Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Indo French Bengali film by a Sri Lankan in Cannes Directors Fortnight










MUSHROOMS, CHHATRAK in Bengali, a Bengali film and an Indo-French co-production directed by Vimukthi Jayasundara, a Sri Lankan director trained at the FTII, Pune, is part of the line up of films in the Directors' Fortnight section at Cannes. So, Indian films have not completely drawn a blank at Cannes. This is not the first Cannes entry of Vimukthi. He had won Camera d'Or for his first film THE FORSAKEN LAND in 2005. His film was part of Un Certain Regard section that year. Camera d'Or is presented to the best debutante director in any of the Cannes sections, including parallel programmes like the Critics' Week and the Directors' Fortnight.

Created by the French Directors' Guild, the Directors' Fortnight seeks to aid filmmakers and contribute to their discovery by the critics and audiences alike. Since its inception, the Directors' Fortnight has showcased the first films of Werner Herzog, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Nagisa Oshima, George Lucas, Martin Scorsese, Ken Loach, Jim Jarmusch, Michael Haneke, Chantal Akerman, Spike Lee, Luc et Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Sofia Coppola, invit� Robert Bresson, Manoel de Oliveira, Stephen Frears, Jerzy Skolimowski, William Friedkin, Francis Ford Coppola... among others.

The entire slate of the Directors' Fortnight films chosen by its artistic director Frederic Boyer was revealed today and has a dominant European presence with 15 of the 21 films from the region. Here is the list.

DIRECTORS' FORTNIGHT SELECTION:

APRES LE SUD, France, Jean-Jacques Jauffret

BLUE BIRD, Belgium, Gust Van den Berghe

BREATHING, Austria, Karl Markovics

CODE BLUE, Netherlands-Denmark, Urszula Antoniak

CORPO CELESTE, Italy-Switzerland-France, Alice Rohrwacher

END OF SILENCE, France-Austria, Roland Edzard

LA FEE, Belgium-France, Dominique Abel, Fiona Gordon, Bruno Romy (opening film)

LES GEANTS, Belgium-France-Luxembourg, Bouli Lanners (closing film)

IMPARDONNABLES, France, Andre Techine

THE ISLAND, Bulgaria-Sweden, Kamen Kalev

IRIS IN BLOOM, France, Valerie Mrejen

JOAN CAPTIVE, France, Philippe Ramos


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