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| Carey Mulligan plays an over-wrought mother in Paul Danos’s Wildlife, opening Cannes Critics’ Week Photo: Sundance Film Festival |
The French Cinema Critics Association has announced today (16 April) its selection for the Cannes Film Festival's Critics’ Week (La Semaine de la Critique) with Carey Mulligan and Jake Gyllenhaal turning the clock back to the Sixties for Paul Dano’s Wildlife, the opening title.
Dano and fiancée Zoe Kazan adapted the film from the novel of the same name by Pulitzer Prize-winner Richard Ford. It is set in Great Falls, Montana and will be released in the States and Canada in the autumn. It premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January.
The film examines how a 14-year-old (Ed Oxenbould) is forced to assume the role of family patriarch when his newly unemployed father (Jake Gyllenhaal) takes off to fight a forest fire near the Canadian border. Carey Mulligan plays the boy’s overwrought mother.
A special screening will be given to Guillaume Senez's Our Battles / Nos Batailles with Romain Duris and Latetia Dosch.
Senez won the Europa Cinemas prize in Locarno for his first feature Keeper. Duris as a single father struggles to balance work and family life.
The closing film will be Guy by Alex Lutz (France), about a young journalist who discovers from his mother that he is the illegitimate son of a popular French singer.
As already announced, Norwegian director Joachim Trier will serve as president of the Critics’ Week jury, alongside American actress Chloe Sevigny, Argentinian-French actor Nahuel Perez Biscayart from 120 BPM, Vienna film festival director Eva Sangiorgi and French culture journalist Augustin Trapenard.
The Critics’ Week sidebar focuses on discovering new talent, and awards the Nespresso Grand Prize, accompanied by €15,000.
The France 4 Visionary Award is given to a first or second feature film for creativity and innovation.
The Gan Foundation Award is given to help distribute a first or second feature in France, and the French Writers’ Guild awards the SACD prize to a new writer.
Short films in competition are recognised with the Leica Cine Discovery Prize or the Canal+ Short Film Award.
The full line-up comprises:-
Opening Film
- Wildlife by Paul Dano (US)
Compétition - features
- Chris The Swiss by Anja Kofmel (Switzerland, Croatia, Germany and Finland)
- Diamantino by Gabriel Abrantes & Daniel Schmidt (Portugal, France, Brazil)
- One Day / Egy Nap by Zsófia Szilágyi (Hungary)
- Fuga / Fugue by Agnieszka Smoczyńska (Poland, Czech Republic, Sweden)
- Woman At War / Kona fer í stríð by Benedikt Erlingsson (Iceland, France, Ukraine).
- Savage / Sauvage by Camille Vidal-Naquet (France)
- Sir / Monsieur by Rohena Gera (India, France)
Special screenings
- Nos Batailles by Guillaume Senez (Belgium, France) - Closing Film
- Shéhérazade by Jean-Bernard Marlin (France)
Compétition - shorts
- Amor, Avenidas Novas by Duarte Coimbra (Portugal)
- Hector Malot: The Last Day Of The Year / Ektoras Malo : I teleftea mera tis chronias by Jacqueline Lentzou (Greece)
- Pauline Asservie by Charline Bourgeois-Tacquet (France)
- La Persistente by Camille Lugan (France)
- Exemplary Citizen / Mo-Bum-Shi-Min by Kim Cheol Hwi (South Korea)
- Rapaz / Raptor by Felipe Gálvez (Chile)
- Schächer by Flurin Giger (Switzerland)
- The Tiger / Tiikeri by Mikko Myllylahti (Finland)
- A Wedding Day / Un Jour De Mariage by Elias Belkeddar (Algeria, France)
- Normal / Ya Normalniy by Michael Borodin (Russia)
Closing film
- Guy by Alex Lutz (France)
The prizes will be bestowed on 16 May. The Cannes Film Festival runs from 8 - 19 May.
