U.S. director Wes Anderson introduced his newest A-list solid led by Benicio del Toro to the Cannes movie competition on Sunday, ramping up the star energy because the competitors reaches the midway mark.
Anderson’s usually whimsical “The Phoenician Scheme”, which additionally finds roles for Tom Hanks, Scarlett Johansson and Kate Winslet’s daughter, Mia Threapleton, is within the operating for the highest prize at Cannes.
It tells the story of risk-taking and accident-prone European tycoon Zsa-zsa Korda, performed by del Toro, who seems to bequeath his fictional enterprise empire to his estranged God-fearing daughter.
Del Toro’s character is loosely primarily based on Anderson’s Lebanese father-in-law.
“He was a completely different sort of person, but he was an engineer and quite alpha,” the director instructed AFP. “His relationship with my spouse might be the DNA of the film. He instructed her at some point, ‘I have to inform you about how my enterprise works as a result of I will not stay without end.’
But “the way he told her about his business was he opened a closet and started taking out shoeboxes and said, ‘This is the project that we are doing in Saudi. This is the project we are doing in Gibraltar,” Anderson added.
“She came home and she said, ‘This is crazy.’ So all of that went in the movie,” mentioned the maker of such quirky hits as “Asteroid City”, “The Grand Budapest Hotel” and “The Darjeeling Limited”.
With Anderson’s movie at all times thick with stars, the movie’s red-carpet premiere was filled with celebrities, with Edward Norton, Julianne Moore, Benedict Cumberbatch and Oscar-winning director Guillermo del Toro additionally on the town.
Fellow A-listers Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson had been additionally on the Croisette promenade on Sunday, a day after the premiere of their in-competition movie “Die, My Love” by Scottish director Lynne Ramsay.
Australia’s Nicole Kidman picked up a Kering Women In Motion award, in the meantime, the place she lamented the nonetheless “incredibly low” variety of ladies administrators within the film enterprise.
Anderson’s “The Phoenician Scheme” is one among 22 movies competing for finest movie within the official Cannes competitors which is able to conclude on Saturday.
Critics’ favorites from the primary week embody German-language drama “The Sound of Falling” about inter-generational trauma, and experimental rave road-trip thriller “Sirat”.
According to an evaluation of scores by movie journal Screen, the frontrunner is a contemplative drama about justice and cruelty within the Soviet Union referred to as “Two Prosecutors” by Ukrainian director Sergei Loznitsa.
“Russian society today is different from Soviet society in the 20th century but the essence is the same,” the 60-year-old director instructed AFP earlier this week.
“The Phoenician Scheme” was praised by The Hollywood Reporter as a “poignant narrative jigsaw puzzle” whereas Variety referred to as it “dense but undeniably enjoyable”.
Scarlett Johansson was not on the purple carpet on Sunday, however she is going to current her directorial debut — “Eleanor the Great” — to audiences on Monday.
Sunday additionally noticed the premiere of Nigeria’s first movie in an official slot at Cannes.
“My Father’s Shadow”, the debut characteristic of newcomer Akinola Davies is about throughout a 1993 coup, a pivotal second in Nigeria’s current historical past, when the navy annulled the election and General Sani Abacha ultimately took energy.
“Getting into competition for the first time ever shows that Nigerian cinema has come of age,” Prince Baba Agba, a cultural advisor to Nigeria’s President Bola Tinubu, instructed AFP.
Culture Minister Hannatu Musawa led the big and classy Nigerian presence on the purple carpet for the premiere.
© 2025 AFP