Cannes Directors’ Fortnight Unveils 2024 Line-Up

Cannes parallel section Directors’ Fortnight has unveiled the line-up for its 56th edition running from May 15 to 23, at a press conference in Paris’s Forum des Images cultural center.

The section, launched in 1969 and overseen by the French Directors Guild, will present 21 feature films and 10 short films.

It is the second line-up overseen by Delegate General Julien Rejl, who took up the role last year.

Discoveries of his inaugural edition included Georgian director Elene Naveriani’s late coming-of-age drama Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry; U.S. indie film Riddle Of Fire by Weston Razooli, as well as Vietnamese filmmaker Phạm Thiên Ân’s 2023 Cannes Caméra d’Or winner Inside The Yellow Cocoon Shell.

The 2024 edition will open with late director Sophie Fillières’ final feature This Life of Mine, starring Agnès Jaoui as a woman whose sense of self starts to unravel as she turns 55.

Fillières died shortly after completing the shoot and her children have dedicated themselves to finishing post-production.

“It follows three moments from a woman’s life. It’s a comedy, a tragedy and an epiphany with a brisk pace, changes in tone and heartening dialogue that gives spice to the cinema of Sophie Fillière,” said Rejl.

“It’s a very moving work because it’s also a very intimate self-portrait, a portrait to which Agnes Jaoui gives a soul and body.”

French director Jean-Christophe Meurisse’s dark comedy Plastic Guns will close the selection. Inspired by a true story, the mistaken identity tale follows the case of Frenchman who is arrested by police in the belief that he is a man wanted for the murder of wife and children.

This year’s line-up features a quartet of films by emerging U.S. directors: Tyler Taormina’s Christmas Eve In Miller’s Point, Carson Lund’s Eephus, India Donaldson’s Good One and Ryan J. Sloan’s Gazer.

“The presence of these films in the selection is a choice by the committee to highlight the relevance and the boldness of an American independent cinema, that giving itself new rules, unity of time and action,” said Rejl.

Christmas Eve In Miller’s Point is the third feature from Taormina, after Happer’s Comet and Ham on Rye. Written by Taormina, Eric Berger and Kevin Anton, it follows four generations of the Balsano family as they gather for what may be the last Christmas in the family home. Read more details here.

The cast stars Michael Cera (Life & Beth), Elsie Fisher (Barry), Maria Dizzia (The Good Nurse), Francesca Scorsese (We Are Who We Are), Ben Shenkman (Billions), Gregg Turkington (Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania), Sawyer Spielberg (Masters of the Air) and newcomer Matilda Fleming.

Eephus, revolving around the final Game of a small-town baseball team, is the feature directorial debut of Lund, who also takes a cinematography credit on Christmas Eve In Miller’s Point.

India Donaldson’s Good One, about a 17 year-old on a weekend backpacking trip in the Catskills contending with the competing egos of her father and his oldest friend, world premiered in Sundance earlier this year, where she spoke to the Deadline Studio. Watch her interview here.

Sloan’s Gazer is also a first film. Set on the outskirts of Newark, New Jersey, the paranoia thriller stars Ariella Mastroianni as a young mother with a rare degenerative brain condition called dyschronometria.  

Unable to find steady work with her condition, she desperately takes a job from a mysterious woman with a dark past.

Also out of North America, is Canadian director Matthew Rankin’s surprising Persian and French language drama Universal Language set between Tehran and Winnipeg and interweaving the lives of multiple characters in surprising and different ways.

Rejl also noted the strength of the Latin American indie cinema in spite of difficult economic and political head winds.

“I want to really highlight the relevance and the importance of Latin American cinema,” he told the press conference.  “There’s a lot of vitality, a lot of singularity, a lot of energy. We got propositions from everywhere, from Brazil, from Chile, from Colombia, from Peru, from the Dominican Republic.”

“The whole of the continent is certainly very active in terms of cinema, and Argentina especially, and this new generation of filmmakers in Argentina who are really creative and really exciting, you know, that that industry is very much under threat ad Argentina.”

Selected pictures from the region include Argentine director Hernán Rosselli’s Something New, Something Borrowed; Brazilian directorial duo Eryk Rocha and Gabriela Carneiro da Cunha’s The Falling Sky (A queda do céu) and Chilean filmmakers Cristóbal León and Joaquín Cociña’s feature-length animation The Hyperboreans.

Rejl described Rosselli’s feature as Sopranos-style drama about a family of bookmakers, striving to keep the business alive following the death of its patriarch.

“We discover the world of sports betting within a suburban working class, where people want to have their place in the sun,” he said.

The Falling Sky is a documentary based on the autobiographical book by Davi Kopenawa, a shaman and figurehead for the Yanomami of the Brazilian Amazon in their struggle to save their ancestral homes from commercial exploitation.

Further French films include Thierry de Peretti’s Corsica set drama In His Own Image (A Son Image) andCaroline Poggi and Jonathan Vinel’s Eat The Night,

Out of Asia, two Japanese films have made the cut director Yôko Yamanaka’s second film Desert of Namibia (Namibia no sabaku) and animation Ghost Cat by Yôko Kuno and Nobuhiro Yamashita.

Taiwanese directorial duo Chiang Wei Liang and You Qiao Yin will present illegal workers drama Mongrel while Indian director Karan Kandhari has been selected with his UK produced feature Sister Midnight about a young woman coming to terms with married life in a Bombay slum.

Established directors in the mix include French filmmaker Patricia Mazuy’s Visiting Hours (La Prisonnière De bordeaux) starring Isabelle Huppert and Hafsia Herzi as women who bond while visiting their husbands in prison.

Further French titles include Thierry de Peretti’s Corsica set drama In His Own Image (A Son Image) andCaroline Poggi and Jonathan Vinel’s Eat The Night.

Directors’ Fortnight 2024 Line-Up

Feature Films

This Life Of Mine (Ma Vie Ma Gueule) OPENING FILM
Dir.Sophie Fillières
(France)

In His Own Image (A Son Image)
Dir. Thierry de Peretti
(France)

Christmas Eve In Miller’s Point
Dir. de Tyler Taormina
(U.S)

Desert of Namibia (Namibia no sabaku)
Dir. Yôko Yamanaka
(Japan)

East of Noon (Sharq 12)
Dir. Hala Elkoussy
(Egypt)

Eat The Night
Dir. Caroline Poggi & Jonathan Vinel
(France)

Eephus *
Dir. Carson Lund
(U.S.)

Gazer *
Dir. Ryan J. Sloan
(U.S)

Ghost cat anzu (Bakeneko Anzu-chan / Anzu, chat-fantôme)
Dir. Yôko Kuno & Nobuhiro Yamashita
(Japan)

Good One *
Dir. India Donaldson
(U.S.)

Mongrel (白衣蒼狗) *
Dir. Chiang Wei Liang & You Qiao Yin
(Taiwan)

Visiting Hours (La Prisonnière De bordeaux)
Dir.Patricia Mazuy
(France)

Savanna and the Mountain (A savana e a montanha)
Dir. Paulo Carneiro (Portugal)

Sister Midnight
Dir.Karan Kandhari
(U.K.)

Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed (Algo viejo, algo nuevo, algo prestado)
Dir. Hernán Rosselli
(Argentina)

The Falling Sky (A queda do céu)
Dir. Eryk Rocha & Gabriela Carneiro da Cunha
(Brazil)

The Hyperboreans (Los hiperbóreos)
Dir. Cristóbal León & Joaquín Cociña
(Chile)

To A Land Unknown
Dir.Mahdi Fleifel
(Palestine, Denmark)

The Other Way Around
Dir. de Jonás Trueba (Spain)

Universal Language (Une Langue Universelle)
Dir. Matthew Rankin (Canada)

Plastic Guns (Pistolets en Plastique) CLOSING FILM
Dir. Jean-Christophe Meurisse
(France)

Special Screening

American Stories: Food, Family and Philosophy
Dir. Chantal Akerman
(Belgium)

Short Films

Après Le Soleil (After the Sun)
Dir. Rayane Mcirdi (France, Algérie / Algeria)

Extremely short (Totemo mijikai)
Dir. Maryam Tafakory (Japon / Japan)

IMMAculata
Dir. Kim Lêa Sakkal (Liban / Lebanon)

Antoine, Élise and Léandre (Les Météos d’Antoine)
Dir. Jules Follet (France)

Mulberry Fields (Một lần dang dở)
Dir. Nguyễn Trung Nghĩa (Vietnam)

Our Own Shadow (Nuestra sombra)
Dir. Agustina Sánchez Gavier (Argentine / Argentina)

The Moving Garden (O jardim em movimento)
Dir. Inês Lima (Portugal)

Very Gentle Work (Travail très soigné)
Dir.  Nate Lavey
(U.S.)

When The Land Runs Away (Quando a terra foge)
Dir. Frederico Lobo (Portugal)