With its 72nd season about to be underway, the international Cannes Film Festival (14-25 May 2019) is the most important film festival in terms of worldwide impact. Founded in 1946, the Festival has launched the careers of many prominent filmmakers, like Quentin Tarantino and Steven Soderbergh. Every year, it draws attention to and raises the profile of films, with the aim of contributing towards the development of cinema, boosting the film industry worldwide, and celebrating cinema at an international level. The highest distinction of the festival is the Palme d'Or, followed by the prestigious Grand Prize and the Jury Prize.
From My Uncle to Under the Sun of Satan, Highlights of Cannes will tell the story of a festival that has forged the history of cinema.
As part of this film series, the Cultural Services of the French Embassy is proud to present four feature films:
Under the Sun of Satan (Sous le soleil de Satan) by Maurice Pialat
1987 – France – 108 min
April 9 | 7:00 p.m.
A slow, complex and captivating tale of a French priest and his moral trials and tribulations, Under the Sun of Satan won the Palme d'Or at the 1987 Cannes Film Festival. Donissan (Gérard Depardieu) struggles to save the soul of the 16-year-old pregnant Mouchette (Sandrine Bonnaire) in this allegorical drama.
A Man and a Woman (Un homme et une femme) by Claude Lelouch
1966 – France – 102 min
April 23 | 7:00 p.m.
A widow and a widower find their relationship developing into love, but their past tragedies prove hard to overcome, causing them to proceed with utmost delicacy. The film won several awards, including the Palme d'Or at the 1966 Cannes Film Festival, two Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film and Best Original Screenplay, and two Golden Globe Awards for Best Foreign Language Film and Best Actress.
My Uncle (Mon Oncle) by Jacques Tati
1958 – France – 110 min
May 14 | 7:00 p.m.
Monsieur Hulot (Jacques Tati) is the dreamy, impractical, and adored uncle of nine-year-old Gérard Arpel, who lives with his materialistic parents, Monsieur and Madame Arpel, in an ultra-modern geometric house and garden. The second Hulot movie and Tati’s first color film, My Uncle is a supremely amusing satire of mechanized living and consumer society that earned the director the Jury Prize at the 1958 Cannes Film Festival and won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.
The Class (Entre les murs) by Laurent Cantet
2008 - France - 128 min
May 28 | 7:00 p.m.
Set wholly in a secondary school in a working-class district of Paris, where many inhabitants are foreign-born, the film follows a year in the life of a young teacher, François Marin, and the 25 teenage pupils to whom he teaches French for an hour each day. Winner of the Palme d'Or at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival, master French director Laurent Cantet's The Class is "fresh piece of humanist, realist, optimist cinema" (The Guardian).
All films are in French with English subtitles.
