The Daily 2009

On the Cannes Classics program, screening in the Bunuel theater at 2pm, is a restored copy of Mr Hulot’s Holiday by Jacques Tati. Filmgoers can also view The Mummy by Shadi Abdel Salam, a digitally restored version handled by World Cinema Foundation. The film is based on true events, the 1881 discovery of 40 Royal Sarcophaguses....

Music and film are offered to the public every evening at the outdoor theater Cinema de la Plage. Saturday night’s film is Soundtrack for a Revolution, a story of the American civil rights movement through its powerful music featuring new performances of freedom songs by top artists, including John Legend, Joss Stone, Wyclef Jean,...

The official Don't Look Back press conference was an opportunity for director Marina de Van, actors Sophie Marceau, Monica Belluci, and Andrea Di Stefano, and producer Patrick Sobelman to enlarge on their artistic intentions to the journalists present. Excerpts follow. The actresses, on becoming acquainted with their parts: Sophie...

In 2008, Bong Joon-Ho was a member of the trio directing Tokyo! which screened in Certain Regard, his co-filmmakers being Leos Carax and Michel Gondry. This year, Certain Regard has selected the Korean director's latest film, the suspenseful Mother. A widow, determined to prove that her son is innocent of the murder accusation leveled...

Winner of the Camera d’Or for Or, Keren Yedaya is back in Cannes with her latest film, Jaffa , being shown in a Special Screening. “I began thinking about JAFFA when I finished the script for OR,” said the director. “I felt the need to do a political film about Israel and Palestine. But I was searching for a much wider audience...

Cast and crew of Competition feature Taking Woodstock were present to meet the press. Director Ang Lee, actors Emile Hirsch, Demetri Martin and Imelda Staunton, along with Ang Lee’s regular screenwriter, James Schamus responded to their questions. Excerpts follow: On what the symbolic value of Woodstock is to each one: Ang Lee...

Highly acclaimed in 2002 for her first film, Dans ma peau, director Marina de Van is now in Cannes to screen Don't Look Back, which stars Monica Belluci and Sophie Marceau in a film about the elusiveness of identity, as the two of them continually switch places and faces, and appearances are deceiving. In the midst of writing a...

For the presentation in Competition of A Prophet, director Jacques Audiard, the actors Tahar Rahim and Niels Arestrup, writers Thomas Bidegain, Nicolas Peufaillit, and Abdel Raouf Dafri, and producers Pascal Caucheteux and Marco Cherqui answered questions from journalists. Highlights follow: Jacques Audiard on his interest in the...

Selected to screen in Certain Regard today, Samson and Delilah by Warwick Thornton is the first feature from the Australian filmmaker, and thus in competition for a Camera D’or. The title is taken directly from the Old Testament, which, in the film, refers to two adolescents growing up in an Aborigine community who find out how...

Spotted or expected in Cannes: Anne Alvaro, Niels Arestrup, Rosanna Arquette, Monica Bellucci, Richard Berry, Michel Boujenah, Didier Bourdon, Rachida Brakni, Marion Cotillard, Mariah Carey, Robert Charlebois, Abbie Cornish, Guillaume Canet, Mathieu Demy, Cecile De France, Franck Dubosc, Vincent Elbaz, Jeremy Elkaim, Michael...

Twelve years after his Best Screenplay award for Ice Storm, Ang Lee returns to the Croisette to present Taking Woodstock in Competition. It refers, of course, to the famed three days of love, peace, mud, and music which took place in 1969. Based on the book by Elliot Tiber and Tom Monte, Taking Woodstock : A True Story of a Riot, a...

Directed by Jacques Audiard, winner of the Best Screenplay in 1996 for Un héros très discret, A Prophet is the first French film to screen in Competition this year. Malik is a 19-year-old boy from a North African background sentenced to 6 years in prison. There, he falls in with a gang of Corsican inmates and gradually learns how...