Following last year’s Covid-19-forced cancellation, the Cannes Film Festival will return as a physical event and run from July 06-17. Although we are still in the middle of a pandemic, screenings will be allowed to operate at full capacity. One safeguard in place is that people present a vaccination certificate or a valid health pass via a PCR test.
As for the festival and its films, the event features over 63 films from around the world, with Oliver Stone’s JFK Revisited: Through The Looking Glass getting it’s premiere alongside In Front Of Your Face by Hong Sang-soo and Jane Par Charlotte by Charlotte Gainsbourg.
In the Official Competition section, made up of 24 titles, there is a wealth of talent which will get its world premiere – Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch and Leos Carax’s Annette (the opening films of the fest) are early standouts. We have one title from Japan.
Drive My Car 
ドライブ・マイ・カー 「Doraibu Mai Ka-」
Release Date: August 20th 2021
Duration: 179 mins.
Director: Ryusuke Hamaguchi
Writer: Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Takamasa Ooe (Script), Haruki Murakami (Original Novel)
Starring: Hidetoshi Nishijima, Toko Miura, Masaki Okada, Reika Kirishima,
Ryusuke Hamaguchi (Happy Hour) returns to Cannes following his 2018 film Asako I & II with an adaptation of the Haruki Murakami short story Drive My Car (from his collection of short stories Men Without Women). Earlier this year, Hamaguchi won the Silver Bear Award at Berlinale with Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy.
The lead actor is Hidetoshi Nishijima (License to Live) who is paired with Reika Kirishima (Permanent Nobara, Norwegian Wood) as a husband and wife separated by death and a secret.
Synopsis: Yusuke (Hidetoshi Nishijima) is a stage actor and a stage director who is happily married to his playwright wife Fukaku (Reika Kirishima). Two years later, Yusuke lives with a sense of loss and the vague knowledge that she had a secret, When he takes a directing gig at a theatre festival in Hiroshima, he drives down in his beloved Saab where he meets Misaki (Toko Miura) who has been assigned as his exclusive chauffeur. She’s a taciturn person but while Yusuke spends time with her, he becomes aware of things which he had turned a blind eye to until then…
In the Director’s Fortnight section, there is one short film by a familiar name from the Japanese animation world:
Anxious Body (Dir: Yoriko Mizushiri, 6 mins. website)
This is a Japan-France co-production which was commissioned work for the exhibition “Inter+Play at the Towada Art Center and was on display from January to May this year.
Synopsis (from the website): Living things, artificial things, geometry shapes, and lines. When these different things encounter, a new direction is born. Desiring it as the sense of touch, things keep chasing it forever. Animation of tactility you only can let yourself go with the streaming of the images.
Onoda – 10 000 Nights In The Jungle 
Release Date: July 21st 2021 (France)
Duration: 165 mins.
Director: Arthur Harari
Writer: Arthur Harari, Vincent Poymiro (Script)
Starring: Yuya Endo, Kanji Tsuda, Yuya Matsuura, Tetsuya Chiba, Shinsuke Kato, Issei Ogata,
This is an international co-production directed by French filmmaker Arthur Harari. It opens the Un Certain Regard section and retells a true story.
Synopsis from the Website: Japan, 1944. Trained for intelligence work, Hiroo Onoda, 22 years old, discovers a philosophy contrary to the official line : no suicide, stay alive whatever happens, the mission is more important than anything else.
Sent to Lubang, a small island in the Philippines where the Americans are about to land, his role will be to wage a guerilla war until the return of the Japanese troops.
The Empire will surrender soon after, Onoda 10.000 days later.
Here’s past coverage of the film festival:
Round-up – Like Someone in Love
Round-up – 11.25 The Day He Chose His Own Fate
Round-up – Blade of the Immortal