Certain Regard welcomes “Precious”

Lee Daniels, the director of Shadowboxer, a film never released in France, makes his first appearance in Cannes this year with a new feature, Precious, selected by Certain Regard. Adapted from "Push," a book published in 1996 by the New York poet Sapphire, it tells the story of an obese adolescent learning to read and write in an alternative school, and focuses on how the child blossoms when she comes in contact with peers.

For the role of Precious, the casting presented a real challenge. As Lee Daniels put it, "Hollywood doesn’t really train this type of girl." When he held open castings in Los Angeles and New York, though, he found Gabourey "Gabby" Sidibe, a 24-year-old Harlemite who had done some acting in college but didn’t really intend to make a career out of it. "We spent two hours talking about the character," Daniels recalls."Gabby understood Precious, so much that she sometimes disagreed with me about certain aspects of her behavior, based on her own personal experience. She didn’t kiss up to me to get the part – she told me what she thought, and she blew me away." For her screen debut, young Sidibe couldn’t have dreamed of cooler co-stars than the singers Lenny Kravitz and Mariah Carey.