Leos Carax’s Annette, starring Marion Cotillard and Adam Driver, will open the 74th Cannes Film Festival on July 6, festival organisers said.
Annette is Carax’s first English-language film and the French director’s anticipated follow-up to his celebrated, surreal 2012 film Holy Motors.
Set in contemporary Los Angeles, Annette stars Driver and Cotillard as a glamorous couple – Driver plays a stand-up comedian, Cotillard a famous singer – whose first child is “a mysterious girl with an exceptional destiny”, according to the festival’s description.
“Every Leos Carax film is an event. And this one delivers on its promises,” said Pierre Lescure, president of the festival.
📣ANNETTE by Leos Carax, starring Marion Cotillard & Adam Driver, will premiere internationally for the Opening of the 74th Festival de Cannes on July 6th and will simultaneously be released in French cinemas! #Cannes2021 @charlegillibert @TribusP
More ►https://t.co/h3zZZsFHiB pic.twitter.com/3succqOAyfAdvertisement— Festival de Cannes (@Festival_Cannes) April 19, 2021
“Annette is the gift that lovers of cinema, music and culture were hoping for, one that we have been yearning for during the past year.”
Cannes was cancelled last year due to the pandemic but is planning – “with confidence and determination”, the festival said – an in-person edition this summer, two months later than its usual May dates.
Spike Lee is set as president of the jury, and selections are to be announced at the end of May.
No North American release date has yet been announced for Annette, which Amazon Studios is distributing in the US.
The film’s release in France will coincide with its Cannes premiere.
“We couldn’t have dreamed of a more beautiful reunion with cinema and the silver screen, in the Palais des Festivals where films come to assert their splendour,” said Thierry Fremaux, Cannes’ general delegate.
“Carax’s cinema is an expression of these powerful gestures, these mysterious alchemies that makes the secret of cinema’s modernity and eternity.”
