The 2013 Cannes Film Festival kicks off May 15 and runs through May 26 along the palm-tree-lined Promenade de la Croisette, opening with The Great Gatsby—a fitting film that mirrors the glitz, glamour, and buzzing excitement of the festival itself. Steven Spielberg is helming the 66th festival as the jury president, with Nicole Kidman, Christoph Waltz, and Oscar-winning director Ang Lee in tow to select the winner of the coveted Palme d’Or this year. From Sofia Coppola’s The Bling Ring to the Coen brothers’ Inside Llewyn Davis, see the most highly anticipated films at this year’s art-house-leaning festival.
The Bling Ring jump-starts the festival’s Un Certain Regard category as the opening film on May 16. Starring Emma Watson (Harry Potter, The Perks of Being a Wallflower) and Leslie Mann (This Is 40, Knocked Up), the movie is adapted from a truth-is-stranger-than-fiction caper written by Vanity Fair journalist Nancy Jo Sales. The film follows a group of thrill-seeking, partying teenagers who embark on a Hollywood home burglary spree, stealing from the likes of Orlando Bloom and Paris Hilton. Director Sofia Coppola is making her first trip back to the Croisette since her 2006 competition entry for the polarizing Marie Antoinette.
Merrick Morton,via Cannes Film Festival
Director Asghar Farhadi put Iranian cinema on the map when he snagged the 2012 Best Foreign Language Oscar for A Separation. He follows up with The Past, starring Bérénice Bejo (The Artist) and Tahar Rahim (A Prophet), and competing for the Palme d’Or. In this story, which has similar themes to his earlier film, an Iranian man leaves his French wife and children for his homeland, only to return when he receives a petition for divorce, discovering his wife’s new beau and the strain the situation is causing his children.
via Cannes Film Festival
There is already buzz surrounding Behind the Candelabra, airing on HBO on May 26 and in competition at Cannes. The biopic on the long-standing relationship between Liberace (Michael Douglas) and his much younger lover Scott Thorson (Matt Damon) is based on Thorson’s memoir. “Once you get the first kiss in, you are comfortable,” Douglas said in an interview with Vulture of kissing Damon in the film. Director Steven Soderbergh returns to Cannes nearly 25 years after he won the coveted Palme d’Or for sex, lies, and videotape, his directorial debut.
via Cannes Film Festival
It’s been a long time coming, and critics are hoping that it was worth the wait. Director James Gray, whose last film, Two Lovers, was released in 2008—returns to the screen with The Immigrant, a period piece set in the 1920s and anchored by a prominent cast. Ewa Cybulski (Marion Cotillard) is a Polish woman immigrating to the U.S. and manipulated by a pimp (Joaquin Phoenix) to become a prostitute in New York, until a magician (Jeremy Renner) attempts to save her.
Inside Llewyn Davis boasts a star-studded cast including Carey Mulligan (The Great Gatsby), Justin Timberlake (The Social Network), John Goodman (Argo), and Garrett Hedlund (On The Road). The Joel and Ethan Coen–directed feature takes viewers into the world of the 1960s folk-music scene in New York’s Greenwich Village, with some Bob Dylan-esque tunes. The brothers grabbed Oscars for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay for 2007’s No Country for Old Men. They also won the Palme d’Or for their 1991 film Barton Fink.
Alison Rosa,via Cannes Film Festival
Indie veteran Jim Jarmusch made a romantic drama about vampires? You’ve got our attention! Jarmusch describes the film as a “crypto-vampire love story,” and it follows an underground musician (Tom Hiddleston) whose peaceful life with longtime lover (Tilda Swinton) is disrupted by her little sister (Mia Wasikowska).
via Cannes Film Festival
A contender at Cannes, Nebraska is director Alexander Payne’s follow-up to his well-received The Descendants. A father (Bruce Dern) and his son (Will Forte) road-trip across the Midwest to claim sweepstakes prize money, and some scores need to be settled along the way. “I had been sitting on this Nebraska script even when I did Sideways,” Payne said in an interview with USA Today. “But I didn’t want to go back to a road-trip movie right after that. I was really tired of shooting people in cars. I’m serious. It’s a drag. But after Descendants, I came back to this story.”
via Cannes Film Festival
On the heels of their accolade-laden Drive, Ryan Gosling reunites with director Nicolas Winding Refn for another film. Only God Forgives is set in the gritty underworld of Bangkok, where Julian (Ryan Gosling) must stop smuggling drugs to fulfill his mother's (Kristin Scott Thomas) request to seek vengeance for his brother’s murder. This art-house film, like Drive, will not be for the faint of heart; its red-band trailer already hints at some violent scenes to come.
via Cannes Film Festival
Beloved French director Claire Denis (Chocolat) returns to Cannes in the Un Certain Regard category. (Only one female director, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, is in Palme d’Or competition this year.) In Denis’s highly anticipated offering, she draws out a dark story involving a suicide, revenge, and a family business.
via Cannes Film Festival
Acclaimed director Hirokazu Kore-eda joins fellow Japanese director Takashi Miike in the competition category of Cannes this year. No stranger to the festival circuit, Kore-eda was a Croisette contender back in 2001, with Distance, and Nobody Knows in 2004. Like Father, Like Son, a thought-provoking film, touches upon family roots and hard decisions. A businessman discovers his son was switched at birth and must choose between his biological son and the one he raised.
via Cannes Film Festival
Book adaptations of the great American literary classics have been trending—see: The Great Gatsby and On the Road—and reminding movie-goers that they need to revisit their high-school reading list. James Franco’s As I Lay Dying—a film he directed, acted in, and co-wrote—revives William Faulkner’s novel and brings along actors Tim Blake Nelson (O Brother, Where Art Thou) and Danny McBride (Eastbound & Down) along for the ride. In a sleepy Mississippi town in the 1920s after Addie Bundren’s death, her family members attempt to honor her wishes.
Alissa Whelan,via Cannes Film Festival
Israeli film director Ari Folman blew critics away with 2008’s Waltz With Bashir, a contender at Cannes. He returns to the French Riviera five years later with a competition slot for The Congress, a combination of live-action and animation, starring Robin Wright (Moneyball) as an aging actress who sells her acting rights to a company that scans her body into a virtual actress. It’s an adaptation of Stanislaw Lem’s novel The Futurological Congress and borrows the acting chops of Paul Giamatti (Sideways) and Jon Hamm (Mad Men).
via YouTube
Roman Polanski has big shoes to fill—his own—for his competition-nominated Venus in Fur. After receiving his Palme d’Or for The Pianist in 2002, he returns with an adaptation of a David Ives play about an actress who attempts to convince a director she is the perfect person for a role. This French-language film stars Polanski’s wife, Emmanuelle Seigner.
via Cannes Film Festival
A Touch of Sin is set to compete at Cannes, with Chinese director Jia Zhangke at the wheel. It’s a story that follows the tumultuous lives of four individuals across four provinces, from Guangzhou to Shanxi, equipped with some beautiful cinematography and heavy themes. Zhangke’s last film, I Wish I Knew, a documentary on Shanghai, was in the Un Certain Regard category in 2010.
via Cannes Film Festival
