Alain Delon, Honorary Palme d'or at the 72nd Festival de Cannes

Alain Delon © Harcourt

He entirely belongs to cinema and its finest works and legends: in 2019, the Festival de Cannes has decided to award Alain Delon with an Honorary Palme d'or to pay tribute to his wonderful presence in the history of film. After Jeanne Moreau, Woody Allen, Bernardo Bertolucci, Jane Fonda, Clint Eastwood, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Manoel de Oliveira, Agnès Varda and Jean-Pierre Léaud, the Festival de Cannes is proud and delighted that the legendary actor who starred in Luchino Visconti's The Leopard (Palme d'or, 1963) has accepted this honour from the international community. "Pierre Lescure and I are delighted that Alain Delon has accepted to be honoured by the Festival," says Thierry Frémaux, General Delegate. He hesitated for a long time, having long been reluctant to this Palme d'or because he thought he should only come to Cannes to celebrate the directors he had been working with." We're talking about a giant, a living legend and a global icon. In Japan, where he is revered, he is even known as the Spring Samurai. More than 80 films, countless masterpieces and superlatives are testament to the artistic reach and international aura of a man who burst onto the scene in Purple Noon (1960), a crime film and ode to his incredible beauty. René Clément invented Delon in this film. A diamond in the rough, he was just 25 at the time.

OFFICIAL CANNES 2019 POSTER

Agnès, in the bright sunlight.

"All the way up.
As high as she could go.
Perched on the shoulders of an impassive technician.
Clinging to a camera, which seems to absorb her entirely.
A young woman, aged 26, making her first film.

It is August 1954: we are in the Pointe Courte neighbourhood of Sète, in the South of France. In the dazzling summer light, Silvia Monfort and Philippe Noiret explore their fragile love, surrounded by struggling fishermen, bustling women, children at play and roaming cats. Natural settings, lightweight camera, shoestring budget: with La Pointe Courte (presented in Cannes, in a screening on the rue d’Antibes, in 1955), Agnès Varda, the photographer from Jean Vilar’s Théâtre National Populaire is paving the way for a young cinema, of which she will remain the only female director.

Like a manifesto, this still photo from the set sums up everything about Agnès Varda: her passion, aplomb, and mischievousness. Ingredients of a free artist, forming a recipe she never stopped improving. Her 65 years of creativity and experimentation almost match the age of the Festival de Cannes, who celebrates each year visions which reveal, dare and rise higher. And who remains keen to remember.

As she liked to point out, Agnès Varda is not a woman filmmaker: Agnès Varda is a filmmaker. She often attended the Festival de Cannes to present her films : 13 times in the Official Selection. She was also a Jury member in 2005 as well as President of the Caméra d’or Jury in 2013. When she received the Honorary Palme d’or, in 2015, she evoked “resilience and endurance, more than honour”, and dedicated it “to all the brave and inventive filmmakers, those who create original cinema, whether it’s fiction or documentary, who are not in the limelight, but who carry on.”

Avant-garde but popular, intimate yet universal, her films have led the way. And so, perched high on this pyramid, surveying the beach at Cannes, young and eternal, Agnès Varda will be the inspirational guiding light of this 72nd edition of the Festival!"

CANNES 2019: Claire Denis — President of the Short Films & Cinéfondation Jury

Claire Denis © C. Alvarez / Getty Images

French filmmaker and screenwriter Claire Denis is to lead the Short Films and Cinéfondation Jury of the 72nd Festival de Cannes.

Claire Denis will succeed Abderrahmane Sissako, Naomi Kawase, Cristian Mungiu and Bertrand Bonello. On Thursday May 23, along with her jury, she will award the three prizes of the Cinéfondation among the 17 film students’ works presented. On Saturday May 25, she will award the Short Film Palme d’or at the Closing Ceremony of the 72nd edition of the Festival de Cannes.

Claire Denis has occupied a unique place in contemporary cinema for more than 30 years. She has directed a compelling body of work, including 13 feature films, four of which were screened in the Festival de Cannes’s Official Selection. A true adventurer, she has established her taste for observation and experimentation throughout her artistic journeys, navigating between introspection and openness to the world.

Chocolat (1998), her first, semi-autobiographical film revisiting Cameroon’s independence and the Africa of her childhood – continent she returned to with Beau Travail (2000) andWhite Material (2010), deeply affected audiences and was lauded at the Cannes Competition, the César awards and by critics.

With No Fear, No Die (1990), I Can’t Sleep (Un Certain Regard, 1994), Nénette and Boni (Pardo d’oro, 1996) or 35 Shots of Rums (2008), Claire Denis explores a cinema of the margins and the heartlands where connections between people are in constant evolution. She is also attached to filming desire born from the otherness, from things forbidden and taboos, as seen in Trouble Every Day (Midnight Screening, 2001) or Bastards (Un Certain Regard, 2013).

Always daring, always free, Claire Denis has never stopped reforming the paths between the unknown and the familiar up to her latest High Life (2018), in which the power of her direction and expertise in the ellipsis were reinventing science fiction.

An admirer of Ozu, Claire Denis has worked alongside Wim Wenders, Jim Jarmusch and Jacques Rivette, and it’s a filmmaker frequently quoted by the new generation, from Barry Jenkins to Joachim Trier who will mentor the young directors of the 2019 Selection.

In 2018, the jury chaired by Bertrand Bonello awarded the Short Film Palme d’or to All These Creatures, by Charles Williams.

Lynne Ramsay, Xavier Giannoli, Alice Winocour, Pascale Ferran, João Salaviza, Jim Jarmusch, Nuri Bilge Ceylan and Jane Campion, who remains to this day the only director having received both the Short Film Palme d’or and the Palme d’or for a feature, have also made their first steps in Cannes with this Selection.

The 2018 Cinéfondation Prizes were awarded to first works by Diego Céspedes, Igor Poplauhin, Shen Di and Lucia Bulgheroni. They were following in the footsteps of Emmanuelle Bercot, Deniz Gamze Ergüven, Léa Mysius, Kornél Mundruczó, Claire Burger, Cãtãlin Mitulescu and Nadav Lapid, also discovered by the Cinéfondation.

The Festival de Cannes will take place from Tuesday May 14 to Saturday May 25, 2019. The Competition Jury will be chaired by Mexican filmmaker Alejandro González Iñárritu, and Un Certain Regard Jury by Lebanese filmmaker Nadine Labaki.