An initiatory road movie by Paolo Sorrentino

For his 4th selection in Competition, the Italian director presents This Must Be The Place, his first feature film in English. A road movie conceived in 2008 following the Jury Prize awarded at Cannes for Il Divo, his previous film.

Above all This Must Be The Place is a cinematographic love story. It is 2008, at the height of the Festival de Cannes, and Sean Penn has just put on the mantle of President of the Jury. The actor, awarded the Best Male Actor Prize in 1997 for She’s So Lovely, fell in love with Il Divo, Paolo Sorrentino’s latest feature film, presented In Competition. The film, a vitriolic look back at the final years in power of former Italian President Giulio Andreotti, walked off with the Jury Prize. Following a suggestion by Sean Penn, the idea of a collaboration between the two men began to take shape.

It would take three years before the result hit cinema screens. Sean Penn plays Cheyenne, a nostalgic rock star who decides to abandon his secluded life in Ireland to find Aloise Muller, the former SS officer who was responsible for having tortured his father 60 years earlier at Auschwitz. An initiatory journey into the past, which leads to greater self-discovery.

To play alongside Sean Penn, Paolo Sorrentino, for whom This Must Be The Place is his first feature film in English, called on Frances McDormand (Hidden Agenda, Rangoon, Fargo) and Harry Dean Stanton, who had played opposite the American in She’s So Lovely. Meanwhile, the original soundtrack of the film, whose title is taken from a song by American band Talking Heads, was entrusted to the group’s ex-leader, David Byrne.

B.P.

The film will be screened on 20th May at 8.30 a.m., 2.30 and 7.30 p.m. at the, Grand Théâtre Lumière.