Out of Competition: "The Age of Ignorance" by Denys Arcand

Four years after winning the Best Screenplay Award here in Cannes for The Barbarian Invasions, Denys Arcand is presenting the final film of the Official Selection, the
Out-of-Competition entry The Age of Ignorance. In this satire of society, the Canadian director from Quebec focuses on Jean-Marc, a simple man, a good civil servant in his own
mind, an insignificant husband, failed father and incurable dreamer. Indeed, only his dreams are able – at moments – to relieve his chronic depression.

“There’s a great Hollywood saying that goes: ‘If you have a message, call Western Union.’ It’s not that I don’t have anything to say about the world we live
in, it’s just that I have a story to tell. But it’s a story that has some symbolic aspects, for sure. I’d be incapable of making a full-on drama in the same way as I’d
be incapable of making 90 minutes of comedy. My films always fluctuate between comedy, tragedy, slapstick, melodrama… That’s why I’m a filmmaker, not a political activist,
because I tend to see both sides of every argument.”