A number of Israeli films will be taking part in the Cannes Film Festival, which will run from July 6-17, and which just announced its lineup on Thursday.
Cannes usually takes place in early May, but last year it was postponed and eventually canceled and this year it has been postponed until summer. But the organizers emphasized it would take place as announced this year, but with audiences wearing masks and certain other regulations in place.
Nadav Lapid’s latest film, Ahed’s Knee, will take part in the main competition and he also has another movie, The Star, in the short film competition, an unprecedented coup. Ahed’s Knee will compete against the latest films by such renowned directors as Jacques Audiard, Bruno Dumont, Asghar Farhadi, Francois Ozon, Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Wes Anderson. Lapid is one of Israel’s most acclaimed directors, and in 2019 he won the Golden Bear, the top prize at the Berlin International Film Festival for his previous film, Synonyms.
Ahed’s Knee tells the story of a film director who arrives in a remote village at the edge of the desert to screen one of his films and meets a bureaucrat. He finds himself fighting a battle for artistic freedom in Israel and another to come to terms with his mother’s death. Following its international premiere at Cannes, Ahed’s Knee will be released in Israeli cinemas.
Work on Ahed’s Knee began before the pandemic, but The Star was inspired by the coronavirus crisis and was filmed during one of the lockdowns. It tells the story of a woman determined to receive a kiss from a star she idolizes in spite of the horror of the plague, and its cast includes Tom Mercier, who was in Synonyms, as well as Lapid’s partner, the actress Naama Preis, and their son, Noah.
“To present two films at the Cannes Film Festival is like digging, finding the treasure and then finding another one,” said Lapid in a statement. “I am of course happy about Ahed’s Knee being accepted for the official competition... I’m just as happy about The Star, a movie made at the height of the horror of the plague with a sense of happiness and lust for life... After a year of illness and stagnation, Cannes will be like a rebirth for cinema. We will all realize again that cinema is one the great inventions of the human race and nothing is more beautiful than a beautiful movie.”
Eran Kolirin’s latest film, Let There Be Morning, will take part in the prestigious Un Certain Regard competition. Kolirin’s film tells the story of a Palestinian who returns with his family to the village where he grew up for a wedding, only to find himself trapped there. Two of Kolirin’s previous films, The Band’s Visit and Beyond the Mountains and Hills also competed at Cannes.
Shlomi Elkabetz, a director and actor who starred in the HBO drama, Our Boys, will have his latest film, Black Notebooks, shown in a special Cannes screening.
Ukrainian director Sergey Loznitsa’s latest film, Babi Yar. Context will explore the massacre of Jews at Babi Yar and will also be shown in a special screening.