64th Festival de Cannes – Today’s News

Today organizers announced several additions to the Official Selection and an innovation for the 2011 edition that will become an annual event: A Guest Country. To begin the tradition the first country chosen is Egypt.

The tribute to Egypt will take place on Wednesday May 18 and will include several activities like the screening of 18 jours a work grouping of ten filmmakers short films; a screening in Cannes Classics, another screening at the Cinéma de la Plage and a concert with a group of Egyptian musicians. Egyptian films are or will be in the blog at the Cannes section post.

Also there are two new Special Screenings in the Official Selection, both are documentaries one by Mourad Ben Cheikh and the other by Josh Tickell. Both films are already add to the main Cannes blog post.

In the School Screenings for secondary pupils, two films have been added to the program, but can't find the complete program. As soon as I find it will evaluate if I do a post or not.

To read the official press release go here .

Les Bien-aimés by Christophe Honoré will be the closing film that will be screened after the awards ceremony; with a superb cast, Catherine Deneuve, Ludvine Sagnier, Louis Garrel, Chiara Mastroiani, and Milos Forman, among others, film definitively is a must be seen for me but when I check the film description: “Actors embody characters that draw us into Prague of the sixties, London of the '80s, the world of Sept. 11 and Paris of today in a singular, melancholy and romantic work of art” becomes a lot more appealing and interesting for me.

A while back was announced a new Out of Competition film that was created exclusively for Cannes 2011 produced by Shekhar Kapoor &
UTV Motion Pictures with Ronnie Screwvala and Trishya Screwvala directed by Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra and Jeff Zimbalist: Bollywood-The Greates Love Story Ever Told a documentary with narrative, sort of a compilation of Bollywood movies that of course will have scenes from Aish movies and definitively becomes must be seen for me.

We only have 12 days to opening ceremony and in about five days (7 days before opening) films information will be up at the site for us to browse and hopefully learn more about each film, as some still have very little info and many no trailers.