Claire Clouzot presents each of the seven films and why the committe selected them.

Les autres filles (The Other Girls, France) plunges deep into the life of an 18-year old apprentice in a hair-dressing school near Toulouse, Solange, not a very modern girl. Her father is busy with his farm, her mother with her adventures at night. She befriends a daring Black girl, Gary and learns to laugh. She finds warmth at a wedding where she does everybody's hair, among Maghreb and Turkish people.
A film by Caroline Vignal, who, after the FEMIS film school, did two shorts and started to polish her "Solange", a recurrent character in her work. Under the charming surface of the film, I read beauty, suffering and the pleasure of discovering girls in the working world of hair-dressing and in the migrant workers community of France.

Amores Perros (Dogs and Loves, Mexico) Characters converge in a car accident but they don't meet. Octavio is in love with his wife's brother and is trying to go away with her. He makes money with dog fights, whereas Daniel and his fiancée lose their small dog and Luis, a homeless old man, cures dogs miraculously.
A film with great punch and a profound impact on the viewer. In the continuation of Arturo Ripstein's cinema, this film is not for the weak at heart. The director, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, was a DJ for the n°1 rock music station of Mexico, WFM and he directed and produced TV commercials. A great director is born with Dogs and Loves.

De L'Histoire Ancienne (Ancient History, France). The central character, Guy, is affected by his father's death. Contrary to his brother and sister who take things as they come and are ready to put their mother in a home, Guy begins an enquiry. His father was a man of the French Resistance and a Communist. Guy's quest leads him to strange borders, to a form of anarchy. For his first effort, Orso Miret makes a very mature and rigorous film. One would think this film typically French--dialogues, bourgeois surrounding-- but Miret fills the story with strange detours. One never knows what is surging from the past to destroy those who find the truth.

Good Housekeeping (USA). Don and Donatella are splitting up. Don stays in the house with his beer and his cronies. Donatella works as a fork lift operator and has fallen in love with the accountant of the factory, Marion. Don builds a wall to segregate Donatella. "Women are for zoos..." Frank Novak's trashy-comedy is a delight. The perpetual contest of shouting and insulting is tainted with much humour. The house is a fire hydrant. When you open the water, it washes laywers, policemen and the rest of the "normal" crowd . Nothing remains, but a bazooka. Frank Novak has expanded a short on the same subject and he is thinking of writing a TV series, as a sequel to Good Housekeeping. This American director is the illegitimate son of Crumb and John Cassavetes.

Happy End (Korea). Min-Ki, a banker, has just been fired. He watches TV, guards his baby son, while his wife goes to work. Slowly he realizes his wife is having an affair with a friend of hers. Slowly, her excitement is dulled by her hysband's apparent passivity. But the bomb is about to explode.
Be careful of the serene surface of this film. Jung-Ji-Woo has done only one short before called A Bit Better. This first sumptuous feature is certainly more than "a bit better".

Hidden Whisper (Taiwan). Three ages of women: a little girl of 5, a rebel of 18 who meets love in the street during a motorbike accident, and a 30-year old who comes to terms with her life when she comes to terms with her dying mother.
A strange, surreal and intensely beautiful film from a woman director, the first to be shown at Cannes coming from Taïpei. Vivian Chang is totally original. We were falling asleep two days before final deliberation of the Selection Committee, one midnight. She woke us up unanimously.

Krampack (Spain). A gay film about charming people. Dani and Nico are two fifteen year old buddies spending their vacation in Dani's parents' house. They are looking for sex. For one of them, it is going to be girls (but that's not so sure), for the other one, it is definitely men (but?) This gentle comedy is very subtle, quite bucolic. This is our only "second" film in the Selection. Cesc Gay has chosen his aka very well.