What To Watch At Cannes

by Helen Earnshaw | 13 May 2009

Inglorious Basterds

It's hard to believe that it's the Cannes Film Festival time of year again as films from around the world compete for the Palme d'Or.

Last year Hollywood breezed in in the form of Kung Fu Panda, Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull and Changeling as well as hard hitting movies such as Waltz with Bashir which stunned audiences and critics.

But it was The Class that went away with top honours. So FemaleFirst takes a look at what you should be watching, or looking out for over the coming months.

- Inglorious Basterds

Quentin Tarantino's return to Cannes and the In Competition category was the early talk of the festival as he shows off his new movie Inglorious Basterds.

With a cast list that includes Brad Pitt, Diane Kruger and Michael Fassbender Inglorious Basterds begins in German-occupied France, where Shosanna Dreyfus (Mélanie Laurent) witnesses the execution of her family at the hand of Nazi Colonel Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz).

Shosanna narrowly escapes and flees to Paris, where she forges a new identity as the owner and operator of a cinema. Elsewhere in Europe, Lieutenant Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) organizes a group of Jewish soldiers to engage in targeted acts of retribution.

Known to their enemy as "The Basterds," Raine's squad joins German actress and undercover agent Bridget Von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger) on a mission to take down the leaders of The Third Reich.

- Fish Tank

Fish Tank is a second movie for Michael Fassbender, who shot to fame and acclaim last year in Hunger as Bobby Sands, in Fish Tank.

This is the highly anticipated next movie by director Andrea Arnold after critical hit Red Road and is one of the UK's entries in the category.

The movie follows fifteen year old Mia whose life is turned upside down when her mum brings home a new boyfriend.

- Looking For Eric

Cannes Film Festival veteran Ken Loach, who won the award in 2006 for the film 'The Wind That Shakes The Barley', is back with Looking for Eric, which stars a certain Eric Cantona.

Looking for Eric follows Eric, a postman whose life is slipping through his own fingers...

His chaotic family, his wild stepsons, and the cement mixer in the front garden don’t help, but it is Eric’s own secret that drives him to the brink.

Can he face Lily, the woman he once loved? Despite outrageous efforts and misplaced goodwill from his football fan mates, Eric continues to sink.

In desperate times it takes a spliff and a special friend to challenge Eric to journey into the most perilous territory of all - the past.

As a certain Frenchman says, 'He who is afraid to throw the dice, will never throw a six.'

- Los Abrazos Rotos (Broken Embraces)

Broken Embraces is another highly anticipated movie as Oscar winner Penelope Cruz reunites with filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar, who last worked together on Volver.

Reminiscent of 1950s hard-boiled American film noir, Broken Embraces follows a four-way tale of dangerous love, set between the 1990s and present day.

A man writes, lives and loves in darkness. Fourteen years before, he was in a brutal car crash on the island of Lanzarote. In the accident, he didn’t lose only his sight, he also lost Lena, the love of his life.

- Taking Woodstock

Despite having a good record of scooping the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in recent years it's Cannes where we get to take a look at Ang Lee's Taking Woodstock.

With a great cast of Emile Hirsch, Liev Schreiber, Imelda Staunton, Jeffrey Dean Taking Woodstock is an adaptation of Elliot Tiber's memoir and Lee's first movie since Lust, Caution.

Tiber played an unexpected but pivotal role in making the 1969 Woodstock Music and Arts Festival into the famed happening it was. Working as an interior designer in Greenwich Village during culturally and politically exciting times, Tiber felt empowered by the gay-rights movement.

But he was also still staked to the family business a Catskills motel. As its part-time manager, he had become the local town's issuer of event permits, granting himself one annually for a small music festival.

When he heard that the planned Woodstock concert had had its own permit denied by a neighbouring town, he called to offer his own. Soon half a million people were on their way to Tiber's neighbour's farm in White Lake, New York, and Tiber found himself swept up in a generation-defining experience that would change his life, and American culture, forever.

- Vengeance

The only movie from Hong Kong to make the In Competition line-up this year is Johnnie To's Vengeance.

Starring Johnny Hallyday the film follows a French assassin turned chef who heads to Hong Kong to avenge the death of his daughter who was murdered.

Movies to catch that are out of competition include the festival opener Up, the latest one from animation giants Pixar. Also causing a stir is Heath Ledger's final movie The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus.

The actor passed away while filming so Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell and Jude Law stepped in to complete the movie.

Francis Ford Coppola's self financed movie Tetro will kick off Directors' Fortnight.

The other In Competition movies

A l'Origine (In the Beginning) - France

Antichrist - Denmark

Bright Star - New Zealand

Bak-Jwi (Thirst) - South Korea

Das Weisse Band (The White Ribbon) - Germany

Kinatay - Philippines

Les Herbes Folles (Wild Grasses) - France

Map of the Sounds of Tokyo - Spain

Soudain le Vide (Enter the Void) - France