As Jury President Cate Blanchett continues to create female-centric history by heading this year’s Festival de Cannes, the woman is on a mission to explore boundaries and what lies beyond traditional filmmaking. Embracing and challenging the power of film, she states, “This festival plays a pivotal role in bringing the world together to celebrate story; that strange and vital endeavour that all people share, understand and crave.” With the selection 2018 offers, she did not falter. Many great films premiere at Cannes, and usually serve as predictions for the Oscars. You don’t have to wait until award seasons just to anticipate and watch them. Indulge with us now.
The Picture Book
Legendary filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard’s The Picture Book is an experimental take on the modern life in the Arabic world. With no eligible traditional persona, Godard pushes the bounds of filmmaking and storytelling: no recognisable visual is shown, the screen is illuminated with color as an obscure curation of sounds takes over. The experimental spirit of this French-Swiss revolutionary questions conventions, as he always has, and we can’t wait to get spellbound. Watch the mind-boggling trailer here:
The House That Jack Built
It only needs half a minute to get you hooked on The House That Jack Built. Although concise, the trailer slams its power by comparing secret passageways in Cathedrals to murder–as the persona stares through your aching body to your soul. Perhaps an all foreseeing god knows more than others, the same way a murderer does. With Lars Von Trier’s fascination with the grotesque, we can expect nothing less than the believable execution of blood, eerie figures, and unorthodox existentialism. Be a willing victim here:
Man Who Killed Don Quixote
This film by Terry Gilliam steers far from the list, yet closer to Miguel de Cervantes’s canonical work Don Quixote, with its satirical take on 16th hundredth adventure through the metaphysical and intertextuality. 18 years in the making, it is the convergence of modernity and classic–literally–as present-day protagonist, an advertiser named Toby, meets a Spanish elder who claims to be Don Quixote. The role of Toby is played by Adam Driver, and Jonathan Pryce plays Don Quixote. Get a scoop of what sounds like a hallucination:
Under the Silver Lake
Dr. David Robert Mitchell wowed us last year with indie horror film It Follows, for its unique anxiety-triggering concept and nerve-wrecking screenplay. With Under the Silver Lake premiering at Cannes, it is to no surprise that he came up with yet another original script that not only bottles you up into an explosion of misery, but coincidentally begs you to ask for answers. The film stars fresh-off Sarkis’ Breathe Andrew Garfield, and post-American Honey Riley Keough.
Farenheit 451
In a reality relevant to dystopia, the Ray Bradbury classic is finally getting its visual representation. The movie stars Michael B. Jordan as the revolutionary fireman Montag, whose initial job is to burn books in favor of those in power, but questions the hierarchal structure and realizes his indoctrination upon meeting a young girl. While Farenheit 451 did its job by marking our shelves past a lifetime, the film in an evolving world of tech might just do the same, or more.
Lazzaro Felice
With recent controversy with the lack of female directors in this year’s Cannes, Italian filmmaker Alice Rohrwacher takes the holster with movie pioneer Lazzaro Felice which is heartfelt storytelling about a small Italian village, quite like a paradise, but thumped with the complexity and catastrophe of human mind and emotions. With this, the characters are transported to situations and physical locations that challenge morality. This takes you to a place you’ve never been, but channels a questionable nostalgia. Watch it here:
by Monina Chua
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