Leonardo DiCaprio and The Great Gatsby is opening the The Cannes Film Festival 2013. The festival, that’s held annually at the French Riviera, started today with rain and the showing of Baz Lurhmann’s 3D epic remaking of the F Scott Fitzgerald novel.
Stephen Spielberg is the jury president this year and he’s in charge of a very prestigious jury. A jury that includes Christoph Waltz, Nicole Kidman, and Ang lee. It is this jury who will decide which film will take home the Palme d’ Or.
The Great Gatsby will premiere tonight, Wednesday. Although the film has been playing in North American theatres for a almost a week, this is not unusual for a Cannes entry. For the films main star, Leonardo DiCaprio, this will not be the first time that he has attended this glamorous event.
The 3D extravagant remake with Leonardo DiCaprio, Carey Mulligan and Tobey Maguire, will be facing stiff competition in this years festival as just one of several films that are vying for the prestigious Palme d’ Or.
Leonardo DiCaprio said that, “Every time I go to Cannes, it feels like I’m entering the helicopter scene in La Dolce Vita. It’s an insane experience. The entire town is turned into a red carpet. Every hotel is a premiere. But at the same time, it is the mecca for the world to celebrate film-making and bold film-making.”
French actress Audrey Tautou will be hosting the opening ceremony of the 66th festival.
This years festival promises to be quite exciting as several films that are expected to feature heavily at the Academy Awards Oscar ceremony will be premiering at the Cannes festival. Not least of which is Ryan Gosling’s second partnering n with Drive director Nicolas Winding Refn in the Bangkok noir, Only God Forgives, which looks to be one of the most violent and exciting films at the festival.
Many previous Palm d’ Or winners are returning to Cannes, including the Coen brothers, Roman Polanski and Steven Soderbergh.
Joel and Ethan Coen will debut Inside Llewyn Davis, a 1960s period film about the Greenwich Village folk scene, while Roman Polanski will premiere Venus In Fur, his French-language adaptation of the David Ives play.
Steven Soderbergh’s Behind The Candelabra will be shown, which features Michael Douglas playing flamboyant pianist Liberace and Matt Damon as his lover, Scott Thorson.
Swedish director Jim Jarmusch’s hotly anticipated Only Lovers Left Alive, a vampire love story starring Tilda Swinton, Tom Hiddleston and Mia Wasikowska, will also feature heavily in the competition as well as Sofia Coppola’s latest offering, The Bling Ring, about a group of star-worshipping California teenagers who raid celebrity homes, starring Harry Potter’s Emma Watson which is based on actual events.
The films that will be competing for the The Palme d’Or are listed below:
A Chateau in Italy by Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi
Inside Llewyn Davis by Ethan and Joel Coen
Michael Kohlhaas by Arnaud Des Pallieres
Jimmy P. (Psychotherapy of a Plains Indian) by Arnaud Desplechin
Heli by Amat Escalante
The Past by Asghar Farhadi
The Immigrant by James Gray
Grigris by Mahamat-Saleh Haroun
A Touch of Sin by Jia Zhangke
Like Father, Like Son by Kore-Eda Hirokazu
The Life of Adele by Abdellatif Kechiche
Shield of Straw by Takashi Miike
Young and Pretty by Francois Ozon
Nebraska by Alexander Payne
Venus in Fur by Roman Polanski
Behind the Candelabra by Steven Soderbergh
The Great Beauty by Paolo Sorrentino
Borgman by Alex van Warmerdam
Only God Forgives by Nicolas Winding Refn
The festival will close with the film Zulu, starring Forrest Whitaker and Orlando Bloom, about two policeman investigating a crime in apartheid-era South Africa.
By Michael Smith
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