2017 Cannes Film Festival opens on Wednesday. Everything you need to know about this year’s event

The 70th edition of the Cannes Film Festival will take place this year between May 17 and 28. The official selection features 60 movies, some of them directed by the likes of Michael Haneke, Sofia Coppola and Michel Hazanavicius.

The famous Cannes Film Festival opens on Wednesday, May 17, with the movie „ „Les Fantomes d’Ismael” by Arnaud Desplechin, outside of the competition.

Italian actress Monica Bellucci will be hosting the opening ceremony, as well as the closing ceremony of the 70th edition of the Cannes Film Festival.

The festival will feature several other movies outside the competition: A Prayer Before Dawn” (directed by Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire), „Ak-Nyeo” (directed by Jung Byung-Gil), „Bulhandang” (directed by Byun Sung-Hyun), „D’apres une Histoire Vraie” (directed by Roman Polanski), „How to Talk to Girls at Parties” (directed by John Cameron Mitchell), „Mungen No Junin” (directed by Takashi Miike), „Visages Villages” (directed by Agnes Varda, Jr.) și „Carne y Arena” (directed by Alejandro G. Inarritu).

The latter will be the first movie to be filmed in virtual reality (VR).

The official selection of the Canned Film Festival also includes the official competition, as well as the Un Certain Regard, Séance Spéciale, Séance Minuit, Cinéfondation selections, event-projections and Cannes Classics.

The list of movies in the official competition

The official competition includes 19 full-feature films: „The Meyerowitz Stories”, by Noah Baumbach, „Aus bym Nichts”, by Fatih Akin, „Okja”, by Bong Joon-Ho, „120 Battements par Minute”, by Robin Campillo, „The Beguiled”, by Sofia Coppola, „Rodin”, by Jacques Doillon, „Happy End”, by Michael Haneke, „Wonbyrstruck”, by Todd Haynes, „Le Redoutable”, by Michel Hazanavicius, „Geu-Hu”, by Hong Sangsoo, „Hikari”, by Naomi Kawase, „The Killing of a sacred byer”, by Yorgos Lanthimos, „A gentle creature”, by Sergei Loznitsa, „Jupiter’s moon”, by Kornél Mandruczo, „L’Amant Double”, by François Ozon, „You Were Never Really Here”, by Lynne Ramsay, „Good Time”, by Benny Safdie & Josh Safdie, „Nelyubov”, by Andrey Zvyagintsev, și „The Square”, by Ruben Ostlund.

The jury of this section will be presided by director Pedro Almodovar and will include director Maren Ade, actress Jessica Chastain, actress Fan Bingbing, actress and singer Agnès Jaoui, director Park Chan-wook, actor Will Smith, director Paolo Sorrentino and songwriter Gabriel Yared.

Uma Thurman, president of jury at the Un Certain Regard section

The Un Certain Regard section will feature 18 full-length movies, such as „Après la Guerre/ After the War”, by Annarita Zambrano, „Wind River”, by Taylor Sheridan, „Jeune Femme”, by Léonor Serraille, „Dregs/ Lerd”, by Mohammad Rasoulof, „The Nature of Time/ En Attendant les Hirondelles”, by Karim Moussaoui, and „Before we Vanish/ Sanpo Suru Shinryakusha”, by Kurosawa Kiyoshi.

American actress Uma Thurman will preside the jury of the Un Certain Regard section. She will be joined by director Mohamed Diab, actor Reda Kateb, director Joachim Lafosse and Karel Och, the artistic director of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival.

The Séance Spéciale section will feature eight productions: „An Inconveniant Sequel”, by Bonni Cohen and Jon Shenk, „12 Jours”, by Raymond Depardon, „They”, by Anahita Ghazvinizadeh, „Keul-le-eo-ui Ka-me-la/ Clair’s Camera”, by Hong Sangsoo, „Promised Land”, by Eugene Jarecki, „Napalm”, by Claude Lanzmann, „Demons in Paradise”, by Jude Ratman, and „Sea Sorrow”, by Vanessa Redgrave.

Séance Minuit section will include the feature Ay-Nyeo/ The Villainess”, by Jung Byung-Gil, „Bulhandang/ The Merciless”, by Byun Sung-Hyun, and „Prayer Before Dawn”, by Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire.

The premiere of ”Twin Peaks” new season at Cannes 2017

2017 Cannes Film Festival will include four event-projections: TV show „Top of the Lake: China Girl”, by Jane Campion and Ariel Kleiman, „Come Swim”, by Kristen Stewart, „Frames”, by Abbas Kiarostami, and TV show „Twin Peaks”, by David Lynch.

This year, the selection committee received 4,843 short film proposals, and the competition will include only nine.

The Cinéfondation section within the 2017 Cannes Film Festival will include 16 productions, such as „Ben Mamshich/ Heritage”, by Yuval Aharoni, „Heyvan/ Animal”, by Bahman Ark, „Atlantida, 2003/ Atlantis, 2003”, by Michal Blasko, „Lejla”, by Stijn Bouma, „Vazio Do Lado De Fora/ Empty on the Outside”, by Eduardo Brandao Pinto, „Tokeru”, by Aya Igashi and „Afternoon Clouds”, by Payal Kapadia.

The jury of the Cinéfondation and the short-length film section is presided this year by Romanian filmmaker Cristian Mungiu. The other jury members are actress Clotilde Hesme, filmmaker Barry Jenkins, director, screenwriter and producer Eric Khoo and director and screenwriter Athina Rachel Tsangari. The same jury will award the Palme d’Or trophy for short-length films, to reward one of the selected short films.

The Palme d’Or trophy, decorated with over 160 diamonds

The Palme d’Or trophy, the prestigious cinema distinction given to the filmmaker that directs the best film in the official selection of the Cannes Film Festival, will be a special one at this edition. In order to commemorate the 70th edition of the event, the famous palm leaf shaped trophy will have 167 diamonds embellished, each of them having 0,694 carats.

The current design of the Palme d’Or was created in 1998 by Caroline Scheufele, co-president of the house Chopard, a company that annually provides this trophy.

The organisers announced that an anniversary book, containing the confessions of 58 journalists accredited at Cannes, will be published this year under the title „Ces années-là”.

Netflix movies, controversies at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival

Despite all of this, though, the 2017 Cannes Film Festival is also marked by a scandal caused by Netflix. The American streaming leader, which acquired the screening rights for two movies included in the competition for the Palme d’Or trophy – „The Meyerowitz Stories”, by Noah Baumbach, and „Okja”, by Bong Joon-ho, announced that they will not be screened in cinemas, but only for its subscribers.

Despite attempts at negotiating and solving the situation, organizers at the Cannes Film Festival explained they could not reach an agreement. Nevertheless, they announced in this context that the regulation for 2018 will be altered, so that any film in the competition will have to be screened in cinemas as well.

Who are the winners of the 2016 Cannes Film Festival

At last year’s edition of the Cannes Film Festival, the winners were:
Best short film: ”Timecode”
Caméra d’Or (best first feature): ”Divines” (director: Houda Benyamina)
Honorary Palme d’Or: Jean-Pierre Léaud
Best actor: Shahab Hosseini, ”The Salesman”
Jury prize: Andrea Arnold, ”American Honey”
Best screenplay: Asghar Farhadi, ”The Salesman”
Best actress: Jaclyn Jose, ”Ma Rosa”
Best director: ”Graduation” (Cristian Mungiu) and ”Personal Shopper” (Olivier Assayas)
Grand Prix: Xavier Dolan, ”It’s Only the End of the World”
Palme d’Or: ”I, Daniel Blake”