Cannes 2009: Best Actor Favorites

Best Actor
Tahar Rahim as a young man behind bars in A Prophet.
Ben Whishaw as John Keats in Bright Star.
André Dussollier as the elderly hero in Wild Grass.
François Cluzet as a con man in In the Beginning.
 
Photos: Courtesy Festival de Cannes
 

Cannes 2009: Best Screenplay Favorites

Best Screenplay
Any of those listed for best film, in addition to:
Marco Bellocchio’s Vincere (co-written by Bellocchio and Daniela Ceselli), about how Benito Mussolini mistreated his first wife (Giovanna Mezzogiorno, top photo) and son while millions of Italians thought he was just the greatest guy around.
Ken Loach’s Looking for Eric (written by Paul Laverty), about a postman who gets soccer player Eric Cantona (middle photo) to become his life coach.
Writer-director Xavier Giannoli’s In the Beginning (bottom photo), in which a con man gets a small town to build a highway.
 
Photos: Courtesy Festival de Cannes
 

Cannes 2009: ADRIFT, DRAG ME TO HELL, IN THE BEGINNING

At Firstshowing.net, Alex Billington on À Deriva / Adrift (above, with Laura Neiva), screened in the Un Certain Regard sidebar:
"I think I stumbled across a big Cannes sleeper hit. From the beaches of Brazil comes Adrift, known as À Deriva in Portuguese, the third film from Brazilian director Heitor Dhalia. I’m going to say right up front — following in the footsteps of City of God director Fernando Meirelles, Dhalia is the next great Brazilian filmmaker on the verge of breaking out. Adrift is his calling card, a gorgeous family drama about a beautiful young girl and her parents. It’s not a masterpiece, but it is definitely one of the better films I’ve seen here that offers [...]

Cannes 2009: Competition Films

Cannes Film Festival 2009: Competition Line-Up
Click on the photos to enlarge them.

Los abrazos rotos (Broken Embraces), Pedro Almodóvar, Spain

Fish Tank, Andrea Arnold, UK

Un prophète (A Prophet), Jacques Audiard, France

Vincere, Marco Bellocchio, Italy

Bright Star, Jane Campion, UK

Bakjwi (Thirst), Park Chan-wook, South-Korea

Map of the Sounds of Tokyo, Isabel Coixet, Spain

À l’origine (In the Beginning), Xavier Giannoli, France

Das weisse Band (The White Ribbon), Michael Haneke, Austria

Taking Woodstock, Ang Lee, USA
Palme d’Or Line-Up: Part II