The first meeting of this festival takes place in a tremendous release of stress: it is only the same morning that we learn that we will be able to speak to Greta Gerwig, three hours later, for around twenty minutes, photo included . Total frenzy, express memory refresh (thanks to the fantastic doc manager at Libé Bénédicte Dumont, on hand to provide 500 pages of documentation in less than a minute, of which we will obviously only have time to read 0.1%), what can you ask for in such a short time?
And then, when Greta arrives in the room awkwardly perched on her skyscraper heels, she sits down breathless, worry in her eyes and voice, and she begins to talk about her restless nights , his total disbelief when Frémaux asked him to chair the jury (“Is this a joke?”), we remember this banality that we will no longer forget throughout these two weeks: all these variously famous people, surrounded by teams taking care of themselves and sublimated in expensive dresses, professionals in intense poses that they offer to the lens of our photographer Laura Stevens with the assistance of Antoine de Tapol, are deep down people like us, imperfect and not always exciting. Thank you to them for letting us have access to their normality as well as their moments of grace.
Greta Gerwig: “I am more sensitive to the conversation between films than to anything between them”
She appears at noon on the top floor of the Palais des Festivals, under the gray sky of Cannes where not much is happening at the moment. Greta Gerwig tumbles in with incredible confidence on incredible pumps (“They look like clogs, don’t you think?”). Something of Alice in Wonderland in the dress of the filmmaker who sits down painfully in her armchair and begins by waddling – “I’m trying to figure out how to hold myself in this corset. I had never worn one before. I really have a lot of admiration for women of the 19th century. What… what a feat.” Ancestral habits are tough, this is the director of barbie who suffers in front of us, trapped in two symbols of the oppression of the female body, which she ends up at least partially getting rid of by taking off her complicated shoes. Read the interview.
Clara Maria Laredo, Corsica major
A strange fire inhabits this young woman who is still completely unknown in the cinema, and whom search engines currently qualify as “Political personality”. Clara-Maria Laredo, 20 years old, plays a surprising leading role in As his look, adaptation by Thierry de Peretti of the novel by Jérôme Ferrari. There, she is Antonia, a very young photographer Corsica-Morning who, in the mid-1980s, became infatuated with a dark Corsican nationalist and thus slipped, his camera always at hand, to the forefront of an increasingly violent armed struggle. Read his portrait.
Hernán Rosselli, bet at all costs
Recently, Hernán Rosselli shared on his social networks an alarming message about the drastic cuts in cinema funding in Argentina, since the election of Javier Milei. Sitting on the beach at the Filmmakers’ Fortnight, the filmmaker tells us very openly: without this selection at Cannes, which made it possible to attract Spanish and Portuguese producers at the last minute, he does not know if he would have been able to finish his film. . Read his portrait.
Jesse Plemons, free redhead
Here is the man, quietly seated in a Cannes palace, polite but nothing more, looking like nothing in particular, unrecognizable on every level down to the very shape of his face, the sound and rhythm of his voice, his way of walking. Red dot in perpetual motion on an axis Matt Damon-Philip Seymour Hoffman, Jesse Plemons metamorphoses within the very heart of Kinds of Kindnessa great fable of perversities in three acts where the American actor revealed to the general public through his role as a worm-killing psycho in the series breaking Bad is in turn Robert, Daniel and Andrew. Read his portrait.
Barry Keoghan, suspended instinct
The Irishman usually plays the weird kid – cat killer in the series Love/Hateworrying teenager at Lánthimos (Killing of the sacred deer), simpleton son in the Banshees of Inisherin – is now 31 years old and is delighted to finally play the role of a father. “It’s very new for me, it pushed me to go look for a place that I didn’t think I would be able to reach. I learned a lot. Finally, we learn constantly, with each new job. On oneself, on one’s limits…” Read his portrait.
Itsaso Arana, from the heart to the work
A simple veil stretched between two cables against the gray sky, and Itsaso Arana makes you forget everything that is happening around, the fifteen simultaneous interviews, the plastic chairs scraping the terrace, the bustle of lunch. She dances gently with the gauze, to an imaginary melody which could resemble the Sad Waltz by Sibelius. His physical beauty inspires us with far too many metaphors for a single article, let’s instead look inside Itsaso Arana, 38 years old, a flowery interior which expresses itself wonderfully in contact with his cinema and life partner, Jonás Trueba . Read his portrait.
Ben Whishaw, elegant in velvet
Ben Whishaw, with a calm and confident step, returns from the swimming pool where he has just been photographed. We hold out our hand, and we receive in return the most remarkably executed handshake we have ever experienced. A lesson in European diplomacy, contained in a simple gesture. The thirteen minutes of interview with Ben Whishaw will be apt and you will have to concentrate very hard not to succumb to the fascination of all these beautiful manners that the British actor has, who answers questions as if he were interpreting a text, expressive down to the smallest of its prepositions. Read his portrait.
Erwan Keopa Falé, nightfall
At 32, the young man from Cergy shines under the direction of Caroline Poggi and Jonathan Vinel in the role of a dealer somewhat in spite of himself, sensual, honest and gentle, guided by love, a register in which he excelled already with Christophe Honoré two years ago. It’s with the high school student that he gets noticed. His first appearance on screen, in the short Akaboum, he owes it to Manon Vila and, as is often the case, to a chance meeting: when he was 24, the filmmaker became interested in the group of friends who revolved around her companion at the time. “He was my first friend, he was a visual artist, he made clothes… and his childhood friends were all a bit musical. Manon wanted to make a very slightly fictional documentary and asked me to play in it – it was pure chance that I found myself there.” Read his portrait.
Payal Kapadia: “I make films to try to understand a little better what surrounds me”
Meeting with Indian filmmaker Payal Kapadia on a beach in Cannes where all the fuss suddenly seems ridiculous in the face of the depth of the conversation, which sheds light on the context of her fascinating first fiction feature film, All We Imagine as Light, presented in official competition. In this film, the filmmaker questions the notion of independence as a woman in India, while measuring her privileges. Read the interview.
João Pedro Mariano and Ricardo Teodoro, beautiful babies
After rolling around half-naked in the fine sand, they put on nothing other than a little cotton shirt, roughly buttoned. The wind is very fresh this morning, despite an obscene sun which gives the sea the turquoise tones of an erotic postcard. But nothing seems to be able to extinguish the embers of these two men whose relationship, as sanguine as it is tender, illuminates the filthiest semi-darkness of the center of São Paulo, a mecca of male prostitution where the Brazilian Marcelo Caetano sets his new film, Baby. Read the portrait.
