Cannes Film Festival 2023: Asian and African cinema lead in post-pandemic revival

Anurag Kashyap's Kennedy, starring Sunny Leone, is the only Indian film in the official selection, and out of competition, at the 76th edition of the Cannes Film Festival to be held from May 16-27 in Cannes, France.

In the spring of 2013, the Cannes Film Festival celebrated the centenary of Indian cinema, displaying fireworks over the Mediterranean Sea, showcasing a sitar recital by Anoushka Shankar, a speech by Chiranjeevi and even a midnight screening of an Indian movie. The midnight screening honour went to Monsoon Shootout, a cop story set in Mumbai, directed by debutant Amit Kumar and co-produced by Anurag Kashyap. It was also the year the festival showed Bombay Talkies, an anthology of short films made by five Indian directors, including Kashyap. In the parallel selection at the Critics' Week was Ritesh Batra's The Lunchbox and Ugly directed by Kashyap in the Directors' Fortnight.

A decade later, another Indian film will be shown in the Midnight Screenings section in Cannes. Unlike in 2013 when he was the co-producer of an Indian film in the Midnight Screenings, Kashyap is the director this time. Kennedy, the Mumbai-based independent director-writer-producer's new crime drama starring Sunny Leone and Rahul Bhat, is the only Indian film in the Cannes official selection announced on April 13. The 76th edition of the Cannes festival, which opens on May 16, however, has vowed to present a new order of world cinema, selecting movies from nations not known for filmmaking, such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan and Mongolia.

Films from Asia, Africa and South America, vast lands that sustain myriad forms of storytelling, are present in nearly all categories of selection in Cannes this year, including the prestigious competition section for the Palme d'Or. For the first time in its long history, the festival has a film from Sudan. Goodbye Julia by Mohamed Kordofani, which is part of Un Certain Regard section for emerging filmmakers, is set in the backdrop of the social turmoil before the division of the North African country in 2011. Mongolia, which launched its National Film Council for creating a vibrant film industry in the East Asian nation at the Cannes film market last year, has its first feature film in Cannes official selection this year. If Only I Could Hibernate by Zoljargal Purevdash, which is set in the capital Ulaanbaatar, tells the story of a teenager fighting hunger to win a school science competition.

Omen by Congo-born multidisciplinary artist Baloji Tshiani, also part of Un Certain Regard section, is about four people accused of being witches and sorcerers. A Congo-Belgium co-production, the film traces the historical links between the two countries. All three films — Goodbye Julia, If Only I Could Hibernate and Omen — are first features. Banel and Adama by Ramata-Toulaye Sy, the first woman Senegalese filmmaker to feature in Cannes competition, tells the story of a couple battling conventions to remain in love. The young Senegalese debutante director will be vying for top honours in a field that has masters like British director Ken Loach, German filmmaker Wim Wenders, Finnish director Aki Kaurismaki, American director Wes Anderson, Turkish filmmaker Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda and Italian filmmaker Nanni Moretti.
Johnny Depp-starring French film, Jeanne du Barry, by Maïwenn will open the Cannes festival in the Out of Competition category. The period drama recounts the tale of working class woman Jeanne Vaubernier (played by the director herself), who climbs the social ladder to become the lover of 18th century French King Louis XV (played by Depp). "The experience of pure cinema is not replaceable," said Cannes festival's new president, Iris Knobloch, the first woman to head the famous festival, at the press conference in Paris announcing the official selection. There are six films in the competition section directed by female directors compared to five last year.

The women directors in the competition section are Senegalese first-time director Ramata-Toulaye Sy, Austrian Jessica Hausner, whose Club Zero tells the story of a group of climate warrior-school students, Oscar-nominated Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania (The Man Who Sold His Skin), whose Four Daughters is about a mother's ordeal amid the disappearance of her two children, French director Catherine Breillat, whose Last Summer tells the story of an affair between a woman and her husband's teenaged son from a previous marriage, Italian filmmaker Alice Rohrwarcher, whose La Chimera, is about stolen artefacts, and French director Justine Triet, whose Anatomy of a Fall is about a woman suspected of her husband's murder.

The Asian films are represented by Kashyap in Midnight Screenings category, Chinese documentary director Wang Bing's Youth, which marks the return of documentary films to competition section in Cannes, and Monster by Hirokazu Kore-eda, who returned to Japan to film a story about a teacher and pupil after his last film, Broker, shot entirely in South Korea. "It's not Rashomon, but there are some links with (Akira) Kurosawa," says Cannes festival's General Delegate Thierry Fremaux. Japanese veteran actor-director, Takeshi Kitano, will present a samurai comedy, titled Kubi, which is likely his last film, in the Cannes Premiere category launched last year.

South Korea, which has been the toast of Cannes festival in the past few years, has a first-time director, Kim Chang-hoon, in Un Certain Regard, with his feature, Hopeless, and the acclaimed filmmaker Kim Jee-woon, in the Out of Competition category, with his film, Cobweb, a film about a film. Singapore is represented by the London-based Anthony Chen (The Breaking Ice) in Un Certain Regard section. Iran also has a film in the same category, Terrestrial Verses by directors Ali Asgari and Alireza Khatami. South America has six films — The Buriti Flower co-directed by Brazilian filmmaker Renée Nader Messora and Portuguese filmmaker João Salaviza about how the Brazilian people in the Amazon region are wrongly treated in recent history, The Delinquents from Argentina directed by Rodrigo Moreno, and the Chilean film, The Settlers, by Felipe Gálvez (all three in Un Certain Regard), veteran Spanish director Victor Erice's Close Your Eyes, Pictures of Ghosts by Brazilian director Kleber Mendonça Filho, and Firebrand by Brazilian Karim Aïnouz in the competition section.

The international directing heavyweights like Ken Loach and Aki Kaurismaki will be eagerly awaited by movie lovers. The Palme d'Or-winning Loach's new film, The Old Oak, encompasses the whole world and its problems like the refugee and migrant crisis and unemployment. "Are you sure?" Loach asked Fremaux when the Cannes artistic director called him to invite him to the competition yet again. Kaurismaki, who once sent American filmmaker David Lynch into guffaws in Cannes with his seemingly sincere question, "Who are you?", will come with his new project, Fallen Leaves, which is shot in Helsinki and about love and longing. Spanish director Pedro Almodovar returns to Cannes with his short film, Strange Way of Life, his second English-language film after the 2020 Human Voice. Wim Wender will have two films in the festival — Perfect Days in the competition section and Anselm, a 3D film, in the Special Screenings category. American director Martin Scorsese will return to Cannes with Leonardo DiCaprio, Lily Gladstone and Robert De Nero-starring Western crime drama, Killers of the Flower Moon.