Cannes International Film Festival 2006
The 59th International Film Festival of Cannes were from 17th May bis 28. May organized of 2006. The film festival opened with Ron Howard's thriller The Da Vinci Code and ended with Tony Gatlif's drama Transylvania . A total of 55 films from 30 countries were presented, with 48 productions celebrating their world premieres. The president of the jury was the Chinese director Wong Kar-wai . Along with the Venice Film Festival and the Berlinale, the film festival on the French Côte d'Azur is considered to be the most important and famous film festival in the world. They have been held every May in Cannes since 1946 .
competition
Competition jury
The office of president of the competition jury this year was held by the Chinese director Wong Kar-wai , who himself was represented three times with his films in the competition of the film festival and who was awarded the director's prize for the romantic drama Happy Together in 1997. The festival's official poster, the silhouette of a woman walking down a flight of stairs, was taken from his film In the Mood for Love . It comes from Wing Shya , a well-known Hong Kong photographer who is responsible for the graphic design and press material at Wong Kar-Wai.
After the American writer Toni Morrison was appointed to the jury in the previous year , the president was supported by filmmakers in 2006 without exception:
- Monica Bellucci - Italian actress
- Helena Bonham Carter - English actress
- Lucrecia Martel - Argentinian director
- Zhang Ziyi - Chinese actress
- Samuel L. Jackson - American actor
- Patrice Leconte - French director
- Tim Roth - British actor and director
- Elia Suleiman - Palestinian director
Competition films
Feature films
Twenty films from thirteen countries competed at the Cannes Film Festival. The productions by the directors Pedro Almodóvar ( Spain ), Sofia Coppola ( USA ), Aki Kaurismäki ( Finland ) and Nanni Moretti ( Italy ) were considered favorites beforehand . The Oscar award winner Pedro Almodóvar was after All About My Mother (1999, Best Director, Prize of the Ecumenical Jury represented) for the second time with a film on the Côte d'Azur. In the adventure comedy Volver - Returning , the leading actress Carmen Maura returns as a ghost to her home village after her death and holds a protective hand over her daughters and grandchildren. The American Sofia Coppola, who won the Academy Award for her film script for Lost in Translation at the 2004 Academy Awards , makes her debut with her historical biography Marie Antoinette on the Croisette, the palm-lined promenade in Cannes. The American actress Kirsten Dunst can be seen in the title role of the French Queen . Aki Kaurismäki was represented in the competition for the third time and ended his film trilogy on homelessness with Lights of the Suburbs , which he featured in Cannes with the films Clouds Move Over (1996, Prize of the Ecumenical Jury) and The Man Without a Past (2002, Grand Prize of the Jury, Ecumenical Jury Prize). The Italian Nanni Moretti won the 2001 competition for his drama My Son's Room . His film The Italian (Il Caimano) is about Italy's elected Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi .
The broader circle of favorites included actor and director Xavier Giannoli with Chanson d'Amour , in which Cécile de France and Gérard Depardieu play the leading roles. The Frenchman had already been awarded the Palme d'Or in 1998 for his short film L'Interview . Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu was also given opportunities . In his drama Babel he tells of three stories that take place in Morocco , Tunisia , Mexico and Japan . Iñárritu ended his trilogy on violence, death and human abysses, which he had started with Amores Perros (2000) and 21 Gramm (2003). The British director Ken Loach was represented for the eleventh time at the film festival with the war drama The Wind That Shakes the Barley , in which he casts a look at the Republicans in Ireland in the early 20th century . The youngest director, aged 30, was the American Richard Kelly with Southland Tales . In his science fiction film , the creator of Donnie Darko (2001) tells of a July 4th party in Los Angeles in 2008.
A German film was not represented in the 2006 competition. In 2004, Hans Weingartner's highly acclaimed work The Fat Years Are Over competed for the Golden Palm with Daniel Brühl and Julia Jentsch in the leading roles. It was the first German participation in eleven years. Last year the 1984 Palme d'Or Wim Wenders ( Paris, Texas ) competed unsuccessfully in the competition with his drama Don't Come Knocking . "The non-presence of German film in Cannes makes it clear that Berlin and Cannes are still in the Cold War," said German director Volker Schlöndorff to Tagesspiegel , who with his statement on the Cannes Film Festival and the German Berlinale as competing film festivals pointed out. Schlöndorff, who was the first German director to win the competition in Cannes in 1979 with his Oscar-winning novel adaptation The Tin Drum , had been rejected by the selection committee for his drama Strajk - Die Heldin von Danzig . The production with Katharina Thalbach and Andrzej Chyra in the leading roles is about the workers' strike movement in Poland in the summer of 1980, from which the Polish union Solidarność emerged .
Short films and the Cinéfondation series
Ten productions competed for the trophy for the festival's best short film, including the British entry Film Noir by Osbert Parker . The three-minute short film had to admit defeat at the British Academy Film Awards 2006 by the Polish production Sztuka spadania (2004) by Jarek Sawko , Piotr Sikora and Tomasz Bagiński . The Cinéfondation series presents sixteen short films, from five minutes ( Elastinen Parturi by Milla Nybondas ) to 51 minutes ( Ha'chavera Shell Emile by Nadav Lapid ). The competition jury, which honors films from both categories, includes the actors Sandrine Bonnaire and Daniel Brühl , the directors Souleymane Cissé and Tim Burton , and the film composer Zbigniew Preisner . The jury chairmanship as president is the responsibility of the Russian scriptwriter and director Andrei Konchalovsky .
Original title | Director | Country of production | length |
Banquise | Claude Barras and Cédric Louis | Switzerland | 7 min. |
Conte de quartier | Florence Miailhe | Canada and France | 15 minutes. |
Film noir | Osbert Parker | UK | 3 min. |
Monstro, O | Eduardo Valente | Brazil | 13 min. |
Nature's Way | Jane Shearer | New Zealand | 10 min. |
Ongeriewe | Robin Kleinsmidt | South Africa | 15 minutes. |
Poyraz | Belma Baz | Turkey | 13 min. |
Primera nieve | Pablo Aguero | Argentina | 15 minutes. |
Sexy thing | Denie Pentecost | Australia | 14 min. |
Sniffer | Bobbie Peers | Norway | 10 min. |
Award winners
- Goldene Palme (Palme d'or) for the best film: The Wind That Shakes the Barley by Ken Loach
- Goldene Palme (Palme d'or) for the best short film: Sniffer by Bobbie Peers
- Grand prize of the jury (Grand prix du jury): Flandres by Bruno Dumont
- Jury Prize: Red Road by Andrea Arnold
- Best Director: Alejandro González Iñárritu ( Babel )
- Best actor: Bernard Blancan , Sami Bouajila , Jamel Debbouze , Samy Naceri and Roschdy Zem for Indigènes
- Best actress: Yohana Cobo , Penélope Cruz , Lola Dueñas , Chus Lampreave , Carmen Maura and Blanca Portillo for Volver - Return
- Best Screenplay: Pedro Almodóvar (Volver - Returning)
- Short film jury award : Primera nieve by Pablo Agüero
- Special mention (short film): Conte de quartier by Florence Miailhe
- SACD script award: Ping-pong , debut work by Matthias Luthardt and Meike Hauck
Films out of competition
Film productions shown outside of the Palme d'Or competition included the opening film, The Da Vinci Code, starring Tom Hanks and Audrey Tautou . The film is based on the novel of the same name by Dan Brown . In addition to Tony Gatlif's graduation film Transylvania , the third part of the X-Men trilogy by Brett Ratner , X-Men: The Last Resistance , the documentary Une équipe de rêve about a reunion of Zinédine Zidane's former classmates from his time at the football boarding school of AS Cannes , as well as Paul Greengrass ' drama Flight 93 . The latter film is the first ever cinema production to take on the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 in the USA and describes the events on the fourth plane, which never reached its destination and crashed in Pennsylvania . Several American cinemas had taken the film trailer out of their programs due to disturbed moviegoers.