79th Cannes Film Festival: still the great love between Cannes and Belgian cinema? | RCF Liège

Lukas Dhont candidate for the Palme d’Or?

 

In Belgium, we don’t expect much from Lukas Dhont’s latest film, “Coward”, a trench film during the 1914-18 war, selected in the Official Selection and which tells the story of two soldiers who become friends after having the idea of ​​putting on a theatrical revue to keep the morale of the troops! In the middle of trench warfare!

 

We know the Cannes success story of the Flemish filmmaker discovered and awarded in 2018 in Un Certain Regard with “Girl”, then Grand Prix du Festival in 2022 with “Close”. So, the next step is the Palme d’Or? It’s allowed to dream, right?

 

Virginie Effira… twice!

 

But Lukas Dhont will not be the only one to represent Belgium in Cannes this year. Thus, Virginie Effira will climb the stairs twice: she will, in fact, appear in the film “Parallel Stories” by the Iranian Asghar Farhadi, which returns to the Paris attacks, also with Isabelle Huppert and Vincent Cassel in the credits.

 

Then on the poster of “Suddenly” by the Japanese Ryusuke Hamaguchi, a film which is inspired by the correspondence between two women, the philosopher Makiko Miyano and the medical anthropologist Maho Isono, to explore their feminine perspective on our world.

 

Numerous Belgian co-productions

 

The Belgian presence in cinema today can be found more and more at the level of co-productions. This will be the case, in particular, of a French film, “Our Salute” by Frenchman Emmanuel Marre, the story of Henry Marre, a fictional character who arrives in Vichy, in September 1940, with the hope of finding a place in the new regime of Marshal Pétain.

 

We will also see in the Official Selection “Your maternal animal” by Valentina Maurel, a Costa Rican who studied at INSAS in Brussels and whose film is produced by Benoît Roland through his company Wrong Men. The film tells the story of Elsa, a young woman who returns to San José, Costa Rica, between a sister victim of mental instability and resigned parents.

 

Another film produced as part of aid for light productions from the Cinema Center of the Wallonia-Brussels Federation, will be presented in the section Un Certain Regard: it’s “Yesterday The Eye didn’t Sleep” by Rakan Mayasi, a film which will take us between Lebanon and Syria in the footsteps of two sisters offered as sacrifices to ease tensions within a tribal community.

 

Horror movie in midnight screening

 

But we could still cite many other films. Thus, presented in a midnight screening at the Grand Théâtre Lumiere, “Sanguine”, a hospital horror film by the Frenchwoman Marion Le Coroller, produced mainly in Belgium and already anticipated as a sort of new “Substance”, the gore film by Coralie Fargeat.

 

Or even “In Waves” by the Vietnamese Phuong Mai Nguyen, an animated film produced in part with Belgian capital and which opens the Critics’ Week. 

 

 

A little bit of Liège with Versus Productions

 

And there will be, in addition, two films co-produced by the Liège company Versus production of brothers Jacques-Henri and Olivier Bronckart, regular producers of Bouli Lanners films.

 

Co-produced with the RTBF cinema fund, “A Woman’s Life”, French title “La vie d’une femme”, by Frenchwoman Charline Bourgeois-Tacquet, will be presented in competition. It’s a dramatic comedy bringing together Léa Drucker and Mélanie Thierry for a dive into the life of a middle-aged, childless surgeon who is thrown into turmoil by the arrival in her department of a writer in search of inspiration.

 

The opening film already in our theaters this Wednesday

 

The other film co-produced by Versus Production but also RTBF, Be TV and Proximus is “The Electric Venus” by Franco-Tunisian director Pierre Salvadori which will open the Festival this Tuesday evening, with Anaïs Demoustier, Gilles Lellouche and Pio Marmaï.

 

It is the story of a young painter in vogue in Paris who, in 1928, was no longer able to work following the death of his wife. Calling on a clairvoyant, he is duped by a modest fairground girl who slipped into his trailer to steal food. But now, through contact with him, he finds inspiration!

 

The film will be released in theaters in Belgium the day after the opening of Cannes, on Wednesday May 13.

 

The jury will have a little Belgian accent!

 

Finally, the Festival jury, chaired this year by the South Korean filmmaker Park Chan-wook to whom we owe, in particular, films like “Old Boy” and “Decision to leave”, will have a slight Belgian accent. Indeed, among the members of its jury, it will count the presence of the Belgian filmmaker Laura Wandel who opened the critics’ week last year with “The Interest of Adam”.