As Cannes 2021 completes a week, a look at major films screened at the festival so far

The Cannes Film Festival kicked off last week, returning to the French Riviera for in-person festivities, running 14 months late, thanks to the pandemic. Last year’s edition was cancelled over the health crisis, and although stars are allowed to go maskless on the red carpet this year, a health pass is required for entrance and many of the glitzy after-parties that are the festival’s calling card have been postponed because of distancing measures. Thierry Frémaux, artist director of the festival, had addressed the press on the eve of opening day and described protocols that were evolving. _(Also read on Firstpost: Cannes Film Festival 2021: Notes on returning to live screenings and the red carpet, with lurking thoughts of saliva tests)_ Opening Day This year, Spike Lee is leading the jury members comprising of Mélanie Laurent, Mati Diop, Mylène Farmer, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Jessica Hausner, Kleber Mendonça Filho, Tahar Rahim and Song Kang-Ho. [caption id=“attachment_9786541” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] Spike Lee. Twitter @Frances24[/caption] During opening day ceremony,  Lee denounced authoritarians and the fact that black people are still “hunted down like animals” in the US. Lee — the first black person to lead the festival’s jury — used his favourite nickname for Donald Trump, “Agent Orange”, and sported a cap reading “1619”, referring to the year in which the first slaves arrived in the Americas. Five of the nine jury members are women (a majority for the fourth time in the festival’s history), and the issue of female representation was also raised at the press conference. “When women are listening to themselves and really expressing themselves, even inside of a very, very male culture, we make movies differently, we tell stories differently,” said actor Gyllenhaal. Lineup so far The lineup of films at the 74th edition of Cannes is as rich and eclectic as ever, featuring work from celebrated auteurs and promising newcomers. This year, 24 films will compete for the festival’s top prize, the Palme d’Or. The directors vying for glory include Italy’s Nanni Moretti with his new film Tre Piani, France’s Jacques Audiard (Les Olympiades) and Thailand’s master of the slow burn, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, with his English-language debut (Memoria). Other contenders include Sean Penn, whose Africa-based humanitarian love story The Last Face bombed at Cannes in 2016; Iran’s two-time Oscar winner Asghar Farhadi; and Russian director Kirill Serebrennikov, who is barred from leaving the country due to an embezzlement conviction widely seen as punishment for his criticism of President Vladimir Putin. Here’s a look at some of the major films which have been screened during the first week of the festival. Annette [caption id=“attachment_9786191” align=“alignnone” width=“640”]  Adam Driver in Annette[/caption] Holy Motors director Leos Carax’s Los Angeles-set drama Annette, starring Marion Cotillard and Adam Driver, opened the 74th Cannes Film Festival on 6 July. Set in contemporary Los Angeles, Annette tells the story of Henry (Driver), a stand-up comedian with a fierce sense of humour, and Ann (Cotillard), a famous singer. In the spotlight, they are the perfect couple, healthy, happy and glamorous but the birth of their first child, Annette, a mysterious girl with an exceptional destiny, will change their lives. Produced by Charles Gillibert, Paul-Dominique Vacharasinthu, and Driver, in association with Amazon Studios, Arte, and Canal+, Annette will be distributed in France by UGC and by Amazon in the US. ( Also read on Firstpost: Cannes Film Festival 2021: Adam Driver owns the fantastical Annette with his charismatic presence ) Flag Day Penn directed and co-starred in  Flag Day about a young woman (Dylan Penn, the actor’s real-life daughter) struggling to make amends with her father, a prolific con artist. “Growing up, being surrounded by actors and being on set, it was really something that didn’t interest me at all,” Dylan said at Cannes during the premiere. “I always thought, and still think, my passion lies in working behind the camera. But as soon as I expressed wanting to do that kind of thing, both of my parents said separately: You won’t be a good director if you don’t know what it’s like to be in the actor’s shoes.” Dylan, 30, has dabbled before in acting but it’s easily her biggest role yet. Val Val Kilmer has made an intriguing and bittersweet return to the big screen at the Cannes film festival in a new documentary charting his stratospheric rise and later fall in Hollywood through his own home recordings. The Amazon-produced documentary Val is a tender portrait of the actor, now 61, whose career has seen more ups and downs than the fighter jets in his breakout film Top Gun. The film draws heavily from Kilmer’s huge library of home videos — he carried a camera with him throughout his life — providing intimate behind-the-scenes footage from his hits, including Tombstone, The Doors and Batman Forever. The Hollywood Reporter described the film as “agile and alive”, and praised the frankness of its star: “How many certified movie stars would allow themselves to be filmed so physically altered, and on the inescapable downslope of an A-list career?” The Velvet Underground The Velvet Underground, which Apple will release on its streaming platform on 15 October, plums little-seen footage and features a host of rare interviews, including founding member John Cale (who describes the band as striving for “how to be elegant and how to be brutal”), Jonathan Richman of the Modern Lovers and an early disciple, and Jonas Mekas, the late pioneering filmmaker who filmed the Velvet Underground’s first-ever live performance in 1964 and to whom the film is dedicated. _(Also read on Firstpost: Cannes Film Festival 2021: Todd Haynes docu on The Velvet Underground shows a band defiant of artistic, cultural norms_ ) The Souvenir Part II [caption id=“attachment_9799551” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] Honor Swinton Byrne, left, and Tilda Swinton pose for photographers at the photo call for the film ‘The Souvenir- Part II’ at the 74th international film festival, Cannes, southern France, Thursday, July 8, 2021. (Photo by Vianney Le Caer/Invision/AP)[/caption] Joanna Hogg’s The Souvenir Part II premiered at the Cannes Film Festival on Sunday. Sequels may be a regular part of summer, but they rarely make it to Cannes. Yet The Souvenir is no usual two-parter.

• Together, the movies are a sublime, singular work of semi-autobiography — a coming-of-age self-portrait reflected through time and cinema. They’re based on a period in Hogg’s life in the late ’80s when she was in film school in London.
• In part one, a romance with an older man who has a hidden drug addiction ends tragically.
• In part two, Julie devotes herself to making her final student film about that experience while processing her grief.
• In both, Honor Swinton Byrne plays a slightly fictionalized version of Hogg when she was younger; Byrne’s real-life mother, Tilda Swinton, plays her mom.

“I don’t even feel sure I have completed it,” Hogg says, a little surprised to feel that way. “It’s funny, because I have completed it. I’m not making another part. I don’t know that it’s really dawned on me that it’s finished.” Benedetta The veteran provocateur Paul Verhoeven premiered his lesbian nun drama  Benedetta at the Cannes Film Festival with a solemn vow to resurrect sexuality in movies. Benedetta predictably stirred the French Riviera festival over the weekend. In it, the Belgian actor Virginie Efira stars as Benedetta Carlini, a 17th-century French nun who communicates directly with Jesus and who falls in love with a farm girl saved by the convent (Daphné Patakia). An entertaining riot of eroticism, violence, Catholicism and plague, Verhoeven’s movie has been both dismissed as “ nun-sploitation” and hailed as “ a good old fashioned art-house costume shagathon.” The 74th edition of the Cannes Festival is running from 6 to 17 July. (With inputs from agencies)