Cannes Film Festival Announces Official Selection Film Program for 2024

The Cannes Film Festival has announced its Official Selection programme for 2024 to compete for the Palme d'Or.

This was reported by the press service of the film festival.

This year's festival will take place in Cannes from 15 to 25 May. There are no Ukrainian directors in the competition programme.

The festival programme was presented by Thierry Fremaux. According to him, 2023 was a successful year for the global film industry, so it was difficult to compile the list of participants.

The Cannes Film Festival will be opened by Quentin Dupieux's comedy Le Deuxième Acte, but it will not participate in the competition programme.

In the main competition, the Palme d'Or will be awarded to the premieres of Francis Ford Coppola's Megalopolis, Yorgos Lanthimos' Kindnesses, David Cronenberg's Shroud, Paolo Sorrentino's Parthenon and others.

The programme of special screenings will include the documentary La belle de Gaza by Yolanda Soberman. The film is about transgender Palestinians from Gaza who emigrate to Tel Aviv.

"This film was made before the war, and it resonates especially today and continues to explore this painful territory on our planet," said Fremaux.

In 2024, the festival's jury was chaired by American director and screenwriter Greta Gerwig, who last year directed Barbie and became the first director to gross more than $1 billion at the box office.

At the closing ceremony of the Cannes Film Festival, George Lucas, the author of the Star Wars and Indiana Jones saga, will receive the Palme d'Or.

The film Limonov, the Ballad of Edichka by Russian director Kirill Serebrennikov will also compete for the top prize. This is a film about Russian writer, Ukrainophobe politician, and head of the National Bolshevik Party Eduard Limonov. The director spoke out against the "cancellation" of Russian culture because of Russia's attack on Ukraine and called for help for the families of Russian soldiers and Russian IDPs, as well as for sanctions against Russian oligarchs to be eased.

The programme of special screenings will also include the premiere of The Invasion, a film about the Russian invasion of Ukraine by another Russian, Sergei Loznitsa.

Film producer Mykhailo Mailis wrote that the team had been working on the film for two years to make a film about the "dear and courageous Ukrainian people". According to him, they "travelled all over Ukraine" for the filming.

In 2022, in Cannes, Loznitsa called Russian culture "Ukraine's achievement and wealth" and called its boycott archaic and destructive, contrary to "European principles of cultural pluralism and freedom of expression". At the same time, his films were included in the programme of a festival in France called From Lviv to the Urals (in addition to Loznitsa's films, the programme also included films by Russians, including Kira Muratova's Asthenic Syndrome). This was one of the reasons why Loznitsa was expelled from the Ukrainian Film Academy.