Fanny Ardant unveils “Ashes and Blood” in Special Screening

To honor the French actress Fanny Ardant, the Cannes Film Festival has slotted her feature debut, Ashes and Blood, in a Special Screening. Her first endeavor behind the camera, after serving Feature Jury duty in 1990, tells the story of Judith, played by Ronit Elkabetz, coming back home to her country after an exile, to attend the wedding of her children’s cousin. But Judith’s return revives old hatreds between rival clans only to set in motion a spiral of violence.

Fanny Ardant related her first day of shooting: "It was the scene with Pashko (Abraham Belaga) and Ilaria (Madalina Constantin) on the riverbank. We all got up early. I arrived in a meadow in the morning mist. There was no one around and I spent a long time at the river’s edge running over the character’s lines in my mind. All of a sudden, when I turned around, I saw trucks, trailers, horses, tents, cars, a whole world that was waiting. And then we were off. It was at that precise moment that everything became real." The actress is also present in Cannes for her role in the Competition feature Face by Tsai Ming-Liang.