Cannes 2022 official selection: Korean wave rolls on, strong Middle East presence and a rare film from Pakistan

Apr 15, 2022

This year’s Cannes official selection has something for everyone – leading arthouse auteurs and former Palme d’Or winners; new talents and discoveries; US studio movies including Top Gun: Maverick, and many other films that will pepper the red carpet with big stars. It feels like a return to business as usual for Cannes after two years of disruption and contingency plans. In a shorter newsletter this week (thanks to crippling jetlag and the Easter holidays), Streamlined is taking a look at the films in the selection from outside Europe and the Americas. So far, the official line-up has 47 titles, compared to more than 80 last year, but Cannes chief Thierry Fremaux says more will be announced soon.

CANNES 2022 OFFICIAL SELECTION:

As expected, South Korea will feature prominently at this year’s Cannes film festival, and not just through Korean filmmakers, although leading Korean director Park Chan-wook has secured a competition slot for Decision To Leave, and Squid Game star Lee Jung-Jae has his directorial debut, Hunt, in Midnight Screenings.

In addition to these two titles, Japanese filmmaker Hirokazu Kore-eda has his first Korean-language film, Broker, in competition, while All The People I’ll Never Be, which Cambodian-French director Davy Chou filmed in Korea, has been selected for Un Certain Regard.

Starring Song Kang-ho (Parasite), Gang Dong-won (Peninsula) and Bae Doona (The Silent Sea), Broker follows two men who take a child from a ‘baby box’, a small space where parents leave infants they’re unable to look after themselves. The film is produced by Zip Cinema with CJ Entertainment financing and handling international sales. Kore-eda, who won the Cannes Palme d’Or in 2018 for Shoplifters, is one of five returning Palme d’Or winners in competition this year, along with Cristian Mungiu, Ruben Ostlund and the Dardenne brothers.

All The People I’ll Never Be follows a young woman who returns to Korea to explore her roots after being adopted and raised in France. The cast is headed by Korean actors Park Ji-Min and Oh Kwang-Rok, along with France’s Louis-Do De Lencquesaing. MK2 Films is handling international sales and Films du Losange is distributing in France. Chou is returning to Cannes after his 2016 debut narrative feature, Diamond Island, played in Critics Week in 2016.

Decision To Leave is one of the few links that China will have to Cannes this year as Chinese actress Tang Wei stars in the film with Korea’s Park Hae-il. Also financed and sold by Korean powerhouse CJ Entertainment, the film revolves around a detective drawn to a mysterious woman while investigating her husband’s death. Park was last in Cannes with The Handmaiden in 2016 and has previously won the Cannes Grand Prix for Oldboy (2004) and the Jury Prize for Thirst (2009).

Lee Jung-Jae also co-wrote and stars alongside Jung Woo-Sung in Hunt, a 1980s-set thriller about two special agents in Korea’s National Intelligence Service, who are separately tasked with tracking down a North Korean mole. The film is one of three announced for Midnight Screenings along with French filmmaker Quentin Dupieux’s Fumer Fait Tousser and US director Brett Morgen’s Moonage Daydream.

Cannes competition also includes two films from Iranian filmmakers – Ali Abbasi’s Holy Spider and Saeed Roustaee’s Leila’s Brothers – and one from Egypt, Tarik Saleh’s Boy From Heaven. Ali Abbasi previously won the Un Certain Regard award at Cannes in 2018 with Border. His new film revolves around a religious man whose quest to free society of corruption sends him on a killing spree.

Saeed Roustaee and Tarik Saleh are new to Cannes and were not tipped to appear in competition, so there’s some excitement about what they might bring. Based in Sweden, Saleh is known for films such as Sundance award-winning crime drama The Nile Hilton Incident and recently made action thriller The Contractor starring Chris Pine. He returns to Egypt for Boy From Heaven, which explores the issue of rivalry within a religious community. Roustaee won best director at Tokyo International Film Festival in 2019 for Just 6.5, which premiered in the Orizzonti section of Venice.

Turning to Un Certain Regard, which focuses on emerging talent, the line-up also includes Burning Days from Turkish director Emin Alper, who won Berlin’s Caligari Film Prize for his debut Beyond The Hill (2012) and the Special Jury Prize in Venice for his second film Frenzy (2015). Burning Days follows a young prosecutor who finds himself being pulled into a political conflict during his first murder investigation.

Un Certain Regard also includes the debut features of Japanese filmmaker Chie Hayakawa, Plan 75, and US-based Pakistani filmmaker Saim Sadiq, Joyland.

Based on her segment from omnibus film Ten Years Japan, Plan 75 is a Japan-Philippines-France co-production about a government programme that encourages senior citizens to be voluntarily euthanised to remedy a super-aged society. An elderly woman whose means of survival are vanishing, a pragmatic Plan 75 salesman, and a young Filipino labourer face choices of life and death. Urban Distribution is handling international sales.

Not much has been revealed about Joyland, but that may be to prevent controversy in Pakistan ahead of the festival, as Indiewire reported that the film may feature a Pakistani transgender character. Sadiq previously won the Orizzonti Award for best short film at the Venice film festival in 2019 for Darling, which also featured a transgender character.

Apart from Joyland, the only other South Asian film in the line-up is Shaunak Sen’s documentary, All That Breathes, which won the Grand Jury Prize in World Cinema Documentary at this year’s Sundance Film Festival and has been selected for Cannes Special Screenings. The film follows two brothers who have devoted their lives to saving thousands of birds from Delhi’s suffocating pollution.

China is so far missing from the official selection, which is not a huge surprise given the country’s political tightening, which has resulted in a bigger focus on patriotic films and made it difficult to gain approval to screen films at international festivals. It may also be the case that filmmakers are nervous to submit after Cannes screened Hong Kong filmmaker Kiwi Chow’s Revolution Of Our Times, about the Hong Kong protests, last year.

On the other hand, there are some interesting Chinese projects in the pipeline, so perhaps these are among the titles Fremaux has yet to announce, or will pop up at festivals later in the year. Likewise, in addition to Davy Chou’s film, there are several more projects in production from Southeast Asian filmmakers that we can expect to see at festivals at some point this year.

Another gap is cinema from Africa, with Berlin film festival currently more active in showcasing African films (this year screening Father’s Day from Rwandan filmmaker Kivu Ruhorahoza; No Simple Way Home, from South Sudanese director Akuol de Mabior and No U-Turn, by Nigerian director Ike Nnaebue).

After a Japanese film, Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Drive My Car, won this year’s best international film Oscar, there are so far no Japanese productions in Cannes official selection. But there is a Japanese connection to the opening film, Michel Hazanavicius’ zombie comedy Z, which is a French remake of Japanese 2017 cult hit One Cut Of The Dead.

Judging from reports so far, Cannes attendance looks like it is returning to usual levels, with around 30,000 accredited participants, but Asian talent and industry, and the Chinese in particular, are not likely to be out in force. Many Asian countries still have some form of quarantine or Covid-related border control that makes it difficult to return home. China is in the midst of a huge Omicron outbreak, resulting in swathes of the country being locked down as authorities stick to their guns on a zero Covid policy.

Having said that, as buzz mounts about this year’s line-up, more industry folk in Asia are succumbing to FOMO and checking out those last-minute flight and apartment deals. So you never know who you’ll bump into on the Croisette.

LAB & FUNDING NEWS:

Screen Australia has announced more than A$1m of development funding for 15 television dramas, 11 feature films and five online projects, including sci-fi drama Immersion from Lion director Garth Davis; queer family drama Jimpa, from writer-director Sophie Hyde; a TV version of successful online series Girl, Interpreted; and a comedy from the Northern Territory, The Hairy Marys.

IN DEVELOPMENT:

Malaysia’s Astro and All3Media International are teaming on a Malaysian adaptation of UK thriller series Liar, to be produced by Malaysian production outfit Double Vision (The Bridge). The original series was produced by Two Brothers Pictures for ITV and Sundance TV in 2017. Astro is also working on a Malaysian adaptation of French series Call My Agent!, which has already spawned local versions in India, UK, Canada and Turkey, with further adaptations planned in South Korea, Indonesia, the Middle East, Philippines and Poland. The Malaysian adaptations of Liar and Call My Agent! are expected to air towards the end of the year across Astro’s linear and on-demand channels.

CORPORATE:

US-based Globalgate Entertainment has added Japan’s Rakuten group to its global network of producers and distributors, which already includes Lionsgate, Televisa in Latin America, France’s TF1, Korea’s Lotte and Indonesia’s Falcon, among others. Globalgate focuses on local-language remakes with recent projects including adaptations of Mexico’s Instructions Not Included in Vietnam and Indonesia. Rakuten, a leading ecommerce player in Japan, operates streaming services Rakuten TV and Asian content-focused Rakuten Viki.
Deadline had an exclusive on a co-production partnership between recently-launched production and sales outfit EST Studios and Malaysia and LA-based ACE Pictures Entertainment for a slate of films aimed primarily at the Asian market.

CURATED:

Italy’s Far East Film Festival (FEFF) announced the programme for this year’s edition (April 22-30), including opening film, China-Italy co-production The Italian Recipe; a competition section of 42 titles; a focus on Hong Kong films, ‘Making Waves – Navigators Of Hong Kong Cinema’, and a previously announced tribute to Takeshi Kitano, who is expected to attend.
The Italian Recipe
International Film Festival Rotterdam said it will restructure and reduce its core team by 15% in response to a challenging couple of years during the pandemic and changes in both audience behaviour and the industry landscape. The festival is aiming for a physical edition next year (January 25-February 5, 2023) after being held virtually for the past two years.

SOLD:

Endeavor Content announced that the UK’s BBC has acquired second window rights to HBO Max’s Tokyo Vice, which has already been sold to a string of international territories. The series will go out on HBO Max across the streamer’s territories in Europe, Latin America and Asia, but the service is not scheduled to launch in the UK for a few years. Produced by HBO and Japan’s Wowow, Tokyo Vice was created and written by J.T. Rogers and has a pilot episode directed by Michael Mann.

STREAMING UPDATES:

AppleTV+ series Metropolis, loosely adapted by Sam Esmail (Mr Robot) from Fritz Lang’s 1927 classic film, will be produced in the Australian state of Victoria, using the state’s virtual production infrastructure and creating around 4,000 jobs.
Indian filmmaker Vetrimaaran (Visaaranai, Vada Chennai) is making his first original series, Nilamellam Ratham, for Indian streamer ZEE5, which unveiled a large slate of Tamil titles this week.
Dubai-based broadcaster and streamer MBC also unveiled a new slate, including Rise Of The Witches, described as Saudi Arabia’s biggest series to date, which is written by the UK’s Charlie Higson with two female Saudi writers.