European Films at Cannes
The lineup of 20 competition films for the 64th Festival de Cannes will be dominated by European films this year. There are eight films from France alone, with big art house films by Cannes veterans and past winners crowding the competition list. Le Havre from director Aki Kaurismaki is a Finnish, French and German co-production that will be featured, along with Melancholia by director Lars von Trier, which is a Denmark, Swedish, French, German and Italian co-production and
The Skin That I Inhabit, a Spanish film by director Pedro Almodovar. There are only two films by new directors on this list dominated by giants, which are the Austrian film Michael by Markus Schleinzer and the Australian film Sleeping Beauty by Julia Leigh. Only a few non-European films made it on the list, including Israel's Footnote by Josef Cedar and two Japanese films, Hanezu No Tsuki by Naomi Kawase and Ichimei (Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai) by Takashi Miike.