Cannes Critics’ Week has announced the selection for its 62nd edition, running from May 17 to 25.
The parallel Cannes section will screen 11 features, seven in competition, and four as special screenings, selected from 1,000 submissions. Scroll down for the full list.
The section, which is overseen by the French Syndicate of Cinema Critics, focuses on first and second features as well as shorts by emerging talents.
Stories of couples, parenthood, family relationships and friendships unfolding against difficult political or societal realities abound in this year’s line-up.
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In Competition, Brazilian director Lillah Halla’s Power Alley (Levante) follows a budding teenage volleyball champion who discovers she is pregnant on the eve of an important championship and then comes up against Brazil’s abortion ban.
Blocked in her attempts to seek an illegal termination, the girl’s future seems to be in everyone’s hands but hers, until help comes from an unexpected quarter.
“Brazilian director Lillah Halla opposes the conservatism gnawing at her country with a queer and rallying vision,” Critics’ Week artistic director Ava Cahen said in a video statement unveiling the line-up.
Halla’s short Menarca played in Cannes Critics’ Week in 2020 and Power Alley was developed with the support of the Critics’ Week Next Step initiative aimed at helping filmmakers who showed shorts in the section to move on to their first feature.
From South Korea, former Bong Joon-Ho assistant Jason Yu unveils his first film Sleep (Jam). Parasite star Lee Sun-kyun star and Jung Yu-mi (Train To Busan) play newlyweds whose lives descend into horror as a result of the husband’s strange behavior while sleeping.
“Three chapters, two protagonists, a baby crying, a dog barking and a lurking phantom are the ingredients for a perfect horror comedy with a demonic efficiency,” said Cahen.
Also playing with the horror genre as well as tapping into Southeast Asia folklore, Malaysian director Amanda Eu’s coming-of-age tale Tiger Stripes explores teenage rebellion in a stifling society through the tale of a 12-year-old girl whose body starts to change at an alarming and horrifying rate as she hits puberty.
Fearing she will be labelled a monster, she tries to conceal her changed appearance until one day she decides she no longer wants to hide away.
“This fantasy film celebrates young girls’ desire for freedom and to have fun, in a society that tries hard to impose discipline,” said Cahen.
French director Iris Kaltenbäck’s psychological thriller Le Ravissement stars actress and filmmaker Hafsia Herzi as a woman who snatches the new-born baby of a friend and attempts to build a life with a former lover, after convincing him the child is theirs.
She is joined in the cast by Alexis Manenti (Les Misérables), Nina Meurisse (Camille, Petite Maman) and Younès Boucif (Standing Up).
“It’s a vertiginous first film with fine and precise writing,” said Cahen.
From Serbia, director Vladimir Perišić competes with second feature Lost Country, set against the backdrop of the 1996 student demonstrations in Belgrade protesting attemped election fraud by then President Slobodan Milošević.
The drama revolves around a teenager who finds himself torn between his convictions and his love for his mother, who is a corrupt politician.
“It’s a powerful film revisiting the codes of classic tragedy,” said Cahen.
Perišić previously participated in Critics’ Week with the 2009 existentialist drama Ordinary People, revolving around seven soldiers sent to an abandoned farm without orders. It won Best Film at the Sarajevo Film Festival in 2009. He also directed a segment of the 2014 portmanteau work Bridges Of Sarajevo.
Taking inspiration from Jordan’s sexist inheritance laws, Jordanian director Amjad Al Rasheed’s Inshallah A Boy stars Palestinian actress Mouna Hawa (A House In Jerusalem, Gaza Weekend, In Between) as a woman fighting for her economic survival and independence following the death of her husband.
The first-ever Jordanian film ever to be selected for Critics’ Week, the long-gestated production is Al Rasheed’s debut feature, with previous credits including the award-winning short The Parrot, co-directed with Farha filmmaker Darin J. Sallam.
Belgian director Paloma Sermon-Daï’s Il Pleut Dans La Maison rounds out the competition.
Shot against the backdrop of the picturesque Eau d’Heure lakes region of Belgian’s French-speaking Wallonia region, the hybrid drama follows two teenagers left to their own devices by their mother over the summer in a squalid house.
Their reality contrasts with that of the comfortably off tourists who invade the area over the holiday season, for its lakeside beaches and water sports.
Sermon-Daï’s documentary feature Petit Samedi – about the relationship between a mother and drug addict son – world premiered in Berlin’s Forum section in 2022 and won Best Documentary in Belgium’s Magritte Awards.
This edition of Critics’ Week marks Cahen’s second year at the helm after a successful debut line-up in 2022, which included Aftersun, Alma Viva, Dalva and La Jauria.
This year’s poster pays tribute to UK director Charlotte Welles’ father and daughter tale Aftersun, which enjoyed an award-winning career at home and on the festival circuit and for which Paul Mescal was Oscar-nominated for best actor.
Critics’ Week revisits the childhood gaze of 2022 titles Aftersun and Alma Viva in its Special Screenings this year.
The opening film Ama Gloria by Marie Amachoukeli revolves around the deep bond between a motherless six-year-old and her nanny, which is disrupted when the latter has to return home suddenly to Cap Vert.
Amachoukeli won the Caméra d’Or in 2014 for Party Girl, co-directed with Claire Burger and Samuel Theis, and also took writing credits on Franco Lolli’s Litigante and Vincent Mariette’s Savage.
Closing film No Love Lost by Erwan Le Duc stars Nahuel Perez Biscayart (120 BPM) as a single father who built a happy life for his daughter (Céleste Brunnquell) after her mother walked out shortly after her birth.
Sixteen years later, just as the daughter is on the cusp of embarking on her own life, the past catches up with them.
“They form an irresistible duo capable of making us pass from laughter to tears at the click of a finger,” said Cahen of Perez Biscayart and Brunnquell, a rising young actress who was recently seen in the Venice noir The Origin Of Evil.
The film is Le Duc’s second feature after The Bare Necessity, which world premiered in Directors’ Fortnight in 2019.
Further Special Screening titles include Stéphan Castang’s contemporary zombie tale Vincent Must Die starring Karim Leklou as a man who finds himself fighting for his life after he goes out one day and suddenly starts being attacked by random strangers in the street with the intent to kill him.
“It’s a tense and scary genre film,” said Cahen.
Critics’ Week has also snagged Belgian directorial duo Ann Sirot and Raphaël Balboni’s second feature collaboration The (Exp)erience Of Love (Le Syndrome Des Amour Passés).
The romantic comedy stars Lucie Debay and Lazare Gousseau as a couple struggling to conceive a child, who are advised by their doctor to track down their respective ex-partners and sleep with them as a way to unblock the situation.
“It’s a funny and sexy romantic comedy which undresses heterosexual norms, desecrates sex and re-enchants love,” said Cahen.
Sirot and Balboni’s previous film 2020 Madly In Love, about a couple dealing with the dementia of the man’s mother, swept Belgium’s Magritte Awards in 2022 alongside Playground, winning seven categories including Best Film.
As previously announced Venice Golden Lion-winning Happening director Audrey Diwan will preside over the jury, following in the wake of the likes of Kaouther Ben Hania and Cristian Mungiu.
Her jury members comprise German actor and choreographer Franz Rogowski, Sundance programmer Kim Yutani, Portuguese cinematographer Rui Poças and Indian journalist Meenakshi Shedde.
The jury awards the Grand Prize of La Semaine de la Critique to the best feature film, the French Touch Prize of the Jury, the Louis Roederer Foundation Rising Star Award to the best actor/actress and the Leitz Ciné Discovery Prize for best short film.
Critics’ Week will announce its short film line-up in the coming days.
COMPETITION
Power Alley (Levante) * (Br-Fr-Uru)
Dir: Lillah Halla
Il Pleut Dans La Maison * (Bel-Fr)
Dir: Paloma Sermon-Daï
Inshallah A Boy * (Jor-Saudi-Qat-Fr)
Dir: Amjad Al Rasheed
Sleep (Jam) * (S Kor)
Dir: Jason Yu
Lost Country (Fr-Ser-Lux-Cro)
Dir: Vladimir Perisič
Le Ravissement * (Fr)
Dir: Iris Kaltenbäck
Tiger Stripes * (Malay-Tai-Sing-Fr-Ger-Neth-Indo-Qat)
Dir: Amanda Nell Eu
SPECIAL SCREENINGS
Ama Gloria (Fr) – OPENING FILM
Dir: Maria Amachoukeli
The (Exp)erience Of Love/Le Syndrome Des Amour Passés (Bel-Fr)
Dir: Ann Sirot & Raphaël Balboni
Vincent Must Die * (Fr)
Dir: Stéphan Castang
No Love Lost (La Fille de Son Père) (Fr) – CLOSING FILM
Dir: Erwan Le Duc
* denotes film is a first film and eligible for the Camera d’Or prize open to all first films in Official Selection and the parallel sections.
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