Yes I Cannes

Derek Elley of Variety provides all of the latest news from overseas in the run up to the 2006 Cannes Film Festival...and from the look of things Latin is in. Elley gives us a breakdown of which films will headline the event, as well as the international scorecard.

Latin cinema is the big winner, while U.S. and French filmers hold their place, in the Official Selection of the 59th Cannes Film Festival (May 17-28), announced in Paris today.
This year's Competition, at a trim 19 titles, artfully mixes Croisette favorites (Pedro Almodovar, Ken Loach, Nanni Moretti, Aki Kaurismaki) alongside known or established names that are new to that particular section.

Among the latter is Sofia Coppola (costumer "Marie-Antoinette"), who actually began her Cannes career in Directors Fortnight with "The Virgin Suicides" (1999) and Mexican Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (English-lingo drama "Babel"), who was discovered by Critics Week six years ago with "Amores perros."

Other Competition newcomers were nurtured by festivals like Toronto and Venice, including Richard Linklater ("Fast Food Nation"), Belgian Lucas Belvaux ("The Weakest Is Always Right") and Portuguese mini-malist Pedro Costa ("Youth on the March").

As such, artistic director Thierry Fremaux maintains the position of the Competition as a platform to be aspired to, rather than one of discovery. Only one Competition feature is a first work: Scottish-set experimental drama "Red Road" by the U.K.'s Andrea Arnold, who won an Oscar for her short "Wasp."

Fremaux has bundled most of the first features (seven) into the sidebar Un Certain Regard, which is the usual broad mix of international titles peppered with some more familiar names (Italo vet Marco Bellocchio, Australia's Rolf de Heer).

Linklater also has a movie in Un Certain Regard -- noir crimer "A Scanner Darkly," from a Philip K. Dick novel -- making him the first director in memory to have two features in different sections of the Official Selec-tion.

Around a fifth of the 59 features that make up the Official Selection's three sections -- Competition, Out of Competition, Un Certain Regard -- come from Spanish, Portuguese or Italian-speaking countries. Two Italian directors (regulars Nanni Moretti and Paolo Sorrentino) are repped in Competition, alongside two Mexican helmers (Guillermo del Toro, Alejandro Inarritu), both new to Cannes' Official Selection.

U.S. presence -- and English-language cinema in general -- is on a par with recent years, with around a dozen North American filmers across the various sections. Richard Kelly ("Donnie Darko") joins Coppola and Linklater in Competition with the ensembler "Southland Tales", while U.S. prods dominate the galas ("United 93," "X-Men: The Last Stand," DreamWorks toon"Over the Hedge") and Special Screenings. Latter include an HBO docu featuring Variety itself: "Boffo: Tinseltown's Bombs and Blockbusters."

Big loser this year is Asia, with no films from Japan and only one small independent drama from South Korea "The Unforgiven" (in Un Certain Regard). In a year when the main jury has an unprecedented two Chinese members (prez Wong Kar-wai, plus actress Zhang Ziyi), Chinese-speaking cinema is more substantially repped, with two works from the Mainland, one from Hong Kong (Johnnie To's "Election 2") and one from Taiwan (swordplay spectacle "Silk").

Obviously, I'm hoping that the good ol' US of A makes a strong showing at the fest, and that we will have some bragging rights to cling to afterwards. In the meantime, (if and) when news breaks during the 11 day party in France, I will be here to comment on it all.