Cannes 2015: French film-makers dominate Critics' Week…

Cannes 2015: French film-makers dominate Critics' Week lineup

The Anarchists, directed by Elie Wajeman, has been given the opening-gala spot at Cannes 2015’s Critics’ Week. Photograph: Matthieu Ponchel

The Cannes film festival’s Critics’ Week has announced its selection for its 2015 edition, following the official festival’s lineup announcement on 16 April.

The Critics’ Week (AKA La Semaine de la Critique) is devoted to features by first- and second-time directors, and French film-makers feature most strongly this time around. Elie Wajeman has been given the plum opening-gala spot with The Anarchists, a fin-de-siècle-set study of a police agent (Tahar Rahim) who infiltrates an anarchist group. Blue is the Warmest Colour’s Adèle Exarchopoulos also stars. Mathieu Vadepied, the cinematographer of domestic French hit Untouchables and Jacques Audiard’s Read My Lips, has taken the closing slot for his feature directing debut, La Vie en Grand, a comedy about kids growing up on housing estates. Neither will compete for awards; and nor will Les Deux Amis, the directing debut of actor Louis Garrel (best known as the twin brother in Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Dreamers). Les Deux Amis is adapted from a story by Alfred de Musset, and stars Garrel as a film extra who falls in love with mysterious sandwich-bar worker Golshifteh Farahani.

The competition strand of Critics’ Week features Dégradé, a Gaza-set comedy by twin-brother Palestinian artists Arab and Tarzan; Paulina, a thriller from Argentinian director Santiago Mitre about a lawyer who returns to live in her impoverished home town; and Sleeping Giant, about teens on the loose in a lakeside resort in Canada, directed by Andrew Cividino. Mediterranea, directed by Jonas Carpignano, is a chronicle of a Burkinabé immigrant’s attempt to reach Europe.

The Critics’ Week runs 14-22 May as part of the Cannes film festival.