The Daily 2006

At the conclusion of this Europe Day, the European Ministers of Culture and Audiovisual and the major companies specialised in telecoms, the Internet and audiovisual creation - France Telecom, Telecom Italia, Vivendi, AOL-Time Warner, Tiscali - signed, on the terrace of the Camera d'Or, an On-line Film Charter, "a chance given...

In the running in the section Un Certain Regard, To Go to Heaven You Must Die First by Djamshed Usmonov is the story of the initiatory journey of Kamal, a 20-year-old young man in search of experience and fulfilment. Married for just a few months, he hasn't yet been able to touch his wife, who is still a virgin. The doctor who...

Manuel Huerga presents today in the section Un Certain Regard Salvador, a true story which unfurls in pro-Franco Spain. It centres on Salvador Puig Antich, a young activist belonging to the Iberian Liberation Movement. At the beginning of the 60s, a small group of Spanish and French leftists continually flaunt the police by...

Selected in the Official Selection Un Certain Regard, How I Celebrated the End of the World is also in the running for the Camera d'Or. Director Catalin Mitulescu looks back over the dark years of Romania through the eyes of a 17-year-old teenager and a 7-year-old child. Bucharest 1989: the last year of Ceausescu's...

Presented out of competition, I Only Wanted to Live by Mimmo Calopresti follows the journey of nine Italian citizens, survivors of deportation and incarceration in Auschwitz's death camps. Nine stories which enable us to retrace the key periods of this hallucinating experience: passing of racial laws, futile attempts at...

Bamako, presented today out of competition, marks Abderrahmane Sissako's fourth time at Cannes. Twice before, the Mauritanian director had joined the Official Selection Un Certain Regard with October (1993) and Waiting For Happiness (2002). Life on Earth brought him in 1998 into a parallel section of the Festival. In...

The Zidane, a Portrait of the 21st Century press conference was held in the presence of its two directors, Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno. They were accompanied by cinematographer Darius Khondji and producer Sigurjon Sighvatsson. Director Philippe Parreno on his intentions: "It is a film about football but the...

During the Dinner of Europe which took place yesterday evening in the Grand Salon of the Carlton Hotel, Viviane Reding, Commissioner for Information Society and Media, awarded the Prize "New Talents of the European Union" to Slovenian screenwriter Blaz Kutin. This distinction has been attributed to a script project for a...

On the Croisette today: Fabienne Babe, Halle Berry, Samuel Boidin, Julien Boisselier, Elodie Bouchez, Margherita Buy, Eric Caravaca, Chen Chang, Carmen Chaplin, François Cluzet, Clotilde Courau, Penélope Cruz, Danièle Darrieux, Faye Dunaway, José Garcia, Julie Gayet, Danny Glover, Philippe Harel,...

For the fourth consecutive year, the Festival de Cannes has joined up with the European Commission to host Europe Day. Invited by Viviane Reding, Commissioner for Information Society and Media, and Gilles Jacob, the European Culture and Audiovisual Ministers as well as motion-picture professionals and CEOs of...

Presented out of competition and in the running for the Camera d'Or, Zidane, Portrait of the 21st Century plunges the audience into a soccer match, sharing with them the sensations and psychology of an athlete, none other than the renowned player Zinédine Zidane. Seventeen synchronised cameras, combining HD with 35mm...

French filmmaker Bruno Dumont, whose film Flandres was presented today in the Official Selection, in competition, answered questions of journalists at a press conference in which equally took part actors Adelaïde Leroux and Samuel Boidin, as well as producers Jean Bréhat and Muriel Merlin. Highlights. ...

Bruno Dumont, Samuel Boidin and Adelaïde Leroux

For the first time in his career, Alejandro Gonz les Iñ rritu comes to present a feature film, in competition, at the Festival de Cannes. Following the example of his previous two films, Love's a Bitch (2000) and 21 Grams (2004), the Mexican director adopts the...

Gael Garc¡a Bernal, Alejandro Gonz lez Iñ rritu and Cate Blanchett

The actors and director of Babel, presented in competition at the Festival, took their places at the press conference today. Front and centre were director Alejandro Gonz les Iñ rritu, actors Adriana Barrazza, Cate Blanchett, Rinko Kikuchi, Boubker Ait El Caid, Gael ...

Following Charlie Says, Flanders is the second French film to compete for the Palme d'Or. Directed by Bruno Dumont, marking his third time at Cannes, The Life of Jesus had won the Caméra d'Or Mention in 1997 and Humanity the Grand Prix in 1999. This drama portrays a group of young men in northern France setting out as...

This evening a dinner will be held at the Hotel Majestic reuniting the crews of the films competing for the Camera d'Or - 29 first films among which Red Road by Andrea Arnold (Official Selection in competition), Requiem for Billy the Kid by Anne Feinsilber (Official Selection out of competition), and Hamaca Paraguaya by Paz...

If they were still among us, the great filmmakers Roberto Rossellini and Luchino Visconti would have celebrated their 100th birthday this year. It is therefore quite natural for the Festival de Cannes to honour Italian cinema not only through the programming of several major works, such as Rome Open City, Violent Summer and...

For two consecutive evenings, the Cannes Mix programme welcomes the Didier Riey Group, a gypsy jazz group, which will officiate on Tuesday, as a musical preamble to the outdoors screening, a selection of twelve shorts by Canadian animation master Norman McLaren, featuring The Grey Hen, Horizontal Lines and Stars and Stripes,...

The All the Cinemas of the World programme, featuring the presentation by selected countries of a range of their cinematic creations, dedicates this day to Switzerland, whose Seventh Art has been successfully reborn "by assuming nostalgia without shame and contemporary turbulence without shyness" (in the xords of Antoine...

The section Cannes Classics today salutes Alejandro Jodorowsky by screening in the Salle Buñuel his western El Topo directed in 1970. This film about an outlaw defying - for the love of a woman - the Four Masters of the Desert, and Holy Mountain, a fable about the quest for immortality. These two films will be shown in...