CANNES.- He Brazilian director Karim Ainouz presents today -May 22- Destination Motela film about desire shot in his native country, the only film in contention for the Palme d’Or directed by a Latin American.
Ainouz, who already competed for the highest award last year with Firebranda British historical drama, returns to his native Brazil to film an erotic thriller in a motel in the northeast.
“It is the simultaneously intimate and universal portrait of a youth deprived of future and hope by a dominating and despotic elite, against which violence is the only weapon to affirm their desire and their vitality,” noted the director, quoted in the release of the film.
Director’s participation in Cannes
The Brazilian filmmaker is a regular at the contest and in 2019 won the Un Certain Regard award for The invisible life of Eurdice Gusmao.
In this edition of Cannes Festival compete with films like Emilia Preza musical set in Mexico directed by Frenchman Jacques Audiard, or Kinds of Kindnessfrom the Greek Yorgos Lanthimos.
The other film in competition presented this Wednesday will also be Lusphone: Grand Tourby the Portuguese Miguel Gomes, about a British official, settled in Burma in 1917, who abandons his fiancée to take a great trip through Asia.
Gomes, who is participating for the first time in Cannes, rose to fame with Tab (2012), awarded at the Berlinale.
This 77th Cannes Film Festival is approaching its final stretch, before this Saturday, the jury chaired by Greta Gerwig announces its palmares.
Rasoulof, in Cannes
Among the latest films that have been projected, he is one of the Italian-themed films.
My Marcelloby the Frenchman Christophe Honor, in which the actress Chiara Mastroianni claims to have transformed herself into her father, the legendary performer.
Y Partnopeby Italian filmmaker Paolo Sorrentino, a new love letter to his native Naples, personified in the story of a young woman torn between several loves.
With two days left to close the competition, all expectations are focused on Iran’s Mohammad Rasoulof and his film The seed of the sacred figscheduled for Friday.
Until this Tuesday it was not known that the filmmaker, who fled his country after being sentenced to five years in prison and receiving whippings, will be able to present his film in person, as confirmed by the organizers.
The 51-year-old director will return to the Croisette for the first time since 2017, when he won the Un Certain Regard award for A man of integrity.
His new film tells the story of an Iranian judge who falls into paranoia and begins to suspect his own wife and daughters during protests in Tehran, according to a statement distributed by the event.
Rasoulof announced last week that he had left the country clandestinely, on foot, on a journey that he described as exhausting and dangerous.
The filmmaker decided to leave his country shortly after being sentenced to eight years in prison for collusion to threaten state security.
He had already been imprisoned between July 2022 and February 2023, and was released from prison only thanks to a general amnesty granted to thousands of people after the large pro-democracy demonstrations that shook the country.
FUENTE: AFP
