Much is currently being said behind the scenes of the different sections of the Cannes Film Festival about Danish animation feature Princess by Anders Morgenthaler (see article). The film’s innovativeness has managed to attract the attention of Thierry Frémeaux, the head of the Official Selection, and meanwhile the doors of Un Certain Regard are getting ready to open.

Yet certain provocative scenes are a cause for embarrassment, as Princess has as its backdrop the porno industry and mixed up in the intrigue is a five-year-old girl. All options now seem possible for the debut feature: a midnight screening in the Official Selection, inclusion in the Director’s Fortnight, or even a return to the Critics Week, where Morgenthaler won the Grand Prix in 2003 for his short Araki: The Killing of the Japanese Photographer...
Two weeks before the announcement of the official selection on April 20, the Cannes programme is far from decided, even if it is not short of favourites such as The Caiman [trailer, film focus] by Nanni Moretti, Volver [trailer, film focus] by Pedro Almodovar (perhaps out of competition, read focus), Marie-Antoinette by Sofia Coppola, The Wind That Shakes the Barley [trailer, film focus] by Ken Loach, Lights in the Dusk by Aki Kaurismaki, Babel by Alejandro Gonzalez Iñarritu, Les climats by Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Selon Charlie [trailer] by Nicole Garcia, Azur and Asmar by Michel Ocelot, Days of Glory [trailer, film focus] by Rachid Bouchareb, Pan's Labyrinth by Guillermo del Toro and The Fountain by Darren Aronofsky.

The French co-production Voiture de luxe by China’s Wang Chao is also in the line-up for at least a parallel selection, along with The Heroine by Volker Schloendorff and Taxidermia [trailer, making of] by Hungarian director György Palfy. Among the many films rumoured to be included in the Director’s Fortnight is Les meurtrières [trailer] by Patrick Grandperret (see news), from a screenplay by Maurice Pialat.