Wes Anderson arrives in Cannes with his armada of stars

Star parade on the red carpet in Cannes: The screening of Wes Anderson's “Asteroid City”, in the running for the Palme d'Or, was preceded by a star-studded climb of the steps on Tuesday, at the height of its amazing cast.

Scarlett Johansson, Tom Hanks, Adrien Brody, Matt Dillon… Twenty actors and actresses, faithful to the American filmmaker or newcomers, made the flashes crackle at outside the Palais des Festivals, after a collective arrival by bus to the applause of a large crowd.

Missing all the same – among others – Tilda Swinton, Jeff Goldblum, or Margot Robbie, who will lend her features to the Barbie doll this summer, alongside Ryan “Ken” Gosling.

From return to competition two years after “The French Dispatch”, which took place in a postcard France, the Texan this time places his action in a fictitious American city in the middle of the desert, bringing together parents and students for scholarly competitions.

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“I watch Cannes compared to the other films I know that have been shown there, and I feel lucky to be selected in the same place as them. For me, it's a chance to be part of this history of cinema”, he confided in mid-May to the New York Times.

Landed for the first time in Cannes With 2012's 'Moonrise Kingdom', Wes Anderson, known for his ironic, old-fashioned style, delivers instantly recognizable cinema with a retro visual palette and taste for symmetry, often imitated on Instagram.

It remains to be seen whether he will manage to seduce the jury chaired by Ruben Östlund, responsible for deciding between the 21 works in the race for the Palme d'Or.

Clippings

Another filmmaker in the running on Tuesday evening: the Italian Marco Bellocchio, 83, a regular at Cannes and distinguished in 2021 with an honorary Palme d'or.

The author of films denouncing religion or the army delves with “The Abduction” into the true story of Edgardo Mortara, a Jewish child converted by force. The film is set in the Jewish quarter of Bologna where, in 1858, the Pope's soldiers burst into the Mortara family's home to take their 7-year-old son and give him a Catholic education.

Bellocchio will he finally know the consecration, when Italian cinema has not been crowned for more than 20 years?

The coveted trophy has always eluded him despite his eight selections since “The jump into the void ” in 1980, until “Traitor” in 2019, on a repentant of the mafia.

Italy will have two other chances to win the Palme with Nanni Moretti, crowned in 2001 for “The Son's Room” and who returns on Wednesday with “Towards a radiant future”, and Alice Rohrwacher, another Cannes regular, who follows a young archaeologist mixed with a group of grave robbers in 1980s Italy in “The Chimera”, in competition on Friday.

Four days from the winners, it is “The dead leaves” of the Finn Aki Kaurismaki who is in the lead, in the panel of critics compiled by the review Screen, which is a reference.

On the sidelines of the Festival, gas and electricity cuts, claimed by the CGT union , mobilized against the pension reform, notably affected restaurants on the beaches, where the midday service was disrupted. However, no cuts took place within the Festival grounds.

Three men, employees of the GRDF and Enedis distributors, were arrested “in flagrante delicto”, a police source told AFP . They will have to complete a citizenship stage, according to the prosecutor.