The documentaries Jeunesse (no description available at time of upload) by Wang Bing (China) and Tunisian Kaouther Ben Hania’s Four Daughters, are selected for Cannes Competition 2023. The titles were announced April 13 by Cannes chief Thierry Frémaux.
Presenting Four Daughters, produced by Tanit Films (France), Frémaux described it as “a film on the edge of fiction, essay, a certain political statement, a human, humanist and feminist commitment.” Kaouther Ben Hania is one of six women directors who will be competing for the Palme d’Or, a record according to French media.
Special Screenings
In Special Screenings is Steve McQueen’s Occupied City, about Amsterdam under occupation by the Nazis during WW2. McQueen previously won the Golden Camera at Cannes with his fiction feature Hunger (2008). Occupied City is scripted by Bianca Stigter, produced by Family Affair Films and co-produced by Lammas Park (UK). The logline for the film reads how, ‘’living in Amsterdam is like living with ghosts. It seems there are two parallel narratives occurring. The past is always present. Turning a corner or blinking can be like stepping into the past. It almost feels like one has lead shoes. The soil is not dry of the past.”
In Wim Wenders’ 3D Le bruit du temps, Anselm Kiefer, past and present intertwine to blur the line between film and painting, allowing for full immersion into the world of one of the greatest contemporary artists, Anselm Kiefer. French distribution on the Germany/France/Italy co-pro is handled by Les Films du Losange.
The Brazilian documentary Retratos Fantasmas is the fifth feature film by filmmaker and screenwriter Kleber Mendonça Filho. The doc is produced by Emilie Lesclaux for CinemaScópio Produções and co-produced by Vitrine Filmes, and marks Mendonça Filho’s third selection for Cannes, following Aquarius (2016) and Bacurau, co-directed by Juliano Dornelles, which won the Jury Prize in 2019.
Wang Bing’s Man in Black, also selected in Special Screenings, is described on the Louverture Films website as “a new video artwork.”
Un Certain Regard
Selected for Un Certain Regard is The Mother of All Lies by Asmae Elmoudir. In the film, we see family’s web of lies and one young girl’s search to find the truth. Through her own voice, Asmae, daughter and filmmaker, flits between national and personal history to tell the 1981 Bread Riots in Morocco and shows how this event connects with contemporary Moroccan society. The Mother of All Lies is produced by InsightFILMS (Morocco), co-produced by Hutong Productions (France) and is supported by the IDFA Bertha Fund.
Over the coming days the selections from Directors Fortnight, Acid and Critics Week sections will be announced. In 2022 Directors Fortnight offered up such gems as Annie Ernaux’s film The Super 8 Years (Les années super 8, France), made jointly with her son David Ernaux-Briot, and De Humani Corporis Fabrica by Fabrica (Fr-US) by Véréna Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor. Cannes Acid presented four feature docs, including Marusya Syroechkovskaya’s How To Save A Dead Friend. No feature docs were presented during Critics Week in 2022.
