CANNES DISPATCH
Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS
Words by JANE CROWTHER

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Cate Blanchett has been to Cannes many times; both with her films and as a jury president. But she returns to the festival this year on a more personal mission. She conducted one of the festival’s ‘A Rendez Vous with…’ career Q&As reserved for icons of the film industry as well as appearing on a panel as chair to announce the five filmmakers who will receive a short film grant from the Displacement Film Fund. Initiated at UNHCR’s Global Refugee Forum and now in its second year, the fund champions and funds filmmakers who concentrate their storytelling on displaced people, or have experienced it themselves. Blanchett has worked tirelessly to bring the Fund to life, combining financial support with access to industry networks, and enlisting the help of Hubert Bals Fund and IFFR as Managing Partners. Generous contributions from Master Mind, Uniqlo, Droom en Daad, the Tamer Family Foundation, Amahoro Coalition, and most recently the SP Lohia Foundation made the Fund possible.

This year Blanchett announced that Mohammed Amer, Annemarie Jacir, Akuol de Mabior, Bao Nguyen and Rithy Panh would be allocated at €100,000 budget to tell their stories, with their completed film premiering at the International Film Festival Rotterdam which runs from the 28 January to 7 February 2027. Last year’s shorts were hailed by The Guardian as ‘an anthology of five brilliant miniature artworks – shocking, funny, confessional, and deeply mysterious… a tremendous collection’. The reception cemented the Fund as a vital platform for displaced filmmakers to share voices too often silenced. Those films will also be shown at Tokyo International Film Festival and the New York’s Film Forum in the autumn.

Blanchett is a UNHCR Global Goodwill Ambassador and a member of the Earthshot Prize Council as well as an actor and producer, and is passionate about putting a spotlight on unrepresented voices. ‘Our first round of DFF shorts have been met with huge enthusiasm from both the industry and our partners, while challenging expectations about what stories of displacement can look like on screen. The short form is a fantastic medium for these narratives and the way audiences are connecting with the first five films is extraordinary. I’m heartened by the success of our first cohort and thrilled to be revealing the next group of artists to be supported. We’re grateful to be hosted by Thierry Frémaux and the Cannes Film Festival who continue to champion our cause and make space for us in this most celebrated annual gathering of cinema.’

Greg Williams caught her ahead of the premiere of Garance on the roof terrace at the Palais du Festival where her Sarah Burton for Givenchy gown was as dramatic as the tales being told on screen in the theatres downstairs…

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Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS
Words by JANE CROWTHER
The Displacement Film Fund is now taking submissions at
www./iffr.com/en/iffr-pro-submissions/film-entry

CANNES DISPATCH
Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS
Words by JANE CROWTHER

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Léa Seydoux and her Blue Is The Warmest Colour co-star Adèle Exarchopoulos were reunited in Cannes as they both arrived at the festival with films this year. The duo shared the Palme d’Or award for their performances as newcomers in 2013, thirteen years later Seydoux in the race for gold again with her role in Marie Kreutzer’s In Competition entry, Gentle Monster. In the Corsage filmmaker’s latest, she plays Lucy, a pianist and mother who is horrified when her husband (played by Laurence Rupp) is investigated by police after child porn is found on his computer. The gentle monster of the title is the seemingly well-adjusted partner Lucy has seen no red flags in, and as the case progresses she experiences rollercoaster emotions of having lived with, and loved, a predator.

The film was initially inspired by a newspaper article Kreutzer read, but gained added resonance when Florian Teichtmeister, the actor who played Emperor Franz-Joseph in Corsage, was found guilty of possessing child porn. Kreutzer told journalists at the press conference in Cannes that she then felt this became more of a reason to create the film and address the subject matter. Seydoux told the conference that the emotionally-charged role was a challenge but a gratifying one. ‘She goes through different states of emotion at the same time as the spectator, you’re totally with her and you feel total empathy,’ she said of her character. ‘You discover the film through her. [In playing her] I tried to live in the spur of the moment and be in the state of total empathy.’ Seydoux was also nervous of singing on camera for the first time in her career, and learnt to play the piano. The film was rapturously received at its premiere, before which Greg Williams shot Seydoux at the Majestic Hotel.

The actor also has Arthur Harari’s body-swap drama The Unknown at the festival, in which she plays a woman who has a one night stand with a man and when she awakes the two have swap consciousnesses. As David, trapped in her body, Seydoux’s character questions identity and gender roles. The two films are vastly different projects but speak to audiences about pertinent themes. As Seydoux told Variety this week; ‘with the fakeness of cinema, you can make the truth appear.’

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Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS
Words by JANE CROWTHER
Gentle Monster and The Unknown premiered at the 79th Cannes Film Festival