Month: April 2009

Originally posted on imdb:

Gilles Jacob, president of the Cannes Film Festival, has offered the festival’s website as a showcase for the first five minutes of each of the 20 films participating in this year’s competition. In a statement, Jacob said that the traditional movie trailer “extinguishes all desire” while it has been suggested that great directors are at their best in the first and last reels. “Let’s hope that Internet users everywhere might drop their games and be tempted to rush to their nearest theater to find out what happens next,” he remarked. At a news conference, festival director Thierry Fremaux indicated that he expected the current worldwide economic crisis to have little effect on the festival. “We haven’t felt the slightest reluctance on anybody’s part, anyone saying ‘we have to watch out because of the crisis,'” he said, adding that Cannes would remain “the rendezvous for creators and the industry.”

Here is a list of the films in competition this year:

* “Broken Embraces”, Pedro Almodovar
* “Fish Tank”, Andrea Arnold
* “A Prophet”, Jacques Audiard
* “Vincere”, Dir: Marco Bellocchio
* “Bright Star”, Jane Campion
* “In the Beginning”, Xavier Giannoli
* “Map of the Sounds of Tokyo”, Isabel Coixet
* “The White Ribbon”, Michael Haneke
* “Taking Woodstock”, Ang Lee
* “Looking for Eric”, Ken Loach
* “Spring Fever”, Lou Ye
* “Kinatay”, Brillante Mendoza
* “Enter The Void”, Gasper Noe
* “Thirst”, Park Chan-wook
* “Les Herbes Foilles”, Alain Resnais
* “The Time That Remains”, Elia Suleiman
* “Inglourious Basterds”, Quentin Tarantino
* “Vengeance”, Johnnie To
* “Face”, Tsai Ming-liang
* “Antichrist”, Lars von Trier