The official selection for this year’s Cannes Film Festival, taking place from May 8th to May 19th, 2018, has been announced. However, controversy accompanies the news as Thierry Fremaux, Cannes artistic director, stated that any distributor or producer that refuses to commit to theatrical release in France will be banned from the main competition. His decision to bar certain entities is a clear response to the festival’s showdown with Netflix last May: two films produced and distributed by the streaming platform, “Okja” and “They Meyerowitz Stories,” competed at Cannes in 2017 in accord with plans to release those films on Netflix in France on the same date as everywhere else in the world. This defied the French law that calls for a 36-month waiting period between theatrical release and streaming release. In response, Netflix refused to release “Okja” and “The Meyerowitz Stories” in French theaters altogether.
Despite Fremaux’s statement that Netflix films were welcome to participate in sections other than Cannes’ main competition, Netflix chief content officer Ted Sarandos decided to pull out of the festival completely, thus eliminating highly anticipated films such as the late Orson Welles’s “The Other Side of the Wind” from the lineup.
Still, the Cannes jury (this year headed by Cate Blanchett) will have a variety of buzzy films to consider, including Spike Lee‘s “BlacKkKlansman,” based on the true story of a black detective who infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan and became a chapter leader, and legendary filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard’s “The Image Book.” See below for this year’s full lineup.
Official selection
Competition:
Everybody Knows (dir. Asghar Farhadi) – opening film
At War (dir. Stéphane Brizé)
Dogman (dir. Matteo Garrone)
Le Livre d’Image (dir. Jean-Luc Godard)
Asako I & II (dir. Ryusuke Hamaguchi)
Sorry Angel (dir. Christophe Honoré)
Girls of the Sun (dir. Eva Husson)
Ash Is Purest White (dir. Jia Zhang-Ke)
Shoplifters (dir. Hirokazu Kore-eda)
Capernaum (dir. Nadine Labaki)
Burning (dir. Lee Chang-Dong)
BlacKkKlansman (dir. Spike Lee)
Under the Silver Lake (dir. David Robert Mitchell)
Three Faces (dir. Jafar Panahi)
Cold War (dir. Pawel Pawlikowski)
Lazzaro Felice (dir. Alice Rohrwacher)
Yomeddine (dir. AB Shawky)
Leto (L’Été) (dir. Kirill Serebrennikov)
Un Certain Regard
Angel Face (dir. Vanessa Filho)
Border (dir. Ali Abbasi)
El Angel (dir. Luis Ortega)
Euphoria (dir. Valeria Golino)
Friend (dir. Wanuri Kahiu)
The Gentle Indifference of the World (dir. Adilkhan Yerzhanov)
Girl (dir. Lukas Dhont)
The Harvesters (dir. Etienne Kallos)
In My Room (dir. Ulrich Köhler)
Little Tickles (dir. Andréa Bescond & Eric Métayer)
My Favorite Fabric (dir. Gaya Jiji)
On Your Knees, Guys (Sextape) (dir. Antoine Desrosières)
Sofia (dir. Meyem Benm’Barek)
Out of competition:
Solo: A Star Wars Story (dir. Ron Howard)
Le Grand Bain (dir. Gilles Lellouche)
Little Tickles (dir. Andréa Bescond & Eric Métayer)
Long Day’s Journey Into Night (dir. Bi Gan)
Midnight screenings
Arctic (dir. Joe Penna)
The Spy Gone North (dir. Yoon Jong-Bing)
Special screenings:
10 Years in Thailand (dir. Aditya Assarat, Wisit Sasanatieng, Chulayarnon Sriphol & Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
The State Against Mandela and the Others (dir. Nicolas Champeaux & Gilles Porte)
O Grande Circo Mistico (dir. Carlo Diegues)
Dead Souls (dir. Wang Bing)
To the Four Winds (dir. Michel Toesca)
La Traversée (dir. Romain Goupil)
Pope Francis: A Man of His Word (dir. Wim Wenders)
Critics week
Competition:
Chris The Swiss (dir. Anja Kofmel)
Diamantino (dir. Gabriel Abrantes & Daniel Schmidt)
One Day (dir. Zsófia Szilágyi)
Fugue (dir. Agnieszka Smoczynska)
Woman At War (dir. Benedikt Erlingsson)
Sauvage (dir. Camille Vidal-Naquet)
Sir (dir. Rohena Gera)
Special Screenings :
Wildlife, (dir. Paul Dano) – opening film
Our Struggles (dir. Guillaume Senez)
Shéhérazade (dir. Jean-Bernard Marlin)
Guy (dir. Alex Lutz) – closing film
