of recent years, with particular praise for the actors and the social commentary on aging women in Hollywood. Fargeat took home the Best Screenplay prize for her work, and while it may be a step too far to call this an Oscar contender due to its genre, it is sure to have people talking whenever it makes its way stateside.
The Seed of the Sacred Fig
There is perhaps no greater story at Cannes this year than that of Mohammad Rasoulof, who pissed off his home country of Iran so much for making this film that they issued a warrant for his arrest. Rasoulof then fled the country and made his way to Europe, where he was able to debut his film at Cannes alongside his cast and crew. The film is a politically relevant social drama about the court system and nationwide protests amidst national unrest, making it no surprise it ruffled feathers among the higher-ups. Rasoulof was awarded a special jury prize for the film, and hopefully it gets some awards love this year even if chances are near zero that it gets submitted by Iran for the Oscars.
Grand Tour
Portuguese filmmaker Miguel Gomes makes his second appearance at Cannes, with his first coming in the Directors’ Fortnight section for 2015’s Arabian Nights. His latest is a period drama shot in black-and-white, following a young couple in British-occupied Burma as one abandons the other on their wedding day, prompting a city-wide pursuit. It’s amusing to me that this shares the same cinematographer as Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers (Sayombhu Mukdeeprom), as these two films couldn’t look more dissimilar and yet equally as visually pleasing to the eye. Gomes took the Best Director prize for the film, which makes sense for such an eye-popping spectacle.
All We Imagine as Light
Indian filmmaker Payal Kapadia returns to Cannes for the second time with her drama about a pair of nurses in Mumbai who embark on a road trip to reassess their troubled lives. The quiet, subtle drama was praised for its look at the interior lives of women in a unique social structure that doesn’t always respect their agency. It’s also the first Indian film to premiere in competition at Cannes, and the first to win the runner-up Grand Prix prize – undoubtedly a proud moment for a nation often overlooked in the international cinema world. India has made some bizarre choices recently for their Best International Feature submissions (most notably snubbing RRR two years ago), but they could have a real shot at gold with this one.
Anora
Neon is now 5/5 in distributing the recent Palme d’Or winners thanks to this victory by Sean Baker! His latest is (surprise surprise) a comedy about a sex worker, starring Mikey Madison as an escort who falls in love with her young Russian client as his wealthy oligarch father attempts to break up their elopement. I’m super thrilled to see Sean Baker have his moment in the sun after a decade-plus of pioneering the indie cinema scene with several groundbreaking films, including Tangerine, The Florida Project and Red Rocket. All of his films thus far have been completely ignored by the Oscars…could this be the one to break the trend? I have a sneaking suspicion that we’ll all be able to call him “Oscar nominee Sean Baker” in about eight months’ time!
Conclusion
Which films are you most looking forward to from this year’s Cannes Film Festival? Which do you think will have legs to make it to the 97th Academy Awards? Let me know below!
All image rights belong to Cannes and the films’ respective distributors.
-Austin Daniel
Scriptophile 