Nida Faraz describes an outstanding event
Cannes Film Festival is rated as an outstanding event in the annals of filmmaking and has been successfully held for the last seventy-five years. This gala occasion assembles a glitzy crowd of film stars and is widely covered in the media. The Cannes Festival started as a partnership between France and Hollywood in 1939 but was delayed due to World War II. The first year of the festival was 1946. This year it has been taking place from 17 to 28 May 2022. The festival has featured a tribute to actor Tom Cruise whose film Top Gun: Maverick premiered at the festival and the actor won a surprise Palme d’Or award. Tom Cruise’s presence is confirmed, for the first time in 30 years on the Croisette. He will present the new Top Gun. The official poster for the festival was designed as an homage to the Truman Show of 1998.
The festival returned to its full spectator capacity after the last two editions as a precaution against the COVID restrictions in France. Virginie Efira is the mistress of the opening and closing ceremonies of the 75th edition of the festival. Vincent Lindon is the president of the jury and he will be joined by four men and four women. The other members of the jury, which will have to draw up its prize list after seeing the 21 films in competition, will be the British Rebecca Hall, the Indian Deepika Padukone, the Swedish Noomi Rapace, the Italian Jasmine Trinca, the Iranian Asghar Farhadi, the American Jeff Nichols, the Norwegian Joachim Trier, and the French Ladj Ly.
Professionals from the cinema industry, international stars, and up-and-coming actors rub shoulders with the crowd looking for surprising pictures and encounters. The Festival de Cannes has been celebrating cinema for more than 70 years. Over the years, the Association Française du Festival International du Film has been able to change whilst keeping the essence of the Festival: a passion for cinema, the discovery of new talent, and the enthusiasm of festival-goers and professionals from the whole world who come to contribute to the making and distribution of films.
Even with a war going on in nearby Ukraine, movie stars and famous filmmakers are back in the southern French city of Cannes for the 75th anniversary of the film festival.
Cruise is back in Cannes for the showing of his movie Top Gun Maverick based on the 1980s film, Top Gun. And Tom Hanks is in a movie about the life of singer Elvis Presley with director David Cronenberg returns with Crimes of the Future starring Viggo Mortensen, Kristen Stewart, and Lea Seydoux. Another American actor and director, Forest Whitaker, will be in Cannes to receive one of the festival’s top awards, known as the Palme D’or, for his life’s work in the film business. While China will not have films at the event, other Asian countries will be represented. Actor Lee Jung-Jae, who became famous last year for his performance in Squid Game, is in a new film called Hunt. Filmmakers Park Chan-wook of South Korea and Hirokazu Kore-Eda of Japan are also showing their new movies.
Russian films were not permitted at the festival. Two films with connections to Ukraine will be shown. One is called Mariupolis 2 by Lithuanian director Mantas Kvedaravicius. He was killed during the bombing of Mariupol by Russian forces almost one month ago while working on the movie. The other is Butterfly Vision by Ukrainian director Maksim Nakonechnyi. It is about a woman who comes home to Ukraine after being released in a prisoner exchange. TW
