It’s been a classic for 14 years. Here comes the film week of the Cannes Film Festival, and with it, Thierry Fremauxthe director general of the most important festival in the world.
Frémaux chooses the titles -he will tell us on the basis of what- which will be exhibited in the Gaumont room, from Monday 28 November to Sunday 4 December, at a more than attractive price: $200 for general admission, for students, pensioners and pensioners pay only $100.
“It is my insistence, because it is a pleasure to be in this city, which is a very important city for me, but also to be with friends and see how the country is doing”, Frémaux says in an interview with clarion, already installed in his hotel in Puerto Madero-. I don’t know, I arrived last night, so let’s see, but it seems that this country is a miracle. All time.”
-And why are you saying this?
-And, since Argentines today are like the French, they live in Heaven and believe it to be Hell.
-My first question is: will Argentina pass the stage at the World Cup?
-After the first game, I don’t know, but it won’t be easy. We can meet in the round of 16… The last time was in 2018, and it didn’t go badly for us… Now I don’t watch many World Cup matches, and in France there’s like a boycott. The World Cup, the Olympic Games, the Tour de France and Cannes are the four biggest world events. And in Cannes, we are in the city of Cannes and we have to control the development so as not to get bigger and bigger and bigger. So that? Cannes is a way to support art. It’s a way of getting together to make “noise” in favor of cinema.
But organizing a World Cup in Qatar was a good idea. Whether the Arabs have it, then Africa… The question is the climate, the heat, the cooling of the stadiums, but we can say that the way of considering the situation of women cannot be understood, or cannot be to accept. Or, conversely, it could be that a World Cup helps that society change. I do not know.
Parallels aside, Frémaux, who will be accompanied in the opening of the Week by vincenzo lindo, who presided over the Jury this year. he took over as artistic director of Cannes in 2001. Which films make you proud, having been to Cannes, whether or not they won the Palme d’Or? “Yes, and I’ve been in Cannes since 2007. But I have felt truly responsible for the Festival for less than ten years, for seven years. Every film is very valuable,” she explains.
-After discovering Romanian or Korean cinema, what are your milestones?
-I brought Hollywood back to Cannes. Getting them was very important, and this year having them Top Gun: nonconformist Y Elvis it was even more transcendental. Because maverick it’s Paramount, and from Universal we got the James Gray film…Time of Armageddon, which is a pity, we have to talk to Vincent Lindon, because the film did not have an award- (joking). It’s important to support an independent cinema in New York, produced by a studio like Universal.
And on the other, to have countries like Japan, with the new generation, or Korea, or Romania. There is now more cinema from North Africa, for example. The cinema in Iran is still very strong. The big disappointment may be Latin American cinema. There are great directors, of course, but mostly in Mexico or here, but we need more presence from Brazil. We have Fernando Meirelles, Walter Salles… 20 years ago, when I arrived, Latin America was really a big cinematic territory. But I wish I had so much more.
-Select this week’s Cannes films. The Palme d’Or is a classic, but what attracted you most about the film?
-And, the Palme d’Or, The triangle of sadness, (it opens on Monday, and on Sunday) is now with an important name (the Swede Ruben Östlund), because he has made three or four films that are good. The other films are opportunities that arise from a dialogue with Argentine distributors. For example, Cronenberg’s film could not be presented, because it had already premiered. And there is an allegiance with the Dardenne brothers (we’ll see Tori and Lokita). It is not a success in France, but what the film says about relations between Africa and Europe is very important. and another is decision to leaveby Park Chan-wook. It is one of my favorite films, because it is the cinema within the cinema. And young old Jerzy Skolimowski (Hey).
And what else do we have? To closeby Lukas Dhont, e divine conspiracyby Tarik Saleh. There is like a new cinema in the Arab world, in the Muslim world, which often isn’t filmed there, and this is the case with this film which was not filmed in Egypt, but outside the country. But there are also new rumors. And that’s why I wanted to bring that film, because it’s a way for me to present not only films from Europe or Asia, which we are used to seeing.
They are also proof of our ability to compete with your films. And although the success of this Week is enormous, because you know that in one day the tickets sold out, for next year, which will be the 15th Week, we will bring other Un Certain Regard films, which are also films that allow us to see another way to see what cinema is today.
-In other words, will this week’s films be released later in Argentine theaters?
-Yes, it seems to me that everyone has their premiere in theaters or on a platform.
-This year Vincent Lindon, who was the last president of the Cannes jury, will accompany you again.
-Yes, he came first for a film, and now he’s coming as president of the jury. He won’t tell any secrets, but I don’t know… (smiles).
Lindon will be holding a Master Class on Tuesday 29, at 18:00, for industry professionals and film students.
“Well, his presence was a very important precedent, because we did the Festival at the beginning of the war, and he’s an ordinary man, with so many political and social convictions, it was very important to have a personality like his, with his way of being an artist, an actor, but also a citizen.
We will see a small montage of the opening of the Festival, and I was very moved to see how faithful Cannes is to its history. It is in the idea that we are inside the world and, obviously, inside what cinema does. That opening was with a lot of political emotion, with the presence of (Volodimir) Zelenski, Forest Whitaker and also with songs, to party.
What he said was very important, but I didn’t know if I would be able to do it. “I need seven minutes,” she told me, and she spoke nine. He’s a president, but he’s also an actor, so I wanted him. “What you do is very important,” he said. You have to remember Charlie Chaplin and Apocalypse now”. And we could expect a talk about war and all that. No? You talked about culture.
Even cinema is part of the eternity of the corporate world, and it was a great emotion to see a president dressed in warfare. This seems to me important in the story. And Cannes already presented itself in 1939 against fascism and against Nazism, and in ’46, for the reconstruction of the world after the war. That’s where culture resides today, and for me, in this time of world destruction, cinema has its own voice. Literature too. And for me again it’s hell, but it’s also heaven. I’m not a pessimist.
Another recurring theme is the fictitious confrontation between auteur cinema and mainstream, mass cinema.
“We must support and support all cinema, all films, blockbusters. It’s not just Marvel. is Elvis, because Warner Bros. protects ideas, or Sony with Quentin Tarantino. In France we have a problem, the general public. Because you have to take care of this audience too, because that’s what goes on the platforms.
So you have to invent quality films, by authors like Coppola. For Oliver Stone today it is difficult to find a studio to produce a film. It’s hard to make movies, just Scorsese, and with the help of platforms. The movie he made with DiCaprio (The flower moon killers), is an Apple film, by Paramount and Apple. Well, they’re very, very expensive movies. A week ago I was in New York, on Marty’s (Scorsese) birthday, De Niro was there, it was like a family thing, and Martin was still working on the post-production of the film.
– Will “Killers of the Flower Moon” be at Cannes 2023?
Fremaux shrugged.
And will there be a film by an Argentinian in competition at Cannes in 2023? “Well, I want to see what’s new from Damián Szifron,” he says about it misanthropethat the director of wild talesthe last Argentinian film that competed for the Palme d’Or, in 2014, shot in the United States…
Source: Clarin
