The 76th Cannes Film Festival kicks off this Friday after several Hollywood star-studded days with two films on the fringes of Turkey and Tunisia, and a grim work on the Nazi camp of Auschwitz by British Jonathan Glazer.
Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan, 2014 Palme d’Or winner (“Winter Dream”), takes off with “About Dry Grass” (“Kuru Otlar Ustun” in Turkish) about a teacher accused of bullying in Anatolia .
The issue of bullying is also addressed by Japanese Hirokazu Kore-eda in his film “Monster”, another candidate for the Palme d’Or.
At 64, Ceylan is an old acquaintance on the Croisette: He won Grand Jury Prizes for “Far Away” in 2003 and “Once Upon a Time in Anatolia” in 2011, and Best Director for “Three Monkeys” (2008). Received award. ,
For his part, Kouthar Ben Hania, 45, will present “Les Filles d’Olfa,” a story that highlights the disappearance of a Tunisian woman’s two daughters and “borders on essay”, according to Thierry Frémaux, general representative of the festival.
Ben Haniya was nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Film with “The Man Who Sold His Skin” two years ago, and participated in the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes in 2017 with “Beauty and the Dogs” .
The third film on Friday is “The Zone of Interest” by British Jonathan Glazer, based on a novel published in 2014 by his compatriot Martin Amis and which deals with the daily life of a Nazi commander and his family in charge of extermination. Camp in Auschwitz.
Glazer premiered in 2013 in “Under the Skin” as an alien Scarlett Johansson played with men, and in 2004 in “Reborn” with Nicole Kidman.
Near the Palacio de Festivals, the epicenter of the event, police detected a suspicious package at 1:30 p.m. local time (11:30 a.m. GMT) this Friday, triggering panic. The police intervened and cordoned off the area.
But shortly after it was dismissed as dangerous: the package was “a suitcase forgotten by a tourist,” said Philippe Luce, secretary general of the Alpes-Maritimes prefecture (south-east).
Not far away, also on the coast, a union protest took place at the newly renovated Carlton Hotel, where hotel workers voiced their opposition to the French government’s pension reform.
These protests have been going on for months, despite the fact that parliament has already approved the reform, and to avoid disturbances the prefecture ordered demonstrations banned in a perimeter around the Palace of Festivals.
But the protest took place inside the hotel premises, so it could be held. There were about twenty demonstrators according to the prefecture, and about thirty according to the CGT federation.
