CANNES Festival 2019

[Chris Knipp]

Other anticipated titles at Cannes


TARON EGERTON AS ELTON JOHN IN ROCKETMAN

Rocketman (Dexter Fletcher)
A biopic about Elton John with Taron Egerton in the lead role. Egerton is the handsome 30-year-old British TV actor-singer known for the series "Smoke" and the 2014 action comedy Kingsman: The Secret Service. Dexter Fletcher, who was memorable (briefly) playing the young Caravaggio in Derek Jarman's film, got lucky last year by landing the job of finishing Bohemian Rhapsody. This film's screenplay is by Lee Hall, who did the writing for Billy Elliot, and is costars Jamie Bell as John's longtime songwriter Bernie Taupin. When shown the photo above Elton John is said to have thought it was him. Premiering Out of Competition.

A Hidden Life (Terence Malick).
A German-language film with Bruno Ganz and August Diehl about the Austrian Franz Jägerstätter, a conscientious objector who refuses to fight for the Nazis in World War II. Competition. This seems to signal the end of Malick's long period of navel-gazing. Why he chose this subject matter remains to be discovered.

Pain and Glory/Dolor y gloria (Pedro Almodover)
This stars Antonio Banderas, Asier Etxeandia, Penélope Cruz, Julieta Serrano and Leonardo Sbaraglia. It's a kind of retrospective, being focused on a director (played by Banderas) who ponders on his life choices as he finds the world crashing down on him. This opened in Spanish theaters (Sony) in March, but is in Competition at Cannes nonetheless.

The Traitor/Il traditore (Marco Bellochio)
Bellocchio's seventh time in competition at Cannes, but he has never been a winner. Depicts pentito Mafia boss (Italian word) Tommaso Buscetta. Pierfrancesco Favino stars as Buscetta with Maria Fernanda Cândido and Luigi Lo Cascio. The only Italian film in Competition at Cannes this year. Buscetto claims "I am and remain a man of honor. It's they who betrayed the ideals of Cosa Nostra." Caught in Brazil, where he managed the drug trade, he saw the killing of sons and brothers in Palermo, and the film shows his trial.