David Cronenberg returning to Cannes film competition
David Cronenberg and Guy Maddin are among the high-profile Canadians returning to this year’s Cannes Film Festival, which begins May 14.
Cronenberg, known for sci-fi and horror films going all the way back to the 1970s, will compete for the main prize with The Shrouds, a horror flick shot in Toronto about a grieving widower played by Vincent Cassel.
The widower invents a device that lets people monitor deceased loved ones in their burial shrouds, and when his wife’s grave is desecrated one night, he sets out to track down the perpetrators.
“Being selected for the Cannes Film Festival is an immense honour, but to return for the seventh time is incredibly humbling,” Cronenberg said in a statement. “I look forward to sharing this film with the world on such a prestigious stage.”
The 81-year-old, whose works include Videodrome, Naked Lunch and A History of Violence, made his last Cannes appearance with 2022’s Crimes of the Future.
Acclaimed Canadian filmmaker David Cronenberg talks about why he couldn’t make his latest movie in Toronto, getting shut down by Netflix, the death of cinemas, and that one time he almost directed a Star Wars movie.
The Shrouds was produced in part by Martin Katz for Prospero Pictures, whose founder and president Martin Katz called it “an audacious and human film, so apt for our times.”
Cronenberg will compete for the Palme d’Or against the likes of Yorgos Lanthimos (Poor Things, The Lobster), who will debut Kinds of Kindness, and George Miller’s Mad Max spinoff Furiosa.
Francis Ford Coppola, known for Apocalypse Now and The Godfather trilogy, will debut Megalopolis starring Adam Driver, his first movie in more than a decade and one of this year’s most anticipated events.
Another attention-grabbing entry is Ali Abassi’s The Apprentice, a biographical drama about Donald Trump’s real estate career in New York in the 1970s and 80s.
The official selection for the festival’s 77th edition was announced at a Thursday press conference in Paris.
Dark Canadian comedy about G7 to screen outside main competition
A trio of Winnipeg directors, Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson and Galen Johnson, co-directed Rumours, which will screen out of competition at Cannes. The dark comedy is about world leaders who meet at the G7 and get lost in the woods while trying to compose a joint statement. The trio previously worked together on 2017’s The Green Fog.
Star Wars director George Lucas will attend this year’s festival to receive an honorary Palme d’Or while Kevin Costner will present his new Western Horizon, an American Saga.
Montreal filmmaker Xavier Dolan, whose film Mommy won the 2014 Cannes Jury Prize, will head the jury for the festival’s Un Certain Regard section, which presents films with unusual styles and non-traditional stories.
Dolan wrote, directed, produced and starred in his first feature film, I Killed my Mother, at age 19, and it earned Canada’s submission for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film. In 2010, his film Heartbeats screened in Un Certain Regard when he was just 21.
“I am humbled and delighted to return to Cannes as president of the Un Certain Regard jury,” Dolan said in a statement. “Even more than making films myself, discovering the work of talented filmmakers has always been at the very heart of both my personal and professional journeys.”
The Cannes main competition jury will be headed by Barbie director Greta Gerwig.
The film festival runs from May 14 to May 25.
