The New Zealand International Film Festival has announced a behemoth-sized list of 21 titles from Cannes playing as part of the 2017 programme. This includes all the major competition winners and the closing night film (for both Auckland and Wellington) Good Time. Oh hey, it’s presented by Flicks!
“The closing night film will send festival goers back into the real world with a shot of pure adrenaline.” says Gosden. Bring it.
From the In Competition selection
BPM (Beats Per Minute)
Early 90s-set French AIDs activism drama and winner of the Grand Prix at Cannes 2017. From the writer of the Oscar-nominated The Class.
A Gentle Creature
A woman travels to a remote prison to track down her incarcerated husband. Loosely inspired by Dostoyevsky’s short story of the same name.
Good Time
Hypnotic crime drama set in NYC starring Robert Pattinson as a man looking to get his brother – busted for an attempted bank robbery – out of prison. This is the closing night film for Auckland and Wellington.
Happy End
Isabelle Huppert leads this bourgeois family ensemble drama from the two-time Cannes Palme d’Or-winning Austrian auteur, Michael Haneke.
The Killing of a Sacred Deer
Colin Farrell reunites with his Lobster director to play a man whose placid domestic life is slowly disrupted by the demands of a teenage stalker.
Loveless
A divorcing couple’s son disappears during one of their bitter arguments in this Cannes Jury Prize-winning Russian drama.
The Square
Palme d’Or-winning satirical drama from Swedish helmer Ruben Östlund (Force Majeure). Stars Claes Bang and Elisabeth Moss.
From Cannes Un Certain Regard
The Desert Bride
Paulina García (Gloria) plays an uprooted woman who stumbles into a new-found freedom in this Argentinean-Chilean debut feature.
Western
Drama from Valeska Grisebach (Longing) that mines the tensions and the bonds that develop between a German construction camp and a nearby Bulgarian village.
Wind River
The feature debut from Taylor Sheridan, writer of Hell or High Water and Sicario, is a murder investigation thriller starring Jeremy Renner and Elizabeth Olsen.
The Workshop
Cannes Palme d’Or-winning filmmaker Laurent Cantet directs Marina Foïs (Polisse) in this suspenseful drama that unfolds at a writers’ workshop.
From Cannes Directors’ Fortnight
I am Not a Witch
Drama revolving around nine-year-old Shula who is accused of witchcraft in Zambia, where the marginalisation of ‘witches’ continues in 2017.
Let the Sunshine In
Juliette Binoche leads this frank, rueful, Cannes award-winning dramedy co-written by novelist and playwright Christine Angot.
Marling the Murderer in Four Acts
A wily feminist spin on a western tale of murder and revenge from Indonesian director Mouly Surya.
Patti Cake$
An unlikely rapper becomes a hip-hop legend in the making in acclaimed music video director Geremy Jasper’s debut feature.
Cannes Special Screenings
Claire’s Camera
Isabelle Huppert (Elle) and Kim Min-hee (The Handmaiden) lead this comic drama set at the Cannes Film Festival.
The Venerable W.
Chilling documentary about the Buddhist monk whose Islamophobic rhetoric is stoking ethnic cleansing in Myanmar.
Cannes Midnight Screenings
The Merciless
South Korean noir thriller starring Kyoung-gu Sul and Si-wan Yim as two prison mates with big plans for after their release.
A Prayer Before Dawn
Joe Cole is Muay Thai fighter Billy Moore in Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire’s adaptation of his tale of survival in Thailand’s Klong Prem prison.
Cannes Out of Competition
Faces Places
Legendary director Agnès Varda partners up with photo-muralist JR to make art and friends in this documentary.
Napalm
Documentary in which renowned French filmmaker Claude Lanzmann (Shoah), now 91, revisits a haunting North Korean encounter.
