From the record number of seven female directors in the competition to Jennifer Lawrence's documentary on Afghan women, we're celebrating the ladies of the Cannes Film Festival! In our special programme from the Croisette, we hear from this year's best actress Oscar winner Michelle Yeoh, as well as actress and women's rights advocate Salma Hayek.
We then meet Australian actress and "Alice in Wonderland" star Mia Wasikowska, who stars in Jessica Hausner's dystopian drama "Club Zero" as a cult-like teacher who instructs her students that eating less is healthier for the environment. She talks to us about how the idealism of youth can be challenged and exploited.We also meet Indian actress and musician Shruti Haasan, who is in Cannes to promote "The Eye", a psychological thriller directed by Daphne Schmon. She talks to us about female empowerment and India's "misunderstood" cinema.
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We then meet Australian actress and "Alice in Wonderland" star Mia Wasikowska, who stars in Jessica Hausner's dystopian drama "Club Zero" as a cult-like teacher who instructs her students that eating less is healthier for the environment. She talks to us about how the idealism of youth can be challenged and exploited.We also meet Indian actress and musician Shruti Haasan, who is in Cannes to promote "The Eye", a psychological thriller directed by Daphne Schmon. She talks to us about female empowerment and India's "misunderstood" cinema.
Visit our website:
http://www.france24.com
Like us on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/FRANCE24.English
Follow us on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/France24_en
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NewsTranscript
00:00 [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:03 Hello from the French Riviera, from the record number
00:15 of female directors in the competition
00:17 to Jennifer Lawrence's documentary on Afghan women.
00:20 Today, we're celebrating the ladies of the Cannes Film
00:23 Festival.
00:25 [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:28 [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:31 And starting with a woman who made history earlier this year
00:43 by winning the Best Actress Oscar for her starring
00:45 role in the Best Picture winner, Everything Everywhere,
00:48 All at Once.
00:49 Michelle Yeoh is the first Asian woman to win the award.
00:53 She's in Cannes to receive Kering's Women in Motion prize,
00:57 which honors iconic female figures in film.
01:00 This was her reaction to winning the award.
01:03 For too long, we as women have been left out
01:07 of rooms and conversations.
01:09 We have been told the door is closed to us.
01:13 Well, Virginia Woolf once said, there
01:17 is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set
01:21 upon the freedom of my mind.
01:24 There is still work to do.
01:26 We have a long way to go before we can
01:29 say we are on equal footing.
01:32 So what I would like to say is keep fighting, keep pushing,
01:36 keep telling your stories.
01:37 Your voices are important, and your vision is vital.
01:42 Michelle Yeoh has some celebrity fans out there,
01:45 including the actress and women's rights advocate Salma
01:48 Hayek.
01:50 She's my hero.
01:52 I mean, she is actually a hero because she
01:57 is a badass that can beat up everyone.
02:02 I've seen so many movies with her
02:03 where she's so strong and graceful and agile
02:07 and magnificently talented as an actress.
02:11 And always there's so much elegance to Michelle
02:16 on screen and outside of the screen.
02:18 She's been an inspiration to many women.
02:22 And also to many minorities, including myself.
02:25 This year, there's a record number
02:27 of female directors in the Cannes competition,
02:30 seven out of 21.
02:32 The previous record of five films was last year.
02:35 Peter O'Brien reports.
02:37 I'm part of half of the population of the world
02:42 that has been left in the shadow for the last thousands of years.
02:47 So I'm very glad that lately two or three women more
02:51 are being pulled into the light.
02:55 Austrian director Jessica Hausner
02:57 is one of seven women selected to compete
02:59 for this year's Palme d'Or.
03:01 That's almost a third of the filmmakers up for the prize.
03:04 Festival director Thierry Frémaux
03:06 is proud of the films chosen, not of the statistics.
03:11 It's thought 18% of directors in the world are women.
03:14 So we're well beyond that.
03:17 Obviously, this is a Cannes record.
03:18 But I'm not going to say, yes, it's great.
03:21 We watch the films, and we decide what's good.
03:25 Among the competitors, Ramata Thulai-Sy is unique.
03:29 She's the youngest, the only first-timer,
03:31 and the second-ever black female director
03:33 to compete for the prize.
03:35 Her film is set in sand-swept rural Senegal,
03:38 where two young lovers find themselves
03:40 at odds with their community.
03:42 I wanted Banel to be a mythic character,
03:48 like Madea, Lady Macbeth, or Phaedra, an anti-hero
03:52 who you love to hate.
03:54 I wanted to bring some complexity
03:55 to the portrayal of African women,
03:58 not just bland, nice, quiet women.
04:00 We're more complex than that.
04:04 The only other film from Africa comes
04:06 courtesy of Kautha Ben-Hanir.
04:08 Four Daughters retells the story of Olfa Hamrouni,
04:12 a Tunisian woman whose daughters left to join the Islamic State
04:15 Group in Libya.
04:17 Hamrouni herself features in the film
04:19 alongside an actor playing her, a blend of fiction
04:22 and reality typical of the director.
04:26 Because the revolution affected the family's life so much,
04:29 this new generation of girls rejects
04:31 any patriarchal maternal authority,
04:33 which Olfa represents.
04:35 But because they don't have the life skills,
04:40 they make terrible choices, sometimes foolish choices.
04:46 Also vying for the prize, a trio of films
04:48 directed by French women.
04:50 Veteran Catherine Greer returns to break taboos
04:53 with her erotic drama Last Summer.
04:55 Justine Trie serves up a courtroom drama
04:58 cum Hitchcock thriller with Anatomy of a Fool.
05:01 And Cannes regular Catherine Corsini
05:03 makes the list again with her drama Homecoming,
05:06 despite allegations surrounding working conditions on set.
05:11 As the curtain falls on the festival this Friday,
05:13 Alicia Rovacka will take us on one final romp,
05:16 tomb raiding through 1980s Italy with her film La Chimera.
05:23 Well, next to our film of the day,
05:24 directed by one of the female directors in the competition,
05:28 Jessica Hausner.
05:29 Australian actress Mia Wasikowska
05:37 plays a cult-like boarding school teacher
05:39 in the eerie dystopian drama Club Zero, who
05:42 instructs her students that eating less
05:44 is healthier for the environment.
05:46 The film interrogates the cultural stigma around food.
05:50 It's also about how the idealism of youth
05:52 can be challenged and exploited.
05:55 Earlier, I went to meet the actress, who we know best,
05:57 from Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland.
06:00 It was very important to the parents' board
06:07 that the children improve their nutrition skills.
06:11 And conscious eating seems to be the latest thing.
06:15 I'm so happy we found you.
06:16 And I am very happy to be here.
06:19 I play a teacher called Mrs. Novak, who
06:23 comes into this elite boarding school
06:25 to teach nutrition and conscious eating,
06:27 and slowly starts to manipulate the students.
06:32 You have been associated with big, famous women,
06:36 like Alice in Wonderland, Jane Eyre.
06:38 What attracted you to this character?
06:40 I thought the script was really great.
06:41 I thought it spoke about a lot of issues
06:43 that probably everybody's faced with at the moment,
06:46 but especially young people.
06:49 Thought it spoke about their vulnerability.
06:51 So it really moved me and disturbed me.
06:55 I'm eating consciously.
06:57 It's a new thing at school.
06:59 It's healthy, strengthens my willpower,
07:02 and preserves the environment.
07:04 Oh, that's beautiful.
07:05 Yeah, well, spare me your excuses.
07:07 Just eat your meal, OK?
07:09 So there are at least two other films
07:10 where young people are sort of influenced
07:12 by cult-like situations at the festival.
07:14 There's The Idol, which is a TV series,
07:17 and Four Daughters, where two young women go off
07:20 to fight for the Islamic State.
07:22 What do you think that's saying about the world
07:24 today and young people?
07:26 Well, I don't know.
07:28 But I think it's not just sort of this time, necessarily.
07:33 But I do think that people are particularly
07:35 vulnerable at the moment.
07:37 I mean, what resonated for me was that these kids join
07:40 this class because they've got a lot of anxiety
07:43 about the world that they're inheriting, about the climate.
07:45 And they want to do something positive.
07:47 And they want to make change.
07:49 And I think that that's a beautiful quality that
07:52 can very easily get subverted.
07:55 And whether that's in this context
07:57 or any other kind of context, it's a real vulnerability.
08:03 And you actually became very famous
08:04 when you were only a teenager.
08:06 You were a Hollywood star in your 20s, early 20s.
08:10 But then you sort of decided to step back.
08:12 Why was that?
08:13 The lifestyle didn't totally work for me.
08:15 So I just took a step back.
08:18 And I still really like acting.
08:20 But it's also important to do other things
08:22 and to have a healthy balance of a life that's
08:26 full of different things, not just one.
08:28 You have worked with some of the greats, like Tim Burton,
08:31 and Jim Jarmusch, and David Cronenberg.
08:34 Is it any different working with a female director?
08:36 It's different working with every director,
08:39 sort of regardless of gender.
08:41 I think women have a harder time being
08:44 able to be in positions where they can tell their own stories.
08:47 So maybe in that way, yeah.
08:49 There's been lots of talk about there
08:50 being seven female directors in competition.
08:53 It's a record.
08:54 Do you think it's good to mark these moments?
08:56 Or do you think we've become obsessed
08:58 by saying female director instead of just director?
09:01 No, I think it is important.
09:02 And I definitely don't want to dismiss gender being important.
09:06 I think it's a really important shift.
09:08 And I think that there is more work to be done.
09:12 But it is really brilliant to have more women more sort
09:16 of equally represented in the competition.
09:18 You have been at the festival before and with Jim Jarmusch.
09:21 And what's your best memory of Cannes?
09:23 I had a great time here with Maps to the Stars
09:25 because I really loved that film with David Cronenberg.
09:29 And it was really memorable.
09:30 And yeah.
09:32 This isn't a very glamorous job.
09:35 I would be the most loyal, most confident, most grateful
09:38 personal assistant you've ever had.
09:41 What does it mean to be showing a film here at Cannes?
09:45 It's great.
09:46 I mean, it's a fun festival because it's the first time
09:49 that all these films are seen.
09:52 And so there's really no preconceived sort of notion
09:56 or conception of what they're going to be like.
09:57 It's real-- sort of a real premiere, you know?
10:01 And then, you know, films get laden with expectation
10:04 and reviews and things like that.
10:06 So I think that's one of the best things about Cannes.
10:09 Amir, what are you going to be working on next?
10:11 I'm not sure.
10:12 I don't have any jobs lined up at the moment.
10:14 So I would like to write and direct.
10:16 But other than that, we'll see.
10:17 Yeah.
10:18 [MUSIC - "I HAD MY CHANCE"]
10:19 I had my chance and I blew it all.
10:26 Knew right from the start written on the wall.
10:31 Now it's real time.
10:33 The Indian actress and musician Shruti Hassan
10:41 is in Cannes to promote "The Eye,"
10:43 a psychological thriller.
10:44 She's also the guest of honor at a roundtable discussion
10:47 about gender parity called "Activating Change."
10:50 She spoke to Julia Monti about female empowerment
10:54 and India's misunderstood cinema.
10:57 Hi, everyone.
10:57 I'm Shruti Hassan.
10:58 I'm an actor and musician from India.
11:00 And I'm here today and this time at Cannes
11:03 to talk about our lovely film "The Eye"
11:05 and to be a part of the Breaking Through the Lens roundtable.
11:09 Yes, I'm super excited to be here with the team of "The Eye."
11:16 It's my first English--
11:18 full-length English feature film.
11:20 And I've had a wonderful time working on it,
11:24 especially because we have an all-women-led team,
11:27 a female director, writer, producer.
11:30 First time for me.
11:31 And it was absolutely fantastic because there's so much honesty
11:34 in telling the story.
11:35 I think that they always say art imitates life.
11:43 And cinema and storytelling carries that responsibility
11:48 of talking about these topics of feminism, gender parity,
11:53 and many such topics.
11:54 So when the people telling these stories
11:57 come together to address the issues that drive them,
12:00 it's really effective.
12:02 I feel like, yeah, India is represented at Cannes a lot.
12:09 I don't think all the kind of stories we have from India
12:12 are represented.
12:13 And I think a lot of the concept of what Indian cinema is
12:16 is misunderstood.
12:18 So a lot of people call it just Bollywood.
12:19 And that isn't true.
12:21 That's just one language.
12:22 There's so many stories and so many different kinds of movies.
12:25 And it's not just singing and dancing and color.
12:28 It's also that.
12:29 But there's a lot more.
12:30 And I hope to see in the future that we
12:33 can represent ourselves in a more unique way
12:36 and that we are understood as well in that same way
12:38 for our diversity.
12:47 And just before we go, Jennifer Lawrence
12:49 has brought a documentary about Afghan women to Cannes.
12:52 Bread and Roses is co-produced by the actress who
12:55 came to its red carpet premiere.
12:57 She wanted to give Afghan women a platform
12:59 to show how drastically life changed for them
13:02 when the Taliban returned to power in 2021
13:05 after the withdrawal of US troops.
13:07 It's directed by the Afghan filmmaker, Sara Mani.
13:11 Thanks for watching.
13:12 See you tomorrow from the Cannes Film Festival.
13:15 [MUSIC PLAYING]
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13:25 [MUSIC PLAYING]
13:28 (upbeat music)
13:31 (upbeat music)
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