Cannes Film Festival: Focus on conflict, climate change and societal crises

Swedish political comedy 'Triangle of Sadness', by Ruben Östlund, makes fun of the bad manners of people.

"This is a warm-up, not a Sunday stroll," yells Gatjang Dagor to the group of young boys and girls lazily walking down the football ground at the United Nations camp for refugees.

Dagor is a referee and coach at the Protection of Civilian Site refugee camp in Juba, capital of South Sudan, one of the most violent countries in the world, trying to build peace through sports.

In 2014, three years after the birth of South Sudan, the youngest country in the world, Dagor and his friends founded a youth network for sports. From only a handful of players at the beginning, Juba's vast refugee camp today has 42 football teams for Under-15 players.

After every match, the losing team congratulates the winners. "Our football field gives hope to those living in the refugee camp," says Dagor, who believes football rules could also work outside the pitch. "Football forges friendships."

The lanky Dagor who is always luring kids to football by offering FC Barcelona jerseys and Nandege Magdalena Lokoro, a young woman trying to bring warring communities together in South Sudan, are the focus of For the Sake of Peace, a new documentary screened at the Cannes film festival that began on May 17.

Part of the Special Screenings section, the film by French directors Christophe Castagne and Thomas Sametin is one among many that reflect the anxieties and tensions in the contemporary world. Another example is Mariupolis 2, a collection of film footage shot by Lithuanian documentary filmmaker Mantas Kvedaravičius in the besieged port city of Ukraine before Kvedaravičius was allegedly stopped by the Russian army and killed in early April.

Produced by American actor Forest Whitaker, who received an Honorary Palme d'Or for his contribution to cinema on the opening day of the Cannes festival, For the Sake of Peace shows the rays of hope in the efforts of courageous Sudanese like the football referee Dagor and peace mediator Lokoro. "It's a country that waged war to gain its independence for half a century, and now for almost 10 years has been shaken by civil war," say directors Castagne and Sametin. "The state of disrepair of the country is staggering."

Mariupolis 2, the last film to be added to the festival's official selection, shows a succession of scenes from daily life in a city at war. The film was its director's desire to continue his work in Mariupolis, where he shot his 2015 documentary by the same name, on the clashes between Ukrainian army and pro-Russian separatists in the Donetsk region.

There are scenes showing a girl playing with her father, dancers busy rehearsing, a couple fishing and actors discussing a scene. "It was heaven in hell, the delicate wings of the butterfly approaching, the smell of death in its raw dimension. It was life pulsating," say writings from the daily diary of Kvedaravičius. After he was killed in April, the film's editor Dounia Sichov brought back the footage to Lithuania, allowing the world of cinema to pay tribute to the director and his work in a special screening on May 20.

'Mariupolis 2' comprises footage shot by Mantas Kvedaravičius in the besieged port city of Ukraine.

Deadly conflicts, civil wars, climate change, gender violence, migration and refugee crisis are subjects filmmakers have dealt with in documenting the state of the world today. One of the films that seeks to awaken the conscience of the audience at the Cannes festival is the Palme d'Or contender EO by Polish director Jerzy Skolimowsky, about the world seen through the eyes of a donkey. Inspired by French filmmaker Robert Bresson's 1966 movie, Balthazar, EO is an emotional film by the director of Four Nights With Anna (2008) and Essential Killing (2010), who cast a donkey as its main character to contrast its innocence with the evils in the world.

"Directors use intellectual arguments and emotional language to provoke actors to deliver the desired effect," says Skolimowsky. "With my donkey, the only way to persuade him to do anything was with tenderness: words whispered in his ear and a few friendly caresses. Raising your voice, showing impatience or nervousness would have been the fastest path to disaster," adds the director.

'EO' is a film about the world seen through the eyes of a donkey.

The Eight Mountains, another film in the prestigious competition section at Cannes, handles the anxieties of the young generation growing up in suffocating urban spaces. Directed by Belgian filmmakers Charlotte Vandermeersch and Felix van Groeningen, The Eight Mountains tells the story of the friendship between two young boys who take to farming and building a stone home in an Italian mountainside village. Partly shot in Nepal, the film revisits the old ways of living in the story of the two nature-loving friends. "The values of the old ways of living are lost today," says Vandermeersch, a Belgian actor-director. "The mountain civilization is alive in Nepal," she adds. "Villages in Italian mountains are abandoned, but it is different in Nepal where a lot of people live in the hills," says Groeningen.

'The Eight Mountains' captures the anxieties of a generation growing up in suffocating urban spaces.

The history of the world is the focus for Mad Max: Fury Road director George Miller, whose new film Three Thousand Years of Longing is a philosophical tale about a genie who has travelled through the ages. The Tilda Swinton and Idris Elba-starring film, part of the Out of Competition section, reflects on human nature and love through a genie locked up in a bottle for 3,000 years. "It is a reflection of the history of the world and how it will end. Usually philosophers tell such stories," says Cannes festival general delegate Thierry Fremaux.

The political comedy, Triangle of Sadness, by Swedish director Ruben Östlund, makes fun of what contemporary society has become by laughing at the bad manners of the people. Vying for the Palme d'Or, the film is about two models marooned on a remote island with a group of billionaires and one of the ship's housekeepers. Hierarchy is suddenly flipped upside down as the housekeeper is the only one who knows how to fish.

The Cannes festival, which is celebrating its 75th anniversary this year, is on till May 28.