Alain Guiraudie, special guest to Les Films de Cannes à Bucarest 2016

     French director Alain Guiraudie, renowned for his erotic thriller L’Inconnu du lac/Stranger by the Lake, is the special guest of the Festival Les Films de Cannes à Bucarest (14 – 23 October).

     The filmmaker will present his new feature, Rester Vertical/Staying Vertical, deemed by the international press as the shock-film of this year's edition of Cannes Festival. One of the revelations of the year in French cinema, actor Damien Bonnard plays the role of a screenwriter without inspiration, who leaves in search of the wolf in the mountains of South France. There, he meets Marie, who gives him a child, then abandones him. Explicit sex scenes and a live natural birth brought it the title of „shock-film”, the French critics comparing it with the features by Pier Paolo Pasolini.
     Disconcerting scenes are also to be found in the noir comedy Ma Loute/Slack Bay, the  film in the Cannes competition by Bruno Dumont (P’tit Quinquin, L’Humanité). At the core of the époque feature there is a burning love story between Ma Loute, son of a fisherman, and Billie, daughter of a bourgeois decadent family.
     Another époque feature in the Cannes competition talks about forbidden passions, Mal de pierres / From the Land of the Moon (directed by Nicole Garcia), starring Marion Cotillard and Louis Garrel. Cotillard plays the role of a young woman whose parents chose her husband, but who is keen on living her dream of finding true love in an era where this is considered scandalous. Or a sign of madness.
     Also in premiere in Romania, film lovers will have the chance to view another époque film in the running for the Palme d’Or: the erotic-psychological thriller The Handmaiden, by Park Chan-wook (Oldboy, Thirst), distinguished at Cannes with Prix Vulcain de l'Artiste-Technicien. The famous South Korean director adapted the novel „Fingersmith”, by Sarah Waters, moving the action from the Victorian era to the Korea of the '30s, during the Japanese occupation period. A maid comes to a vast estate owned by a woman and her tyrant uncle, having a secret plan. All goes according to the plan, until the two women discover unexpected emotions. Because of the sex scenes, the film is banned to those unde 18 years of age in certain countries.
     Another celebrated Asian author, Japanese director japonez Hirokazu Kore-eda, returns with After the Storm, „a painfully beautiful ode to tacit complexities in the life of a family”, as The Telegraph described it. The film centres on a divorced man, running out of money for alimony, who tries to find his place in the lives of his family and his son.
     The features Ma Loute and The Handmaiden are distributed in Romania by the Macondo Cultural Association.
     The Festival is also organising this year the conference Managing Talents, having as guests Ilene Feldman (talent manager, LBI Entertainment, SUA), Avy Kaufman (casting director, SUA), Richard Cook (Lisa Richard Agency, Ireland), Georg Georgi (Das Imperium, Germany).
     Details at: www.filmedefestival.ro // Les Films de Cannes a Bucarest