Cannes Film Festival 2024 Lineup Announcement
The Festival de Cannes, the most prestigious film gathering in the world, has just announced the official lineup for 2024. Released on April 11, the lineup for this year’s festival features a variety of works by independent filmmakers. Greta Gerwig is presiding over this year’s jury for the 77th annual Cannes Film Festival, which is scheduled to start on May 14.
Prior to the press conference, a few films had been confirmed to debut at the festival, including Francis Ford Coppola’s “Megalopolis,” George Miller’s “Furiosa” and Kevin Costner’s Western “Horizon: An American Saga.”
Opening night of the festival will feature “The Second Act” by French filmmaker Quentin Dupieux. The French comedy features performances by Léa Seydoux and Vincent Lindon. This premiere at Cannes marks Dupieux’s first out-of-competition film screening at the festival. The film’s official synopsis, according to the Festival de Cannes website, describes “Florence [wanting] to introduce David, the man she’s madly in love with, to her father Guillaume. But David isn’t attracted to Florence and wants to throw her into the arms of his friend Willy. The four characters meet in a restaurant in the middle of nowhere.”
Francis Ford Coppola’s “Megalopolis” is his self-produced $120 million passion project that has been in the works since the early 1980s, following the release of “Apocalypse Now.” The science fiction film follows an architect who aims to rebuild a destroyed New York City-like metropolis into a sustainable utopia. Following the April 11 press conference, festival director Thierry Frémaux addressed the film’s lack of a distribution deal prior to the premiere. Back in 2017, a new rule had been created requiring all of the competition films to commit to French theatrical distribution.
This year’s festival will also feature the premiere of Yorgos Lanthimos’ “Kinds of Kindness,” a follow-up to the Oscar-winning “Poor Things.” “Kinds of Kindness” is described as an anthology film told in three parts: the first follows a man without choice who tries to take control of his own life; the second follows a policeman who is alarmed that his wife who was missing-at-sea has returned and seems a different person; and the third installment follows a woman determined to find a specific someone with a special ability, who is destined to become a prodigious spiritual leader.
Last year’s announcement of Yves Saint Laurent’s production company brought forth a new mix of fashion and film, and the company’s first feature-length film is set to premiere at the 77th annual Festival de Cannes. David Cronenberg’s “The Shrouds,” produced by Saint Laurent Productions, is confirmed on the official selection list for 2024. The horror film follows a grieving widower and businessman, who builds a device to contact the dead inside a burial shroud.
The Donald Trump movie, or “The Apprentice,” is also set to premiere at the festival. Iranian-Danish filmmaker Ali Abbasi’s Trump biopic follows the former US president’s rise to power and delves into the relationship between Trump and Roy Cohn, the infamous right-wing lawyer. The film’s logline describes “The Apprentice” as “a dive into the underbelly of the American empire.” The feature will be among the others screening in competition for the coveted Palme d’Or at this year’s festival.