Cannes Film Festival 2022 Day 9

Competition

TORI ET LOKITA (TORI AND LOKITA) directed by JEAN-PIERRE & LUC DARDENNE

NOSTALGIA directed by MARIO MARTONE

LEILA’S BROTHERS directed by SAEED ROUSTAEE

A long and absorbing Tehran clan drama, played out in a series of mistakes. An unexpectedly rich experience, says Deadline.

STARS AT NOON directed by CLAIRE DENIS – verdict: set in Latin America, a misfire for a revered director.

Première

ELVIS directed by BAZ LUHRMANN received a 10-minute standing ovation.

“No review would ever mean the most to us than the woman who was married to Elvis Presley,” said Luhrmann at the Cannes press conference.

After showing the film to Priscilla Presley, he received a note from her in which she said, “‘I just wasn’t ready for that. Every breath about Austin [Butler], every move, the spirit of the person, the humanity’” recalled Luhrmann, “‘If my husband were here today he’d look him in the eye and say ‘How dare you? You are me.’”

Luhrmann emphasised that the entire Presley clan including Lisa Marie and Riley Keough was over the moon for the film. “The greatest review I got from them in my life; now there’s something they can look to that is the truth of the humanity of the man.

It’s really about America in the fifties, sixties and seventies. Elvis was at the center of pop culture in all three decades — the good, the bad and the ugly,” said Luhrmann.

(L-R) Olivia DeJonge, Jerry Schilling, Tom Hanks, Austin Butler, Baz Luhrmann, Priscilla Presley, Alton Mason and Natasha Bassett..

THE VAGABONDS directed by DOROTEYA DROUMEVA

DODO directed by PANOS H. KOUTRAS

Un Certain Regard

DOMINGO Y LA NIEBLA (DOMINGO AND THE MIST) directed by ARIEL ESCALANTE MEZA

MEDITERRANEAN FEVER directed by MAHA HAJ

BACHENNYA METELYKA (BUTTERFLY VISION) directed by MAKSIM NAKONECHNYI

Maksym Nakonechnyi says being here is like being in a “parallel universe.” The director’s film Butterfly Vision, about a young female soldier who returns home after being held captive for months only to discover she is pregnant after being raped by her warden, is playing in Un Certain Regard.

It was while editing the documentary Invisible Battalion, which documented female Ukrainian soldiers, when he got his inspiration for Butterfly Vision. “The experiences of the female soldier impressed me a lot,” he says. “Their optics, their approach to the war and what’s happening to their role in the war was so impressive.”

Being an independent filmmaker in the circumstances of war with no access to financing is impossible, he says.