The competition at the Cannes Festival: Without Hollywood, but with Sandra Hülser again

But for Cannes, Hollywood only serves the function of an attention amplifier, providing a pleasant background noise for world cinema. Quentin Tarantino, Tom Cruise, Cate Blanchett and Denzel Washington are welcome guests on the Croisette, but the strength of Cannes in recent years has been confirmed above all by the fact that it hosts the international triumphs – including the Oscars – of films such as “Parasite” (South Korea), “Drive My Car” (Japan), “Anatomy of a Case” (France), “The Secret Agent” (Brazil) and “Sentimental Value”. (Norway) began.

Frémaux has a lot to be proud of on this list. In “Variety” he said on this point that Cannes is currently the state of the art of film art. He doesn’t have to worry about a lack of stars this year either; they’ve been finding their best roles outside of Hollywood for a long time.

Ira Sachs is the only US director in the competition this year with the AIDS era musical “The Man I Love” with Rami Malek in the lead role. It will be interesting to see whether the much-anticipated crime drama “Paper Tiger” from Cannes darling James Gray (starring Adam Driver, Scarlett Johansson and Miles Teller) is among the titles that will be nominated.

Sandra Hülser and Valeska Grisebach in the competition

German film is also making its presence felt again this year. Berlin director Valeska Grisebach is celebrating her premiere in the competition with “The Dreamed Adventure,” her first film since “Western,” which also celebrated its world premiere in Cannes in 2017 in the Un Certain Regard series. And like its predecessor, “The Dreamed Adventure” goes back to Eastern Europe, to the border area between Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey, where a young woman enters into an obscure deal to help an old acquaintance.

Last year, Mascha Schilinski won the jury prize with her complex female portrait “Looking into the Sun”; Perhaps jury chairman Park Chan-wook also enjoys German auteur cinema. Grisebach is one of five directors competing for the Palme d’Or, alongside the Austrian Marie Kreutzer and the French Léa Mysius.

With Sandra Hülser, the currently best-known face of German film is once again represented in the competition, this time in the long-awaited follow-up to the Oscar winner “Cold War” by Polish director Paweł Pawlikowski. In “Fatherland” Hülser plays Erika Mann, the daughter of Nobel Prize winner Thomas Mann (Hanns Zischler). In the post-war chaos, father and daughter embark on a journey through a country in ruins, from the American sector to Weimar, which is occupied by the Soviet Union. Pawlikowski is a master at tracing the mentality of 1950s Europe in his films, soberly and empathetically. Undoubtedly another great achievement from Hülser.

Carte blanche for the Spanish veteran Pedro Almodóvar

The Cannes Premiere series will also feature the new film by Volker Schlöndorff, “Visitation”, the film adaptation of the period novel of the same name by Jenny Erpenbeck, with Martina Gedeck, Susanne Wolf, Lars Eidinger and Ulrich Matthes in the leading roles. This rather curious section has become a kind of gathering place for the old masters and the forgotten ones. John Travolta can also present his directorial debut “Propeller One-Way” here.

The heart of the festival, however, is dedicated to international auteur cinema of the present – ​​and perhaps also the future. Many of today’s leading auteur filmmakers are represented in the competition this year: Asghar Farhadi, Hirokazu Kore-eda, László Nemes, Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Andrei Zvyagintsev, Lukas Dhont and Cristian Mungiu. In addition, Pedro Almodóvar, whose contribution “Bitter Feast” is already playing with great success in his home country of Spain; the Spaniard is the only filmmaker to enjoy this privilege at Cannes.

The big stars are not missing in this international field either: the Romanian Mungiu filmed in Norway with Renate Reinsve and Sebastian Stan, while the film by the Iranian exile Farhadi boasts Isabelle Huppert and Catherine Deneuve. (The latter also has a role in Kreutzer’s “Gentle Monster” alongside Léa Seydoux.)

The Berlinale can only dream of a line-up like this, but that reveals more about the importance of Cannes in international cinema. For a film today, even appearing in a supporting series can mean a big breakthrough; An example of this is the opening film of Un Certain Regard, “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma” by Jane Schoenbrun.

Many people had US indie production on their list for the race for the Palme d’Or, but the “small competition” (for filmmakers who are not yet established) has noticeably gained in prestige again after a gentle reform. So you have to give Frémaux one thing: under his aegis, an Olympic spirit has returned to the Croisette. Being there is everything!