cineuropa

The Cannes Film Festival slowly finishes and it is already time to draw an outcome of these ten intense days of cinema. I will first remember some films: Je veux voir (I Want To See) by Joanna Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige, Ils mourront tous sauf moi (They Will All Die But Me) by the young Russian director (20 years) Valeira Gaï Guermanika, the two excellent interpretations of Jean-Pierre Darroussin (Le voyage aux Pyrenees (The Journey to the Pyrenees) and Les grandes personnes (Grown Ups)), Les bureaux de Dieu (God's Offices) by Claire Simon.

I will have seen here (yes even if one is not especially looking for seeing the “people”, we are here for that as well) Louis and Philippe Garrel, Luc Dardenne, Jonathan Zaccaï, Stefano Cassetti, Catherine Deneuve, Julie Gayet, Maradona, Cécile de France, Bouli Lanners, Emmanuelle Devos and Chiara Mastroianni, Joachim Lafosse, Charles Berling, Guillaume Depardieu, Jérémy Rénier, Monica Belluci, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, Emir Kusturica…

And then, there are all the images off: queues (yes, I always come back to that), the icy reception of Frontier of Dawn by Philippe Garrel, Cannes’ stiff evenings, these women who parade on the Croisette, these people who wait for hours the walking up the steps… and the Cannes inhabitants which play bowls two footsteps away from the Palace.

Cannes is a weird world in itself, disconnected from reality and true life… It is stuffed of stereotypes and clichés, which make that the Cannes Film Festival would not be what it is without them. One will never be able to really apprehend what happens there but by seeing it with his own eyes. I go back to Belgium exhausted (the Festival is far from being holidays!) but satisfied with this first experience in Cannes.

Aurélie