Cannes 2019 day 8 roundup: Once Upon A Time in Hollywood gets standing ovation; Parasite premieres

Once Upon A Time in Hollywood gets standing ovation even before its premiere

25 years after Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction took Cannes by storm, Once Upon A Time in Hollywood, the filmmaker's ode to 1970's hippie Hollywood, premiered at the prestigious film festival on 21 May. Even before its screening, the film scored a six-minute-long standing ovation at the premiere, according to several media reports state. It's one of a longest receptions any film has received this year, Variety reports.

Leonardo DiCaprio, Margot Robbie and Brad Pitt walked the red carpet along with director Tarantino in their glitzy outfits.

Parasite premieres

South Korean drama Gisaengchung/Parasite premiered at the festival on 21 May. Starring Song Kang-ho, Lee Sun-kyun, Cho Yeo-jeong, Choi Woo-shik and Park So-dam,  revolves around Ki-taek and his unemployed family as they take a peculiar interest in the wealthy Park family, which leads them to get entangled in an unexpected incident. The film, helmed by Korean auteur  Bong Joon-ho, has been hailed by critics. Variety described it as an "exceptional pitch-black tragicomedy about social inequality in modern Korea".

Atlantics director Mati Diop talks about being the first black female director at Cannes

In an interview with the Associated Press, Mati Diop, whose film Atlantics opened at the fest on 16 May, said that she was initially disappointed when she discovered that she was the first black female filmmaker in the Cannes Film Festival’s prestigious competition in its 72-year history. “I hadn’t realised myself. I didn’t know,” the 36-year-old French-Senegalese filmmaker said in an interview. “My first reaction is that I found it quite sad. I thought, ‘Oh, is it?’ So there’s still a long way to go before it becomes something completely natural and normal and something that’s not noticeable, the fact that I’m a black woman,” she said. Atlantics marks Diop’s first feature as a director, but she’s previously made five shorts, one of which was the basis for her Cannes entry. That 2009 short bore the same title but a different perspective, concentrating on a young man forced into a dangerous migration.

Dardenne brothers explore radicalisation in Young Ahmed

Cannes regulars the Dardenne brothers said that they were driven to explore the sensitive subject of radicalisation in their latest film after a wave of attacks in recent years, including those by Islamist militants. Young Ahmed is the latest movie by the Belgian filmmaking duo, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, who have already won the film festival’s top Palme d’Or award twice.

“It’s in the context of all these attacks which we have witnessed in Europe, in the United States, but also in Sri Lanka, the Middle East,” Luc Dardenne was quoted by Reuters as saying.

The brothers said they chose to tell the story through the eyes of a young boy, who also has to navigate a sexual awakening and an angsty relationship with his mother, to keep the audience onside, in a tale that also seeks to explore his possible redemption.

“The film isn’t a courtroom, the film is not an act of accusation. Our mission from the beginning was to see how this young Ahmed could - or couldn’t - be brought back towards life,” Jean-Pierre Dardenne said.

Summer of Changsha to premiere without its team's presence at Cannes

The premiere of Chinese movie Summer of Changsha will go ahead at the Cannes film festival, despite the team behind it saying they would not be there.

Zu Feng's tale of betrayal—which is due to screen on 22 May — is one of two Chinese noir movies showing at the world's biggest film festival. But on Tuesday, 21 May, speculation was mounting that it had become the third Chinese film to be pulled from a major festival this year after falling foul of the censors.

In a message posted on the film's official account on Chinese social media platform Weibo, the producers said: "Due to technical reasons, the producer and all leading creators of the film Summer of Changsha will not participate in the 72nd Cannes Film Festival and the related official activities."

The festival said the premiere would go ahead without the director and cast.

Movie poster depicts a decapitated Donald Trump

The poster of When Women Rule the World

A new movie project being presented during the Cannes Film Festival's Market has created significant buzz for depicting a decapitated Donald Trump lookalike on its poster. The poster is from movie titled When Women Rule the World, and is styled as a B-movie poster such common during the 1950s, reports The Hollywood Reporter. It features a bikini-clad woman holding two decapitated heads, one wearing a "Make America Great Again" hat and the other a zombie. The tagline for Sheldon Silverstein's film reads, "Meet the First Lady of the Future with her Heads of State."

(With inputs from agencies)