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"I'm simply overjoyed," the festival's jury
president Vincent Lindon told a packed press conference, flanked
by jury members: actors and filmmakers including Rebecca Hall,
Noomi Rapace, Deepika Padukone, Jeff Nichols and Asghar Farhadi.
The world’s biggest film festival runs from May 17-28, back to
its traditional calendar following two years of pandemic
disruptions, and marking the return of parties and high hopes
from the industry that it will spark the return of audiences to
movie theaters.
"Don't believe the hype, people are saying it’s dying. I don't
believe that for a second," said jury member Joachim Trier,
referring to cinema, which he lauded as a "radiant, progressive,
wonderful art form."
The Danish-Norwegian filmmaker noted that the festival had
served as a springboard for the career of his grandfather Erik
Lochen, who had a film in competition in 1960. It helped bring
an “unknown new filmmaker from a small country in the northern
corner of Europe into prominence,” said Trier.
The festival opened on Tuesday with the screening of Michel
Hazanavicius's zombie film, "Final Cut," and will also feature
heavy hitters like Tom Cruise's "Top Gun: Maverick" — bringing
Cruise to the festival for the first time in 30 years — and Baz
Luhrmann's Elvis biopic.
Forest Whitaker will receive the festival's Honorary Palme D'Or
for lifetime achievement. The actor's production company is
showing “For the Sake of Peace” a documentary on the war in
South Sudan.
With the war in Ukraine hanging over the event, debates over the
role of cinema during times of violence dominated discussions.
“I would say films are even more important than ever,” said jury
member Rapace.
“There's a lot of teenagers and kids in Russia, for example,
today that...are kind of as alien to what's going on as we are.
So I think, you know, films can travel and communicate,” she
said.
“With all that has happened these last two years — and
especially with what has been going on for the past several
months, yes, we will be careful to be deserving, respectful, not
overly casual, intelligent and to stand upright – if only out of
respect for those who are experiencing much, much, much, much
harder days than ours,” said jury president Lindon.
(Reporting by Mimosa Spencer; editing by Jonathan Oatis)
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