Cannes 2010 Cinefondation Announces its Lineup

Cannes's 6th Cinefondation Atelier has a lineup of directors which this year includes more known auteurs than previously. It has also joined with Mexico's Expresion den Corto for a summer residence program in Guanajuato, Mexico. Both programs include a dozen of the best young filmmakers in the world, offering them a platform designed to propel their careers with master's classes, workshops and meetings with public and private organizaitons to help obtain financing for their film projects.

The Cannes lineup of 15 films this year includes 4 films by first time directors one of whom is a woman and 2 Latino filmmakers.

Debuting directors:

Taiwan based former actress Show-Chun Lee from France, a protege of Claude Miller with Shanghai-Belleville

Karoly Ujj Meszaros from Hungary with Liza, the Fox-Fairy, a comedic serial killer nurse romp

Diego Quemada-Diez from Mexico with La Jaula de oro

Ruben Sierra Salles from Venezuela with Lucia

A third Latino filmmaker with his sophmore film is Argentina's Pablo Fendrik with The Ardor which was also presented in the Berlin CoProduction market about a minor Chinese mobster in Buenos Aires

Out of 15 films a total of 2 (13%) are by women including debuting Show-Chun Lee's Shanghai-Belleville and

The second film by Holland's Urszula Antoniak (Nothing Personal) Code Blue, about a nurse who practices euthanasia.  (Nurses seem to be becoming a trend.)

Shinji Aoyama's Decadent Sisters, winner of the Pusan Award and $20,000 at the Pusan Promotion Plan 2009 is the director's 15th feature. The subject is siblings who survive as prostitutes in Tokyo after WWII.

Dream and Silence is about spirituality in a postmodern age according to director Jaime Rosales whose 4th feature this is.

Les Etoiles de Sidi Moumen, also the 4th film by the leading Moroccan director of his generation -- Nabil Ayouch -- is based on the novel by Mahi Binebine about Casablanca's 2003 suicide bombings.

Cambodian director Rithy Panh (The Sea Wall) presents Gibier d'elevage.

Indonesia's Edwin, whose 2008 debut, Blind Pig Who Wants to Fly won a Fipresci Rotterdam fest award is presenting Postcards from the Zoo.

Bulgaria's Javor Gardel, who made B.O. hit Zift and was recognized as a "producer on the move" last Cannes by EFP presents his second film, Zincograph.

Turkey's Huseyin Karabey, helmer of Gitmek, My Marlon and Brando, a Tribeca best director winner has Come to My Voice.

Iran's Massoud Bakhshi ("Teheran Has No More Pomegranates") is attending with Khorramshahr.

Circles comes from Serbia's Sdran Golubovic, director of the Berlinale Forum's The Trap.


In 2009 the Festival de Cannes's various sections featured 10 feature films and two shorts by "alumni" of the Cinéfondation:

Official Selection:
Competition:
Face by Tsai Ming-Liang (Atelier 2007)
Spring Fever by Lou Ye in Competition, took part in the 2008 Atelier for his next project.

Un Certain Regard:

Los viajes del viento by Ciro Guerra (Atelier 2007
Skazka pro temnotu aka Tale in the Darkness by Nikolay Khomeriki (2nd prize Cinéfondation Selection 2005)Independencia by Raya Martin (Résidence of the Cinéfondation (2005/2006) 
Manila (co-direction by Raya Martin with Adolfo Alix Jr.
Police, Adjective by Corneliu Porumboiu (2nd prize Cinéfondation Selection 2004, Résidence 2005, Caméra d'Or 2006)
Morrer como un homen aka To Die Like a Man by João Pedro Rodrigues (Atelier 2007)
Eyes Wide Open by Haim Tabakman (Cinéfondation Selection 2003 and 2004)

Special Screening:
No meu Lugar aka Eye of the Storm by Eduardo Valente (1st prize Cinéfondation Selection 2002, Résidence 2005)

Directors' Fortnight:
Navidad by Sebastian Lelio Campos (Résidence of the Cinéfondation (2006/2007)

Critics' Week:
The Ordinary People by Vladimir Perisic (Cinéfondation Selection 2003, Résidence 2004)

Together (short film) by Eicke Bettinga (Cinéfondation Selection 2002)
C'est gratuit pour les filles (short film) by Claire Burger (2nd prize Cinéfondation Selection 2008)

Rotterdam Tiger Awards 2010:
The VPRO Tiger Awards, given last February,to Agua fría de mar by Paz Fábrega from Costa Rica, Mundane History by Anocha Suwichakornpong from Thailand and Alamar by Mexican director Pedro González-Rubio.


Two of these three filmmakers were spotted by the Cinéfondation. Paz Fabrega has attended the 19th session of the Residence where she has developed Todos Nosotros, her second feature film project.

Anocha Suwichakornpong had presented her short film Graceland at the Cinéfondation Selection in 2006.

One of My Favorite Films In Cannes

Not that I saw so many films in Cannes. But this Competition feature "Map of the Sounds of Tokyo" by Spanish director Isabel Coixet remains with me and so many others have already disappeared from my memory. This story of love, vengeance and mourning in the Japanese megacity brings to mind themes from "Last Tango In Paris", the place of sex in the face of death, eros and thanatos and our fragile humanity in dealing with life as survivors.
...Sydney

Thanks to Cinema Without Borders for this account of the film by Coixet:


Coixet recalls the genesis of her film: "Films, like tunes or poems, spring from strange encounters, from odd associations that can be completely incongruent but full of magic. In the case of Map of the Sounds of Tokyo, I 'saw'the story (I don’t want to sound like some kind of visionary, but this is how I felt it happen) at Tsukiji fish market in Tokyo. I suppose the smells of fresh tuna, seaweed and oysters, the shouting of the auctioneers, the scraping and shuffling of thousands of fish boxes dragged across the market floor and the peculiar effects of the fluorescent lighting at four o’clock in the morning had a great deal to do with it. Or the stony face of the girl neatly hosing the floor who was so adamant in her refusal to let me photograph her, showing a determination that is unusual for Japan."
"I knew I would tell this story of a woman – a hard, solitary, mysterious, wounded woman – who leads a double life: a fish market worker who cleans, hauls crates and occasionally carries out jobs as a hit-woman. And the story of a man, whose obsession are sounds, and who is silently in love with that woman, even though he knows that the very most he can expect from her is the sound of her breath, the sound of her heels down an empty alley and her conversations during her meetings with a man, of Spanish origin, towards whom she experiences an attraction that endangers the life she has led up until then as a loner. To this initial idea, my “vision” or whatever you want to call it, I added the story of a man who is unable to cope with the loss of his daughter, and is on a blind search for revenge that eventually leads to a tragic end."
"This is how Map of the Sounds of Tokyo was born. I was also influenced by the fascination I feel for contemporary Japanese culture and the atmosphere I find in the novels of Haruki Murakami and Banana Yoshimoto as well as by my unconcealed addiction to wasabi and the almost tangible vibrations emanating from Tokyo during the night: a mixture of expectation, mystery, darkness and tenderness that leaves an indelible mark."
In 2005, Isabel Coixet was a member of the 18-filmmaker team - which also included Gus Van Sant, Walter Salles, and the Coen brothers – which produced the collective project "Paris, Je T’aime",in which each director explored a different Paris arrondissement, or district.