Melvin Van Peebles

Critics' Week featured a special "encounter" with Melvin Van Peebles - actor, musician, writer and journalist - who presened his latest made-in-France film shot in digital format, Le conte de ventre plein (Bellyful).

• Melvin Van Peebles

Serge le Peron

We are all guilty, myself more than the others," said Dostoyevsky in the introduction to "Crime and Punishment." The quote is used to set the stage for Serge Le Péron's L'Affaire Marcorelle, a psycho-drama featuring a prosecutor who suffers from nightmares and walks the line between dream and reality.

• Serge le Peron

Good Housekeeping

I fell in love with these characters, what can I say?" says writer/director Frank Novak, about his outrageous satire, Good Housekeeping. Winner of the Grand Jury prize at Slamdance, it explores the white-trash life of loud-mouthed long-time married couple Don (Bob Miller) and Donatella (Petra Western). FilmFestivals.com met with Frank, Bob and Petra.

• Good Housekeeping Team

Haley Joel Osment

Haley Joel Osment (The Sixth Sense) charmed the press corps at an early conference promoting his latest film co-starring Willem Defoe. Armed with an easy and infectious laugh, the quick witted Osment spoke of his new film, Edges of the Lord, and his co-stars. "All actors are different," he said, "you can't compare."

• Haley Joel Osment

Anna Thomson

Favorite actress of Amos Kollek, who incarnated the main character in both Sue and Fiona, Anna Thomson is in Cannes for Kollek's latest film in competition, Fast Food, Fast Women. She talked about her latest role.

• Anna Thomson

Ryo Ishibashi

Star of Directors' Fortnight film Koroshi. The film tells the story of Yuhi Hamazaki (Ryo Ishibashi), a gentle and honest man ­ "a typical Japanese salaried man," says director Kobayashi ­ who gets laid off from his job during the recent Japanese recession. Ryo shared his thoughts about the character.

• Ryo Ishibashi

Amos Kollek

Novelist, screenwriter, actor, documentarist, director, producer... no one knows the twists and turns of film-making, from the inside out, from concept to release, better than Amos Kollek. Born in 1947 in Jerusalem, Kollek has always gone his own way. He is in Cannes with competition film Fast Food, Fast Women starring AnnaThomson.

• Amos Kollek

Irene Jacob

Star of Three Colors: Red and The Double Life of Veronique (Kieslowski), she is in Cannes for the Directors' Fortnight entry, L'Affaire Marcorelle, opposite Jean-Pierre Leaud (The 400 Blows).

• What interested you in the role? • Did Serge Le Peron give you special directions for the love scene? • Are you pleased to be back in Cannes once again?

Oscar Roehler and Hannelore Elsner

Ten years after the fall of the Wall in Berlin, The Unapproachable is appropriate in helping to redress some of the imbalance in measuring the cross-border cultural significance of that historical event. Director Oscar Roehler and Actress Hannelore Elsner commented on the film.

• Hannelore Elsner • Oscar Roehler

Maria De Medeiros

Born in Portugal, Maria has received international acclaim as an actress, noted for her roles in Tres Irmaos (Best Actress at Venice 94), Pulp Fiction opposite Bruce Willis and Henry and Jane. Captains of April, screening in Certain Regard, marks her directorial debut.

• First actress, now director, tell us about the working atmosphere on the set of Captains of April • Do you have a film website, • This is your fourth time in Cannes...

Christina Andreef

This Australian director, long-time assistant to Jane Campion, is in Cannes for the special screening of Soft Fruit, presented during the Critics' Week by FIPRESCI. She talked to us about Jane Campion, the Creteil Women's Film Fest, as well as the father/son relationship and the round-figured actresses in her film.

• Christina Andreef

In Cannes with her new film Things You Can Tell Just by Looking at Her, Italian actress ValeriaGolino is known for her role as the bombshell in Hot Shots. Fluent in four languages, she prefers to swear in Greek.

• What drew you to this film? • Could you explain the meaning of the title? • Do you have a preference for American or Europe?

Bernardo Bertolucci

Bernardo Bertolucci is the Critics' Week Godfather; he himself was brought into the limelight as a budding filmmaker in this selection with Prima Della Rivoluzione (Before the Revolution) in 1964.

• How did you become the Godfather of Critics' Week? •You left for China in the 80s. Why was that?

Jean Claude Van Damme

Belgium-born power- house star of Hollywood action films was former European Karate Champion. In 1981 he moved to California and opened a gym. His first screen appearance was opposite Chuck Norris in Missing in Action. In Cannes promoting his new film the Replicant by Ringo Lam, our reporters met with both of themon the terrace of the Noga Hotel to get some inside comments on the movie.

• What should we expect from this psychological/action movie?

Claire Clouzot

Seven men and one woman -myself- screened 410 feature films for the 39th International Critic's Week at the Cannes Film Festival. We focused on first-timers and second-timers. It was exhausting, exciting, titillating and sometimes very brutal.

• Tell us about the committee and how many films were viewed? • Is there a re-occuring theme in the films? • Why are there so many women filmmakers in France as compared to elsewhere in the world? • Are there any American films in the selection this year?

Kathy Baker

Daughter of Quakers, she started acting at 10. Although she stopped her theatre studies, she did receive a diploma from the University of California, Berkeley in French. Baker then took up cooking, but was still drawn to the stage. She gave an acclaimed performance in Sam Shepard's "Fool for Love" and had an increasing success in films, notably Best Supporting Actress by the National Society of Film Critics for her role in Street Smart (1987). She talked to our reporters about her role as Rose in the Certain Regard film Things You Can Tell Just by Looking at Her.

• Tell us about your character Rose? • Does the character resonate with Kathy Baker in real life? • Have you made the move to the Internet?

Sabine Franel

For her first feature film, Le premier du nom, Sabine Franel left her post as editor (notably for docu-filmmaker Emile Weiss and Manoel de Oliveira) and put "thoughts into movement" tracing her family tree back to "the first to carry the name" (premier du nom). Being screened in the Certain Regard section, the 112-minute long film was produced by Humbert Balsan and is distributed by Pyramide.
Press contact: Nicole Lambert (in Cannes: 06 07 17 31 05)

• Tell us about your film and the role Judaism played? • What were your personal revelations while making this film and was the Holocaust an integral factor? • What was your reaction to being selected at Cannes? • Do you consider this film to be a film made by a woman?

Marie-Pierre Macia

This is her second year in charge of the selection Directors' Fortnight, which she shares with Jacques Gerber and Christine Ravet. Her ideal reason for selecting a film: "un coup de coeur", the process of falling in love with a film. "Every time you see something that's really good, your faith and hope are reborn. It happens all the time. My only real fear is of not spotting a film that's of superior quality."

• What is the specific orientation of the Directors' Fortnight? • What criteria do you apply when selecting a film? • How many women are represented in the selection?

Jeanne Labrune

French writer Jeanne Labrune (who wrote and directed the 1998 drama Si Je T'Aime, Prends Garde A Toi) wrote the screenplay for Vatel while Oscar-winning playwright Tom Stoppard (Shakespeare In Love) adapted the it for English audiences.

• What was your inspiration for the screenplay ? • Did you and Tom Stoppard write the sceenplay together? • What did you think of the final film cut?