PARIS (NYTIMES) - Sean Penn is a contender for the top prize at this year's Cannes Film Festival, to be held from July 6 to 17, organisers announced on Thursday (June 3). In Flag Day, the actor-director plays a conman.
Penn - who was last at the competition as a director in 2016 with The Last Face - will be up against a host of other headliners for the Palme d'Or: Wes Anderson, whose The French Dispatch stars Timothee Chalamet; Nanni Moretti of Italy; Paul Verhoeven of the Netherlands; Leos Carax and Francois Ozon of France; and Asghar Farhadi of Iran, who directed the Oscar-winning A Separation.
This year's festival was delayed from its usual schedule in May because of the Covid-19 pandemic. Last year's edition was cancelled. The 2021 event will have 24 movies in contention for the Palme d'Or, more than usual, said Mr Thierry Fremaux, the festival's artistic director, at a news conference.
The pandemic itself is likely to be a major protagonist at the event.
Unless fully vaccinated or presenting proof of immunity, attendants will have to submit to a saliva test every 48 hours at a lab near the main festival venue, organisers said.
Mr Fremaux said of the more than 2,000 movies submitted, some were shot in lockdown and on cellphones, and some had characters wearing masks.
"In 20 years, younger generations watching these movies will think, 'Why are they wearing masks?'" he added. "Cinema will bear the traces of this. It will remember this moment."
Mr Julien Gester, co-culture editor of French daily newspaper Liberation, said the films by Penn and Anderson would bring "prestige and Hollywood glamour" to the Croisette, the seafront drag where the festival takes place.
He recalled that when Penn was in Cannes for The Last Face - a love story about two humanitarian workers in Africa, starring Charlize Theron and Javier Bardem - the movie was heckled and booed at the screening and "was completely massacred by the critics".
Mr Gester noted that there were seven French films in this year's competition - nearly a third of the full line-up - of which three were directed by women.
In total, there are four films by women in the competition. The festival has come under fire in recent years for the dearth of female contestants; the only woman ever to have won the Palme d'Or is Jane Campion, for her 1993 film The Piano.
Outside of the competition for the Palme d'Or, the festival will also present Oliver Stone's investigation into the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, JFK Revisited: Through The Looking Glass, and the first movie directed by actress Charlotte Gainsbourg, about her mother, actress-singer Jane Birkin.
