Monia Chokri's directorial debut La femme de mon frère | A Brother's Love shared in the Un Certain Regard Heart Prize with The Climb from Michael Angelo Covino (United States) at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival. The top Un Certain Regard prize went to The Invisible Life of Eurídice Gusmão | A vida invisível de Eurídice Gusmão from Karim Aïnouz (Brazil).
Xavier Dolan's Matthias et Maxime competed for the Palme d'Or, the top prize at Cannes. The top Palme d’Or prize went to Parasite from Bong Joon-ho (South Korea).
A very touching end of screening for MATTHIAS ET MAXIME (MATTHIAS AND MAXIME) by Xavier Dolan, "the child of Cannes". #Cannes2019 #CannesMoments #XavierDolan pic.twitter.com/deXR21ztSN
— Festival de Cannes (@Festival_Cannes) May 23, 2019
The last film that Dolan presented at Cannes that didn't win a significant prize was Tom à la ferme | Tom at the Farm. Dolan won the Jury Prize for Mommy and a tie for the Grand Prix for Juste la fin du monde | It's Only the End of the World.
J'ai tué ma mère | I Killed My Mother won the CICAE, Regards Jeunes and SACD Director’s Fortnight at Cannes. Les Amours imaginaires | Heartbeats won the Regards jeunes prize. Mommy won the Jury Prize. It’s Only the End of the World took home the Grand Jury Prize and the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury.
He went out of his way to skip the Cannes Film Festival with The Death and Life of John F. Donovan.
The consensus from the festival was that Matthias et Maxime was good but not good enough to rank well. Vulture had its top 15 films from the festival and Dolan's entry didn't make that list.
"Of course it’s not a problem for me to film heterosexual love, but I’m here as a human being, making films that are very close to me, and there’s no reason for me to feel coy about my sexuality. Making Matthias and Maxime was a way for me to tell a love story about two men, which I realized I had never really done," Dolan said in an interview with The New York Times.
We still don't have a U.S. release date for The Death and Life of John F. Donovan. Dolan told The New York Times that he doesn't think Matthias et Maxime will get U.S. distribution. "I don’t think I will. No. You want to bet? One hundred thousand dollars."
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Without having seen the new Xavier Dolan film, we shouldn't make much of him not faring well at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival. Filmmakers take paths where they need to go. That said, I still want his last 2 films.
Dolan's influence extends to Chokri, who won her prize in her directorial debut. The trailer for her film looked pretty funny. Chokri was one of 13 female directors in the festival.
The film stars Évelyne Brochu, one of our favourite Canadian actresses.
CanadianCrossing.com film coverage
It Must Be Heaven, a France-Canada co-production in the Palme d'Or category, got good notice in the festival. Nova Scotia got some hearty praise as an unofficial co-star in The Lighthouse, a U.S.-Canada co-production with Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson. The movie was shot in Yarmouth and Cape Forchu in Nova Scotia.
The 2019 Cannes Film Festival ran May 13-25.
photo credit: La femme de mon frère film
Twitter capture: @Festival_Cannes
video credit: YouTube/cophinebw
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