The Second Act Opens 2024 Festival de Cannes

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After a glamorous, star-studded Red Carpet, the Opening Ceremony kicked off the 77th Cannes Film Festival with the screening of Quentin Dupieux’s The Second Act (Le Deuxième Acte).

Poster © Shochiku Co., Ltd. / Kurosawa Prod. – Création graphique © Hartland Villa  Rhapsodie en août d’Akira Kurosawa (1991)

Festival de Cannes 2024: the Competition Jury, presided over by American film-maker, screenwriter and actress Greta Gerwig, was welcomed to the stage of the Grand Théâtre Lumière in the Palais des Festivals by actress Camille Cottin, the Master of Ceremonies who took over from Chiara Mastroianni. More than 1,800 feature films were proposed in the Official Selection, with around twenty films competing in the Official Competition. The competition for the Caméra d’or includes feature films from the Official Selection, Critics‘ Week and Directors’ Fortnight.

Greta Gerwig © Ben Rayner / Ebru Ceylan © Nuri Bilge Ceylan / Lily Gladstone © Lindsay Siu / Eva Green © Xavier Torres-Bacchetta / Nadine Labaki © Jihad Hojeili / Juan Antonio Bayona © Germán Romani / Pierfrancesco Favino © Pablo Arroyo / Kore-eda Hirokazu © Mikiya Takimoto / Omar Sy © Selly SY

An international jury

To help the President of the Jury, the first female director in the history of cinema to top the billion-dollar mark at the box office with the global cultural phenomenon Barbie in 2023, the selection of different prizes includes Ebru Ceylan, screenwriter and photographer (Turkey), Lily Gladstone, actress (United States), Eva Green, actress (France), Nadine Labaki, director and screenwriter (Lebanon), Juan Antonio Bayona, director, screenwriter and producer (Spain), Pierfrancesco Favino, actor (Italy), Kore-Eda Hirokazu, director (Japan), Omar Sy, actor (France). The Jury will have the onerous task of awarding the Palme d’Or to one of the 21 films in Competition, as well as the various prizes that make up the prize list, which will be unveiled on 25 May at 8.30pm during the Closing Ceremony.

Meryl Streep ©YesICannes.com

Palme d’honneur for Meryl Streep

Meryl Streep was the guest of honour at the opening ceremony of the 77th Cannes Film Festival. Following in the footsteps of Jeanne Moreau, Marco Bellocchio, Catherine Deneuve, Jean-Pierre Léaud, Jane Fonda, Agnès Varda, Alain Delon, Jodie Foster in 2021, Forest Whitaker in 2022 and Michael Douglas last year, Meryl Streep was honoured with an honorary Palme d’Or for her career, thirty-five years after her acting prize for A Cry in the Night, which remains her only appearance on the Croisette. “We all have something of Meryl Streep in us, said Iris Knobloch and Thierry Frémaux. Because she has spanned nearly 50 years of cinema and inhabited countless masterpieces, Meryl Streep is part of our collective imagination!”

World premiere of The Second Act

The Cannes Film Festival 2024 opened with Le Deuxième Acte by Quentin Dupieux, which will be shown in world premiere out of Competition and released in French cinemas on the same day. The 14th film from the prolific French director and screenwriter with a zany universe – who is also a musician – features a prestigious cast. Le Deuxième Acte follows Fumer fait tousser, presented in 2022 in the Official Selection, Out of Competition.

©Chi-Fou-Mi/ Arte France Cinéma

Acting prowess

You don’t need big, big budgets and Hollywood stars to make a good film worthy of opening a Festival the size of Cannes! The Second Act (Le Deuxième Acte), presented Out of Competition in a world premiere at the opening of the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, required only a very good script, excellent dialogue and long, long, long travelling tracks (for single-shot sequences), as long as a railway whose locomotive is talent (a lot of talents), to take us into a zany universe where reality takes on blurred contours in an elaborate comedy.

©Chi-Fou-Mi/ Arte France Cinéma

A prestigious cast

Perhaps because the director (in the film) is an AI, represented by a character on a portable computer? Uncompromising on the lines, with a withdrawal of the fee in case of error! The 13th film from the prolific French director and screenwriter features a prestigious cast: Léa Seydoux, Vincent Lindon, Louis Garrel and Raphaël Quenard. Set in an old-fashioned roadside restaurant in the countryside, four actors plus the very shaky Manuel Guillot perform scenes from a dreadful nonsense film in the making, plunging us into a bath of humour with a few touches of satire on today’s society and its egos and selfishness. Le Deuxième Acte follows on from Fumer fait couser, presented in 2022 in the Official Selection, Out of Competition

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The Ceremony in cinemas

The Opening Ceremony was broadcast live on France 2 and internationally on Brut, as well as in many cinemas across France. Thousands of spectators were able to experience this exceptional evening – the Opening Ceremony and film – broadcast live thanks to an operation initiated by the Cannes Festival in partnership with France Télévisions, the Fédération Nationale des Cinémas Français and Brut.