Andrew Pulver 

British directors could still make a splash at Cannes, says festival director

Thierry Frémaux hints that Ben Wheatley’s High Rise and Terence Davies’ Sunset Song are still in the mix for the festival, which still has places to fill for the official selection
  
  

Sunset Song.
Not ruled out ... Agyness Deyn and Peter Mullan in Terence Davies’s Sunset Song. Photograph: Hurricanefilms

All is not yet lost for British film-makers hoping to see their work included in the Cannes selection.

When the line-up was announced on Thursday, there was some dismay among UK observers that no British directors had been included. Hopes had been high particularly for High Rise, the JG Ballard adaptation from Ben Wheatley, and Terence Davies’s long-gestating Sunset Song, based on Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s classic Scots novel.

However, in an interview with Screen International, festival director Thierry Frémaux suggested that both these films are still in contention for the slots that, as mentioned in the original line-up announcement, are yet to be filled.

On the subject of High Rise – a natural Cannes film, from the pedigree stable of producer Jeremy Thomas and featuring red-carpet-friendly faces such as Tom Hiddleston, Jeremy Irons and Sienna Miller – Frémaux said: “They’re still working on [it] and we might still be able to see it in time.” As for Sunset Song, which features Agyness Deyn in a chronicle of harsh existences in north-east Scotland in the the early 20th century on which Davies has been intermittently working for well over a decade, Frémaux said enigmatically: “You’ll have to wait and see.”

However, the Stephen Frears-directed Icon, about the doping scandal surrounding cyclist Lance Armstrong, will definitely not be there, as Frémaux remarked the film “isn’t ready”.

British interest is not entirely absent from the line-up as it stands, though. Film4, Channel 4’s film-making arm, have given funding to four films announced by Frémaux, though none with British directors: Justin Kurzel’s Macbeth, Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Lobster, Paolo Sorrentino’s Youth and Todd Haynes’ Carol. The last two are also co-produced by British outfit Number 9, the company run by Liz Karlsen and Stephen Woolley.

The Cannes film festival runs from 13-24 May.

 

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