Somewhere in the beginning of the second Pakistani film at the Cannes film festival in successive editions is a scene where a university security guard scares off a girl and boy sitting next to each other on a campus bench in Karachi. "Sit properly," says the man, "this is not a Bollywood film." After the critical acclaim received by Saim Sadiq's Lahore love story Joyland in Cannes last year, In Flames by Zarrar Kahn is among the global titles that have turned heads in the opening week of the 76th Cannes Film Festival.
A searing indictment of the country's patriarchal society where women are repressed at home and in the street, the only Pakistani film in Cannes this year tells the story of a single mother and her daughter seeing their world come crashing down after the death of the family patriarch. "I am a mother myself and the story resonated with me at many levels," says Bakhtawar Mazhar, who plays the role of Fariha Rizvi, the single mother in Kahn's debut feature. "Every single scene in the film is a real story in Pakistan."
In Flames, which premiered in the Directors' Fortnight parallel selection in Cannes on Friday, looks at the frightening gender inequality prevalent across the subcontinent through the eyes of a young college student, Mariam Rizvi, whose aspirations clash with the social strictures imposed on women. Many of the major movies that premiered at the festival, which kicked off on May 16 with only the second woman-directed movie (Jeanne du Barry by French actor-director Maïwenn) ever to open the Cannes festival, have youth as the focus of their narratives from Turkey to Tunisia and China to Chile.
One of such youth-centred movies is the Chinese film, titled Youth. One of the rare documentaries to feature in the Cannes competition for the Palme d'Or, Youth directed by Wang Bing, is a three-and-half-hour long film shot in the Chinese garment district of Zhili. Male and female employees as young as 18 years old arrive in its factories from far and wide, working in shifts and living in dormitories. Wang turns his camera on the workers doing the unvarying routine while capturing the dreams and drama in their humdrum daily lives.
Monster, celebrated Japanese director Kore-eda Hirokazu's new feature, is set in a school where a series of events involving two students and a teacher upset the eerie calm of a small hill town. The Japanese master, winner of the Cannes top prize for his disconcerting social drama Shoplifters five years ago, focuses on two children, Mugino Minato and Hoshikawa Yori, who want to remake the world from the start once again so that its overgrown and over-prejudiced society can be replaced with a better version. Though its script was written before the world was turned upside down by the Covid-19 pandemic, the director, who shot his previous two features in France (The Truth) and Korea (Broker), says he was "surprised that the story turned out to reflect the rift we now see between people, countries and ethnic groups around the world".
The Tunisian hybrid film, Four Daughters by Kouther Ben Hania, the Oscar-nominated director of The Man Who Sold His Skin, explores radicalisation of youth in the real life story of teenagers Rahma and Ghofrane Chikhaoui recruited by the Islamic State in Libya in 2016. Part documentary and part fiction, the film is about the travails of a Tunisian mother, Olfa, who recreates the circumstances that led to the disappearance of her two older daughters in Libya. In January this year, Rahma and Ghofrane, arrested by authorities after an American air attack on an IS site, were sentenced to 16 years in jail by a Libyan court.
Acclaimed Spanish director Pedro Almodovar was present in Cannes early this week for the premiere of Strange Way of Life, his second short film in English after the Tilda Swinton-starring The Human Voice (2020). Starring American actors Ethan Hawke and Pedro Pascal, the Western drama focuses on sexuality, generally ambivalent in the genre. "For the last one decade, people have been saying the Western is dead," Almodovar said as he sat down with Hawke after the premiere to talk about the movie. "The Western is not dead and my film is a new way of looking at it," he added after applauding the audience for turning out in large numbers braving rains. "On a rainy day in Cannes, this is really flattering," he said. "I must have done something good in my life to receive an email from Almodovar with the script of Strange Way of Life and an invitation to be a part of the film," Hawke added about the movie in the Special Screenings section.
German director Wim Wenders walked the red carpet with compatriot and artist Anselm Kiefer for the premiere of his new documentary, Anselm, part of the Special Screenings. Kiefer, who used his country's history and mythology in his paintings and sculptures to remind the world to "not forget the danger of fascism" in the aftermath of World War II, is considered one of the greatest living contemporary artists in the world. Angry with the society for not addressing fascism following the World War, Kiefer used the Nazi salute in his sculptures in the '60s to provoke the audience.
American actor-director Sean Penn, whose last directorial venture, The Last Face, was part of the Cannes competition section seven years ago, returned this year with Black Flies, in which he acts as an emergency medical responder along with Tye Sheridan and Mike Tyson. Directed by French filmmaker Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire, the film, which is shot in New York, addresses the alarming suicide rate among first responders while exploring the glaring social and economic inequalities in the Western society.
Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan, who won the Palme d'Or for Winter Sleep in 2014, sets his new film, About Dry Grasses, in a Kurdish border village to focus on the complexities of a new generation growing up in the middle of civil wars. One of the many movies in the Cannes official selection this year that puts the youth at the centre of the story, About Dry Grasses is another of Ceylan's movies that exceed the running time of three hours.
The Cannes festival runs up to May 27.
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