Cantona: from the soccer pitch to the screen, the documentary by David Tryhorn and Ben Nicholas

In 2009, Looking for Eric by Ken Loach was shown in Competition, and it won the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury. Frenchman Eric Cantona played himself in the film — a kind of spirit version of himself who appears in the mind of a beleaguered Manchester mailman, a sort of patron saint of working-class neighborhoods. British director Ken Loach is a huge soccer fan, but it isn’t the Manchester United striker he was filming — he was filming the mythical figure that Cantona had already become.  

That said, Eric Cantona wasn’t waiting to star in a Ken Loach film before turning to acting. In 1998, he played the French Ambassador in Shekhar Kapur’s Elizabeth and went on to play around twenty roles over the years, in French comedies, arthouse films, and TV series. His career has followed an unusual trajectory for a former athlete, with over twenty roles in thirty years, across a wide range of genres. At Cannes, he is the Corsican in The Salvation (2014),  the Out of Competition drama by Kristian Levring starring Mads Mikkelsen.

This year, Cantona, who is also a visual artist, performer, cultural iconoclast and founder of a travel agency dedicated to his favorite sport, is also featured in Avril Besson’s debut film, Les Matins Merveilleux in a Special Screening. Following on from Pelé and Luis Figo, directors  David Tryhorn and Ben Nicholas, explore the extraordinary career of another soccer legend with Cantona.