Head to Cannes, where the International Film Festival is held until Saturday May 28. Sophie Torlotin lets us hear the impressions of young directors or actors who are coming to the Croisette for the first time.
The success of a Cannes Film Festival is often due to a skilful alchemy. The combination of experience and novelty, regulars on the Croisette and newcomers.
La Semaine de la Critique is dedicated to discovering young talent by exclusively selecting first or second films. This Friday, it’s a first attempt in the form of a punch, on a young teenager placed in a home, which should make people talk: ” Dalva by Emmanuelle Nicot.
The radiant 36-year-old director feels no pressure, and for good reason: “ It’s the very first Cannes of my life, because I’ve never been there as a spectator either. And I confess that I have never followed the events that take place in Cannes too much. I am very, very happy with this selection for the Week, and then I started telling the people on my team, I also sent emails to all the people who took part, whether they were people who were extras or silhouettes, and then everyone started saying to me: “I hope you’ll bring something back, fingers crossed”. Well, I come here but I don’t even have the pressure to bring anything back in fact, this selection for the week is already such a nice gift. “.
A first full of emotion for the young actors
Premiere in Cannes also for the young actor Alassane Diong. At 25, he bursts the screen in Skirmishers. The young actor is still very moved by the memory of the moment when the artistic director, Thierry Frémaux, had him cheered by the spectators by taking his arm. ” I’m all exhilarated, it’s my first time there and I’m shaking. I was looking The Lion King to prepare the film, it was my reference. And when Thierry Frémaux takes my hand, it was a bit like Rafiki. »
More accustomed to interviews, already awarded at various festivals, Adam Bessa is also walking the red carpet of the Palais des Festivals for the first time. In Harka, he embodies a gasoline salesman dreaming of a better life. The 31-year-old actor is the voice of hopeless Tunisian youth, ten years after the Arab Spring.
” Me, it’s true that I have all my family there, so I know this Tunisia. The way I worked on it was in that sense in any case, to tell myself that I had a responsibility to try to get the right message across and to be really fair and to the truth of what these people may be feeling. And in general, when we talk about subjects like poverty, we can tend to want to make certain people feel guilty because they are better off or not. It’s really nobody’s fault. This is what this person feels, we feel things and it is even stronger than words. »
But there is no age to innovate. The veteran of the competition, the Polish Jerzy Skolimowski, 84, surprises with a film whose main actor is a donkey: ” Hi Han looks at the world and makes us aware of its cruelty.