The Cinéfondation Selection at the 68th Cannes Film Festival; Abderrahmane Sissako, President of the Cinéfondation and Short Films Jury

In 2014, the internationally acclaimed Timbuktu caused the greatest emotion among the films in Competition at the Festival de Cannes. This year, Mauritanian director Abderrahmane Sissako returns for the 68^th Festival (13-24 May), where he will serve as President of the 2015 Cinéfondation and Short Films Jury. This great poet of contemporary Africa will follow in the footsteps of illustrious directors such as Abbas Kiarostami, Jane Campion, Michel Gondry, Hou Hsiao-hsien and Martin Scorsese.

Born in Mauritania but brought up in Mali and trained in filmmaking in the Soviet Union – at the Moscow VGIK –

The official poster of the 2015 Cannes Film Festival

Abderrahmane Sissako crosses cultures and continents. His work is imbued with a distinct strain of humanism and social consciousness and explores the complex relations between North and South as well as the fate of a much-beleaguered Africa.

The Game, directed by Sissako during his final year at Film School, was presented at La Semaine de la Critique in 1991, followed two years later by the medium-length Octobre, at Un Certain Regard. Life on Earth and Waiting for Happiness, both featured in the Directors’ Fortnight in 1998 and Un Certain Regard in 2002, thus firmly establishing the director on the international scene. Bamako, a political

This year, Mauritanian director Abderrahmane Sissako returns for the 68th Festival (13-24 May), where he will serve as President of the Cinéfondation and Short Films Jury.

parable caught between anger and utopianism, presented Out of Competition in 2006, was followed by Timbuktu in Competition in 2014. This vibrant fictional protest against religious fundamentalism was the first Mauritanian work to be nominated for Best Foreign Film at the Oscars.

The African director chooses to combat the ominous climate of current events with the power of art and his conviction. “I would never want to make a film that somebody else could make, and I want to see films that I would never make. What’s important to me is the cinema of anonymity – addressing the conflicts but above all the suffering endured by anonymous people – empowering them and making them visible, testifying to their courage and their beauty.”

The President of the Cinéfondation and Short Films Jury and the four figures from the arts world accompanying him will award three prizes to films submitted by Film Schools to the Cinéfondation Selection, as well as the Short Film Palme d’or – to be presented during the Festival’s closing ceremony on Sunday 24 May 2015 in the salle Buñuel.

La Tête haute by Emmanuelle Bercot to open the 68th Festival de Cannes

This year a female director will open the Festival. La Tête haute, a film by Frenchwoman, Emmanuelle Bercot, will open the 68^th edition of the Festival de Cannes on Wednesday 13 May.

La Tête haute tells the story of Malony, and his upbringing from six to eighteen years, as a children’s judge and social worker try to save him. It was filmed in the Nord-Pas de Calais, Rhône-Alpes and Paris area regions, with the participation of Catherine Deneuve, Benoît Magimel, Sara Forestier and Rod Paradot, who plays the main character.

La Tête haute © Luc Roux

Emmanuelle Bercot is a film director, screenwriter and actress. She studied dance at Cours Florent before attending La Fémis film school. Her talent was discovered at the 1997 Festival de Cannes, where her short film, Les Vacances, received the Jury Prize. This was confirmed two years later with a second Cinéfondation Prize for La Puce, her final-year student film. In 2001, her first feature film, Clement  (Clément), in which she plays the main character, made the Un Certain Regard Official Selection. Since then, she has directed several films, including On my Way (Elle s’en va) in 2014, in which Catherine Deneuve gave one of her best performances. Miss Bercot also co-wrote the script for Maïwenn’s Polis (Polisse), which earned her the main role in her latest film, Mon Roi.

Emmanuelle Bercot. Crédit : AFP

La Tête haute was written by Emmanuelle Bercot and Marcia Romano, with Guillaume Schiffman as director of photography. It is produced by Les Films du Kiosque, and co-produced by France 2 Cinéma, Wild Bunch, Rhône-Alpes Cinema and Pictanovo with the participation of Nord-Pas de Calais Region. It is sold by Elle Driver and distributed in France by Wild Bunch.

“The choice of this film may seem surprising, given the rules generally applied to the Festival de Cannes Opening Ceremony,” explains Thierry Frémaux, General Delegate of the Event. “It is a clear reflection of our desire to see the Festival start with a different piece, which is both bold and moving. Emmanuelle Bercot’s film makes important statements about contemporary society, in keeping with modern cinema. It focusses on universal social issues, making it a perfect fit for the global audience at Cannes.”

The world première of La Tête haute will be shown in the Grand Théâtre Lumière in the Palais des Festivals, and will be released in French cinemas the same day, on Wednesday 13 May. The film has already been sold in multiple countries.

As in previous years, the cinemas screening the film will be able to take part in the festivities and screen the Opening Ceremony, courtesy of Canal+ and an agreement between the Festival and the FNCF (French National Cinema Federation). This year, Lambert Wilson will host the ceremony.

The 68^th edition of the Festival de Cannes will take place from 13 to 24 May 2015. The Jury of the Competition will be chaired by American directors Joel and Ethan Coen, the Un Certain Regard Jury by the Italian-American actress and filmmaker Isabella Rossellini, and the Cinéfondation and Short Film Jury by Mauritian Film Director Abderrahmane Sissako.

Isabella Rossellini Named President of the Un Certain Regard Jury; Joel and Ethan Coen to preside over the Jury of the 68th Festival de Cannes

The Italian-American actress and director Isabella Rossellini has kindly consented to preside over the Un Certain Regard Jury

For the first time in the history of the Festival de Cannes, not one but two leading figures will chair the Jury. American filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen have accepted the invitation from President Pierre Lescure and General Delegate Thierry Frémaux to become the Presidents of the 68th edition of the Festival.

The daughter of Italian director Roberto Rossellini and Swedish actress Ingrid Bergman, to whom this year’s Festival de Cannes is to pay tribute, Isabella began her cinematic career alongside her father as a dresser, before becoming acting for the Taviani Brothers – family friends who gave her a role in The Meadow (1979). Her career quickly took an international turn, with White Nights by Taylor Hackford (1985), Tough Guys Don’t Dance by Norman Mailer (1987), Les Yeux noirs (1987) by Nikita Mikhalkov, Blue Velvet (1986) and then Wild at Heart (1990) by David Lynch, for whom she played a number of mysterious and tortured female roles.

She went on to star in a wider variety of guises for both television and film in Italy and America but returned to arthouse cinema with Abel Ferrara’s The Funeral (1996), and Two Lovers by James Gray (2008), in which she played a role of remarkable intensity. In 2010 she appeared in The Solitude of Prime Numbers by Saverio Costanzo.

In 2008 following a request from Robert Redford, she threw herself into directing a miniseries devoted to the reproduction, seduction techniques and maternal behaviour of animals. Green Porno, Seduce me and Mammas – all produced by SundanceTV – which revealed her irresistible comic talent and off-beat sense of humor.
Miss Rossellini and Jean-Claude Carrière then made a scenic version entitled Animals Distracted Me, which toured the world to great acclaim.

At the 2015 Festival de Cannes, Rossellini will take part in the tribute to her mother by attending the screening of Ingrid Bergman, in Her Own Words‏, a documentary by Stig Björkman being shown as part of the Cannes Classics. She will also launch her own ‘Ingrid Bergman Tribute’ to celebrate the centenary of her mother’s birth. The show, directed by Guido Torlonia and Ludovica Damiani, will be based on both her autobiography and her correspondence with Roberto Rossellini and will play on some at the world’s major theatres.

With the help of a soon-to-be-announced Jury made up of artists, journalists and festival directors, Rossellini will award the Un Certain Regard Prize and meet the winners on Saturday 23^rd of May, on the eve of the closing ceremony. The 2014 Un Certain Regard was awarded by President of the Jury Pablo Trapero to White God directed by Kornél Mundruczó.

Palme d’or laureates in 1991, the Coen brothers are part of the Festival’s history. Since Raising Arizona (1987), their second film, they have been invited into the Official Selection and have presented nine of their films, often winning the most prestigious prizes: the Palme d’or in 1991 for Barton Fink; the Award for Best Director in 1996 for Fargo as well as for The Man Who Wasn’t There in 2001. And in 2013, Inside Llewyn Davis won the Grand Prix, from Steven Spielberg.

From New York, where Joel studied film, the Coen brothers have become the embodiment of independent cinema, and let’s not forget that they have collaborated since their first film, Blood Simple in 1984, which won the Grand Prix at Sundance Film Festival. After Miller’s Crossing and Raising Arizona, both critically acclaimed, it was Barton Fink which brought international recognition. The brothers asserted their talent and originality in films such as Fargo, which was extremely popular with audiences, The Big Lebowski, which has acquired cult status with many film lovers, and O’Brother, Where Art Thou, which gave George Clooney his first big comedy role.

They always work together on films, for which Ethan (himself an author, with a short story collection, Gates of Eden, published in 1998 and newly re-edited in France) is the producer and Joel the director, and since 2004 they have credited themselves together for the script, directing, editing, and production, reinforcing the image of a kind of cinema as personal as it is brotherly.