‘The red carpets will be sumptuous!” announced Cannes festival director Pierre Lescure bullishly, seated aside the beaming general delegate Thierry Frémaux. And the mood is pretty bold, now that the festival is returning to a post-Covid normality after cancellation and then disruption in 2020 and 2021.
The festival apparently isn’t giving us the new David Lynch movie that had been feverishly predicted – and the traditional patriotic pining for Brits continues, with none in competition this year. But Cannes is lining up new work from its established alpha auteurs: Claire Denis, David Cronenberg, George Miller, Kelly Reichardt, Park Chan-wook and James Gray, as well as the returns of Palme winners Ruben Östlund, the Dardenne brothers, Cristian Mungiu and Hirokazu Kore-eda.
