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The lineup for the 2021 edition of the Cannes Film Festival has been unveiled. After taking a pause due to the pandemic in 2020, this year’s festival will take place with an in-person event in July with several high-profile titles, including Wes Anderson’s “The French Dispatch”, the Adam Driver and Marion Cotillard musical “Annette” and new works from Oliver Stone, Todd Haynes, Francois Ozon, Sean Penn, and more.
The festival kicks off with Leos Carax’s “Annette” — itself a holdover from 2020, along with “The French Dispatch”, and Paul Verhoeven’s “Benedetta”.
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The 2021 Cannes lineup includes plenty of American-made features.
The Sean Penn-directed “Flag Day”, about a criminal father who runs cons to support his daughter, stars Josh Brolin and Miles Teller and will premiere at the festival. The Tom McCarthy (“Spotlight”) drama “Stillwater” with Matt Damon as a father desperate to free his daughter (Abigail Breslin) from a French jail will also debut.
Other highly anticipated titles include Colin Farrell and Jodie Turner-Smith in Kogonada’s sci-fi drama “After Yang”; “The Florida Project” director Sean Baker’s latest, “Red Rocket”; and Korean-American writer-actor-director Justin Chon’s “Blue Bayou” with Alicia Vikander.
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Several high-profile documentaries have also been announced. Among them is “Fish Tank” director Andrea Arnold’s “Cow”; Todd Haynes’ look at Lou Reed’s seminal band in “The Velvet Underground”; Charlotte Gainsbourg’s ode to her mother Jane Birkin with “Jane”; and “Val”, a portrait of Val Kilmer, which charts the highs and lows of the actor’s career, as well as the loss of his voice due to cancer.
Notably absent from the lineup is Netflix. The streamer’s fraught relationship with the festival continues after Netflix received backlash for its presence in 2017, leading Cannes to establish a rule that all films selected for the fest must screen in French theatres. Netflix held back its films in 2018 but was poised to return last year for an out-of-competition screening of “Da 5 Bloods”. Also absent is Jane Campion’s Netflix-backed film “The Power Of The Dog” with Benedict Cumberbatch, Kirsten Dunst, and Jesse Plemons. To date, Campion is the only female filmmaker to be awarded the festival’s top honour, the Palme d’Or, for her film “The Piano”.
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“We regret this absence, this attitude, this desire, this will, not to negotiate about an out-of-competition presence,” Cannes festival director Thierry Fremaux said during the festival press conference on Thursday.
The festival previously pledged to be more gender-inclusive. This year’s festival has four women directors in competition and a historic number of films by females within the program.
See the full list of 2021 Cannes Film Festival selections below.
Opening Night Film
“Annette,” Leos Carax (also in Competition)
Competition
“Ahed’s Knee,” Nadav Lapid
“Annette,” Leos Carax
“Benedetta,” Paul Verhoeven
“Bergman Island,” Mia Hansen-Løve
“Casablanca Beats,” Nabil Ayouch
“Compartment No. 6,” Juho Kuosmanen
“Drive My Car,” Ryûsuke Hamaguchi
“Everything Went Fine,” Francois Ozon
“The French Dispatch,” Wes Anderson
“A Hero,” Asghar Farhadi
“La fracture,” Catherine Corsini
“Lingui,” Mahamat-Saleh Haroun
“Memoria,” Apichatpong Weerasethakul
“Nitram,” Justin Kurzel
“Paris, 13th District,” Jacques Audiard
“Par un Demi Clair Matin,” Bruno Dumont
“Petrov’s Flu,” Kirill Serebrennikov
“Red Rocket,” Sean Baker
“The Restless,” Joachim Lafosse
“The Story of My Wife,” Ildikó Enyedi
“Three Floors,” Nanni Moretti
“Titane,” Julia Ducournau
“The Worst Person in the World,” Joachim Trier
“Flag Day,” Sean Penn
Un Certain Regard
“After Yang,” Kogonada
“Blue Bayou,” Justin Chon
“Bonne Mère,” Hafsia Herzi
“Commitment Hasan,” Hasan Semih
“Freda,” Gessica Généus
“House Arrest” OR “Delo,” Alexey German Jr.
“The Innocents,” Eskil Vogt
“Lamb,” Valdimar Jóhansson
“Moneyboys,“ B.C Yi
“Noche de Fuego,” Tatiana Huezo
“Un Monde,” Laura Wandel
“Women Do Cry,” Mina Mileva and Vesela Kazakova
“La Civil,” Teodora Ana Mihai
“Unclenching the Fists,” Kira Kovalenko
“Let Their Be Morning,” Eran Kolirin
“Rehana Maryam Noor,” Abdullah Mohammad Saad
Cannes Premiere
“Evolution,” Kornel Mundruczo
“Cow,” Andrea Arnold
“Deception” OR “Tromperie,” Arnaud Desplechin
“Hold Me Tight,” Mathieu Almaric
“In Front of Your Face,” Hong Sang-soo
“Love Songs for Tough Guys,” Samuel Benchetrit
“Mothering Sunday,” Eva Husson
“Val,” Ting Poo and Leo Scott
Out of Competition
“Aline, the Voice of Love,” Valerie Lemercier
“Babi Yar. Context,” Sergei Loznitsa
“Bac Nord,” Cédric Jimenez
“Emergency Declaration,” Han Jae-Rim
“In His Lifetime” OR “De son vivant,” Emmanuelle Bercot
“Stillwater,” Tom McCarthy
“The Velvet Underground,” Todd Haynes
Special Screenings
“Black Notebooks,” Shlomi Elkabetz
“H6,” Yé Yé
“Jane by Charlotte,” Charlotte Gainsbourg
“JFK: Through the Looking Glass,” Oliver Stone
“Mariner of the Mountains,” Karim Aïnouz
“Baby Yar. Context.” Sergei Loznitsa
“The Year of the Everlasting Storm,” Jafar Panahi, Anthony Chen, Malik Vitthal, Laura Poitras, Dominga Sotomayar, David Lowery, and Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Midnight Screenings
“Bloody Oranges,” Jean-Christophe Meurisse
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