(Paris) Catherine Corsini and Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire join the list of directors in the running for the Palme d’Or at the 76th Cannes Film Festival, bringing the number of films in competition to 21, organizers announced on Monday.
The French filmmaker will be in the running with Le retour, a feature film shot in Corsica about a woman working for a Parisian family who offers her to take care of the children during a vacation on the island of Beauty.
According to information from Le Parisien and Télérama, this film was initially to appear in the official selection unveiled in mid-April by the general delegate of the festival, Thierry Frémaux, before being temporarily withdrawn.
At issue: suspicions of harassment and an irregularity concerning a scene involving an underage actress. The selection “was not canceled but the board of directors wanted to know more about the situation of the work”, had then told the Parisian the Cannes Film Festival, which therefore finally included it in its list of films in competition.
This work was nevertheless the subject of a rare measure: the National Cinema Center deprived it of financial assistance because a scene involving a minor had not been declared to a commission responsible for studying the requests for filming with children, the organization told AFP.
Catherine Corsini, 66, had been in competition on the Croisette in 2021 with La Fracture, a film featuring a couple of women (Marina Foïs and Valéria Bruni-Tedeschi) stuck in the hospital one evening of demonstrations and violent repressions of ” yellow vests”.
For his part, Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire, 54, will present Black Flies, a thriller following two doctors in New York, adapted from the novel 911 by Shannon Burke.
He was present for the last time at the Cannes Film Festival in 2017, out of competition, with A prayer before dawn, about a Briton finding himself in a Thai prison and discovering boxing there.
Both join a competition which includes the American Wes Anderson, the British Ken Loach and the Frenchwoman Catherine Breillat.
A total of 14 films joined the Official Selection on Monday, including Love and Forests by French director Valérie Donzelli, L’abbé Pierre – Une vie de combats, a biopic on the life of the founder of the Emmaüs association directed by Frédéric Tellier, and Perdidos in the noche of Mexican Amat Escalante, who won the prize for directing in 2013 with Heli.
