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A Cannes Apart: 2022 Directors’ Fortnight

All of the different awards bestowed at Cannes can become a bit confusing to absorb. There’s the Palme d’Or, the most coveted award at the festival, if not in the entire film industry, which goes to the best overall film in contention. This year 21 films, that ranged from Cronenberg’s Crimes of the Future to Ali Abbasi’s Holy Spider were chosen as contenders. These films played at the Grand Théâtre Lumière, and a jury that consisted of actors (like Noomi Rapace), producers (like Rebecca Hall), and screenwriters and directors (like Jeff Nichols) chose Ruben Östlund’s Triangle of Sadness as this year’s winner.

Claire Denis’s Stars at Noon and Lukas Dhont’s Close shared this year’s Grand Prix, which is the jury’s second most significant prize. The award actually called the Jury Prize went to Eo, directed by Jerzy Skolimowski, and Le Otto Montagne, directed by Charlotte Vandermeersch and Felix van Groeningen. Another well-known award at Cannes is the Prix Un Certain Regard, an award aimed at celebrating innovation and non-traditional storytelling. These twenty films (this year’s winner was The Worst Ones (Les Pires), directed by Lise Akoka and Romane Gueret) were projected at Salle Debussy which, along with Théâtre Lumière, is located in the heart of the festival at the Palace of Festivals (the Palais des Festivals).

But plenty happens outside of the Palais at Cannes. The Director’s Fortnight is a collection of films that are screened at Theatre Croisette, a smaller, homier venue that is attached to the JW Marriott (the former site of the Palace of Festivals, which is now about five minutes away).

Created in 1969 by the French Directors’ Guild, the Directors’ Fortnight is a selection of films running concurrently with the Cannes Film Festival, but totally independent from the main event. On  La Quinzaine (the Fortnight) website the organization describes the event as “a free-spirited and non-competitive selection and it is open also to non-professional spectators who attend the Cannes Film Festival. Each year, the Directors’ Fortnight selection showcases films without constraints of genre, format, duration or geographical origin.”

While Fortnight films can also be selected for prizes like the Caméra d’Or Award (or the Golden Camera), an award for the best first feature film at the festival, the Fortnight allows partners like Europa Cinemas and France’s Writers’ Guild to award prizes associated with its selections.

 

 

One Fine Morning won this year’s Europa Cinemas Cannes Label for best European film. “Mia Hansen-Løve’s One Fine Morning is a beautifully made film with very relatable and well-drawn characters. Her observation of human life is astutely drawn – the tussle for a single mother between her child, her sick father, and her lover,” a Europa Cinemas Network jury noted. The film kept its star Léa Seydoux busy at Cannes as she was also promoting her role in Crimes of the Future.

And emerging director Thomas Salvador’s The Mountain won the SACD Prize, awarded by France’s Writers’ Guild for the best French-language movie in the section. The film deals with friendship and the supernatural in the French Alps. “Prizing ‘The Mountain,’ we are prizing the prodigious audacity and radiant simplicity of generous filmmaking. The spectacular and intimate ambition of the film, its delicate writing, and its stylistic ambition take us on a memorable journey,” said SACD’s Delphine Gleize.

Other notable films in this year’s 54th edition of The Director’s Fortnight included Alex Garland’s Men, a horror-thriller starring Jessie Buckley that takes aim at the patriarchy, and Saela Davis & Anna Rose Holmer’s psychological drama God’s Creatures starring Paul Mescal and Emily Watson.

Here is the full lineup of films that ran from May 18-27:

  • Scarlet by Pietro Marcello – Opening Film
  • 1976 by Manuela Martelli
  • The Water by Elena López Riera
  • The Dam by Ali Cherri
  • The Super 8 Years by Annie Ernaux & David Ernaux-Briot
  • Ashkal by Youssef Chebbi
  • The Five Devils by Léa Mysius
  • De Humani Corporis Fabrica by Véréna Paravel & Lucien Castaing-Taylor
  • Continental Drift (South) by Lionel Baier
  • Enys Men by Mark Jenkin
  • Falcon Lake by Charlotte Le Bon
  • Will-o’-the-Wisp by João Pedro Rodrigues
  • Funny Pages by Owen Kline
  • God’s Creatures by Anna Rose Holmer & Saela Davis
  • Harkis by Philippe Faucon
  • Men by Alex Garland
  • The Mountain by Thomas Salvador
  • Pamfir by Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk
  • Paris Memories by Alice Winocour
  • Under the Fig Trees by Erige Sehiri
  • One Fine Morning by Mia Hansen-Løve
  • A Male by Fabian Hernández
  • The Green Perfume by Nicolas Pariser – Closing Film