2024 CANNES FILM FESTIVAL

The 2024 Cannes Film Festival is on the way, a celebration of new, exciting works of cinema from across the globe running from May 14th to 25th. The poster for the 77th edition of this fest features a screen image from Akira Kurosawa's 1991 feature, "Rhapsody in August" to honor the legendary Japanese filmmaker. A 4K restoration of Kurosawa's "The Seven Samurai" will be screened during the festival to celebrate the 70th anniversary of his illustrious classic.

Cannes will open this year with Quentin Dupieux‘s French-language comedy, "Le Deuxième Acte (The Second Act)",  which stars Léa Seydoux, Vincent Lindon, Louis Garrel and Raphaël Quenard, making it's world premiere out of competition.



Greta Gerwig, the director of last year's box-office phenomenon, "Barbie", will be the President of the Main Competition Jury that will select the winners of prizes. The American actress/filmmaker will be joined by fellow jurors Turkish screenwriter, Ebru Ceylan; American actress Lily Gladstone; French actress Eva Green; Lebanese director/screenwriter Nadine Labaki; Spanish director J.A. Bayona; Italian actor Pierfrancisco Favino; Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda and French actor Omar Sy.

Some of the films selected for the Main Competition include new feature films by acclaimed international creators Ali Abbasi ("The Apprentice"), Karim Aïnouz ("Motel Destino"), Andrea Arnold ("Bird"), Jacques Audiard ("Emilia Perez"), Sean Baker ("Anora"), David Cronenberg ("The Shrouds"), Michel Hazanavicius ("The Most Precious of Cargoes"), Christophe Honoré ("Marcello Mio"), Jia Zhang-Ke ("Feng Liu Yi Dai (Caught by the Tides)"), Yorgos Lanthimos ("Kinds of Kindness"), Paul Schrader ("Oh, Canada"), Paolo Sorrentino ("Parthenope") and Francis Ford Coppola with his first film in fourteen years, the self-financed, one hundred million dollar, sci-fi drama, "Megalopolis".









New this year, Cannes will be looking into the future by launching a competitive immersive section featuring works of virtual and augmented reality. In the Cannes Classics section, there is an impressive line-up of restored films. In addition to "The Seven Samurai", we have a 4K restoration of Wim Wenders' 1984 Palme d'Or winner, "Paris, Texas"; the 1964 Palme d'Or winner, "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg", the enchanting musical by Jacques Demy who will be featured in a new documentary, "Jacques Demy: Le Rose et Le Noir" by Florence Platarets that will make it's premiere during the fest; "Gilda", the classic 1946 film starring Rita Hayworth and Glenn Ford, which this 4K restoration will help celebrate the 100th anniversary of Columbia Pictures and "The Sugarland Express", Steven Spielberg's early breakthrough will have a 50th anniversary restoration screening.

"Napoleon", the groundbreaking, seven hour silent film by French filmmaker, Abel Gance, will finally be screened again after sixteen years of extensive restoration work. After premiering at the Paris Opera on April 27, 1927, the film was hacked-up by various entities over the years with twenty-two different known versions appearing to date and has not been seen in it's proper, original form since the premiere. "Napoleon" will be screened first in two parts before being shown in it's entirety with a 250 piece, live orchestra before heading to Netflix in France.









New, intriguing documentaries on celebrated actors, Faye Dunaway and Elizabeth Taylor (which utilizes newly discovered recordings); French filmmaker, François Truffaut, music composer, Michel Legrand and "Muppets" creator Jim Henson (in a film directed by Ron Howard) will be presented. And "Scénario", a 18-minute film by Jean-Luc Godard, will be the final new project by the iconic French filmmaker to be screened at the fest, completed the day before his voluntary death in 2022 at the age of ninety-one.