Jia Zhang-ke
China-Spain-France
19 min.
Short film
This film is an elegy to the youth of the whole generation born in the 1970s. Ten years after graduation, four college classmates who live far apart are reunited. (Old lovers played by Guo Xiaodong and Zhao Tao; Wang Hongwei and Hao Lei.) They have not drifted apart with the passage of time, nor do they feel so. New arguments begin on the same topics they argued about 10 years ago. With the past still lingering on their minds, they didn?t feel courageous enough to pick up the pieces of their shattered love. Despite cherishing those feelings, they knew it was their fate to be apart. Like the silent but turbulent rivers that wind through and around Suzhou, they held on tightly to their secrets.
Digna Sinke
Set in the near future, Atlantis depicts a perfectly-ordered society where everyone seems to be happy and the past has been declared taboo. But the fourteen-year-old Xenia is different from other girls. She only feels close to Arnout, the brother with whom she shares vague memories of other times when their grandmother was still alive. Every morning she tells him her dreams, mostly raising questions with no answers. One day, on her way to school, an elderly man approaches her, asking her to give a letter to someone called Agnes who lives on the neighbouring island. Although Xenia initially refuses as the island is forbidden territory, the man?s insistence pushes her, however doubtfully, to accept the letter.
Jia Zhang-ke
Chengdu, today. State-owned factory 420 shuts down to give way to a complex of luxury apartments called 24 City. Three generations, eight characters: former workers, factory executives and yuppies, their stories are the history of China.
Juan Vicente Córdoba
From a shack in Pozo del Tío Raimundo, the shanty town thrown up in the 50s with mud and tin "houses" that flourished like "moonflowers" in the night, the "red priest" Father Llanos conveyed to the immigrants his Utopian dream of endeavouring to achieve justice and freedom. Days and years of solidarity, of rebelling, and of forging a new identity in the belief that they could change the world from their slum. How did these people come to realize their situation and put their strength and cohesion into setting about its transformation?
Philippe Garrel
Carole, a celebrity neglected by her husband, falls for François, a young photographer. Returning from a business trip, the husband surprises them, and the lovers have to end their relationship. Carole gradually drifts into madness and commits suicide. A year later, a few hours before his wedding, François has a vision. It's Carole, calling him from the other world?
Jonathan Demme
Jonathan Demme presents an as yet unfinished version of Neil Young Trunk Show, with Young in the middle of a stage full of personal icons, at times alone in the centre of a circle of his beloved acoustic guitars, at others in the midst of a handful of much-beloved musicians Ben Keith, Rick Rosas, Ralph Molina, Anthony Crawford and Pegi Young. There are delicately offered piano/guitar/voice numbers like "Ambulance Blues" and "Mexico"; mesmerizing electric travelogues into the artist's psyche ("No Hidden Path"); searing, chaotic anthems like "Hurricane" and "Spirit Road"; and rarely performed pieces, like "Harvest", that provide glimpses of Young's less public persona. Shot with a mix of video and film cameras, mostly handheld, Neil Young Trunk Show follows the assembling and presenting of a concert in breathtakingly intimate fashion, catching lighter moments backstage and between songs.
Terence Davies
Based on the montage of archive images and contemporary footage, Davies uses his own voice to look at his memories of the Liverpool in which he grew up, that of the 40s and 50s, later working towards the present day, stopping at some of the biggest events in recent British history and showing us the effects of time on his native city with comments fluctuating between poetry and irony, melancholy and anger.
Jonathan Demme
When Kym returns to the Buchman family home for the wedding of her sister Rachel, she brings a long history of personal crisis, family conflict and tragedy along with her. The wedding couple's abundant party of friends and relations have gathered for a joyful weekend of feasting, music and love, but Kym, with her biting one-liners and flair for bombshell drama, is a catalyst for long-simmering tensions in the family dynamic.
Gilles Jacob
France
26 min.
Short film
Short film made by the President of Cannes Festival, Gilles Jacob. "This is a false biopic. I wanted to retrace the itinerary (from birth to old age) of a real person (in this case the current director of Cannes Festival, Thierry Frémaux) using scenes from famous films. Even if they don't know the hero, I hope that the spectators will have fun following his adventures and trying to guess what films the extracts come from and their directors," explains Gilles Jacob.
Yves Montmayeur
Yakuza Eiga is an astonishing journey into Japan's cinematic underworld from the end of World War II until today, during which time emblematic, key figures of new Japanese cinema like Miike Takashi and Takeshi Kitano have relifted the genre. For a period of four decades, actors and directors met real yakuza, and real yakuza and gang leaders became top actors. This documentary is a cross-border film between cinéma vérité and a historical approach to a popular yet controversial genre, yakuza cinema.