Cannes Film Festival 2018: The Salesman director Asghar Farhadi's Everybody Knows to open 71st edition

Oscar-winning   Iranian auteur Asghar Farhadi’s new film, Everybody Knows, starring Javier Bardem, Penelope Cruz and Ricardo Darin, will be the opening film of the 71st Cannes Film Festival this May, as reported by Variety. [caption id=“attachment_4419459” align=“alignnone” width=“1400”]  Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz in a still from Everybody Knows. YouTube[/caption] The film, written by Farhadi, follows the journey of Laura, Penelope Cruz’s character, from Buenos Aires to her native village in Spain, where a family reunion gets disrupted, changing the course of everyone’s lives. The filmmaker is best known for _The Salesman,_ his 2016 film which had won two honours at Cannes, and had gone on to win the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. Everybody Knows, a psychological thriller, will be his first time opening the prestigious film festival, and only the second Spanish language film to open Cannes, after Pedro Almodovar’s Bad Education in 2004, as reported by Variety. The film’s selection as the opening film, a slot usually reserved for a French or English language film, points to the changes festival director Thierry Fremaux has intended to put into effect this year. The artistic director of the festival aimed to kick off the festival with a film that combines both a critically acclaimed auteur and a stellar star cast. As a part of reorienting the Cannes in its 71st year, for the coming decades, radical changes to the festival include the unprecedented decision of simultaneous screening for the press and world premiere, breaking with the tradition of a special screening for the press and critics in advance, which often unfairly influenced the audience reactions in the ensuing world premier. Further, the 12-day annual event in the French Riviera will now start on a Tuesday and end on a Saturday instead of the customary Sunday, as reported by Hindustan Times. Watch the trailer here: