45 Potential Titles Rumored for the 2011 Cannes Film Festival

The official announcement comes on April 14

By: Brad Brevet
Published: Tuesday, March 22nd 2011 at 1:34 AM

The Palais des Festivals, which is where I watched all of the press screenings
Photo: Brad Brevet

It seems there have been a lot of articles speculating as to which films will be showing at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival this year, each of them pretty much naming the same films. However, the only film confirmed is Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris which will open the fest. The rest is simply speculation and rumor, but now the most comprehensive and seemingly "in the know" list has surfaced.

Of the films currently expected to hit the Croisette, but obviously in no way confirmed yet seem to be among the most likely, are Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life, Pedro Almodovar's The Skin I Live In, Gus Van Sant's Restless and Lars von Trier's Melancholia.

Of course, those are the big name features. The films that draw the most attention before the festival starts. However, just as exciting are those films that hold the potential to creep up and blow you away. Screen Daily has fashioned their own list as we near the April 14 announcement and here's a rundown of the films Screen's Mike Goodridge believes stand a good chance at showing up this year.

• Habemus Papam (dir. Nanni Moretti)
• The Kid With A Bike (dir. Dardenne Brothers)
• Once Upon A Time In Anatolia (dir. Nuri Bilge Ceylan)
• Le Havre (dir. Aki Kaurismaki)
• Terraferma (dir. Emanuele Crialese)
• This Must Be The Place (dir. Paolo Sorrentino; starring Sean Penn)
• The First Man (dir. Gianni Amelio)
• The Cardboard Village (dir. Ermanno Olmi; starring Rutger Hauer)
• We Need To Talk About Kevin (dir. Lynne Ramsay; starring Tilda Swinton and John C Reilly)
• The Woman In The Fifth (dir. Pawel Pawlikowski; starring Ethan Hawke and Kristin Scott Thomas)
• The Descendants (dir. Alexander Payne; starring George Clooney)
• Cars 2 (dirs. John Lasseter and Brad Lewis)
• Larry Crowne (dir. Tom Hanks)
• Drive (dir. Nicolas Winding Refn; starring Ryan Gosling and Carey Mulligan)
• The Monk (dir. Dominik Moll; starring Vincent Cassell)
• The Snows Of Kilimanjaro (dir. Robert Guedeguian)
• The Beloved (dir. Christophe Honore)
• The Empire (dir. Bruno Dumont)
• Goodbye First Love (dir. Mia Hansen-Love)
• House of Tolerance (dir. Bertrand Bonello)
• Unforgivable (dir. Andre Techine)
• Chicken With Plums (dir. Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud (Persepolis))
• The Artist (dir. Michel Hazanavicius; starring John Goodman, James Cromwell, Penelope Ann Miller, Missi Pyle and Berenice Bejo)
• Polisse (dir. Maiwenn)
• The Prodigies (aka The Night Of The Infant Kings) (dir. Antoine Charreyron)
• Free Men (dir. Ismael Ferroukhi; starring Tahar Rahim (A Prophet))
• The Skylab (dir. Julie Delpy)
• Sponsoring (dir. Malgorzata Szumowska; starring Juliette Binoche)
• The Conquest (dir. Xavier Durringer)
• The Exchange (dir. Eran Kolirin)
• Where Do We Go Now? (dir. Nadine Labaki)
• Code Blue (dir. Urszula Antoniak)
• I Wish (dir. Hirokazu Koreeda)
• Prey (dir. Brillante Mendoza; starring Isabelle Huppert)
• Headshot (dir. Pen-ek Ratanaruang)
• Hanji (dir. Im Kwon-Taek)
• Yellow Sea (dir. Hong-jin Na)
• Love And Bruises (dir. Lou Ye)
• Elena (dir. Andrey Zvyagintsev)
• Faust (dir. Aleksandr Sokurov)
• The Citadel: Burnt By The Sun 3 (dir. Nikita Mikhalkov)

Two films that have been talked about for a long time and were previously expected to show up, but Screen says they won't be ready and will likely find slots at either or both Venice and Toronto include David Cronenberg’s A Dangerous Method and Andrea Arnold’s Wuthering Heights.

Looking over the list, it becomes clear once again why I skip American festivals such as Sundance and SXSW as the mix of international titles I find so much more intriguing. I have already booked my hotel and flight and even received my accreditation for this year's Cannes Film Festival and will once again bring you as many reviews and updates from the South of France I possibly can, not to mention I have a couple of other things in store to hopefully keep you up-to-date just before and just after I go in and get out of every single movie.

For now, bask in the speculation above and weigh in with your thoughts. After looking over the list of international pictures above and the descriptions provided by Screen a few that stand out include the Thai film Headshot, which follows a hitman who wakes up from a coma and sees everything upside down; The Conquest, which is about the rise to power of Nicolas Sarkozy and the separation from his second wife Cecilia; Free Men, a World War II set drama in which Tahar Rahim (A Prophet) plays an Algerian man who develops a friendship with a young Jewish man under the watchful gaze of the Paris police; The Artist, which centers on a silent movie star whose career is destined to end with the arrival of sound in 1927; The Woman In The Fifth simply because it's a Paris-set thriller starring Ethan Hawke and Kristin Scott Thomas; and This Must Be The Place starring Sean Penn as an ageing rock star on the hunt for his father’s Nazi executioner.

Anything stand out for you? Comment below and also get a look at the homepage I'm still working on for this year's festival right here where you will also find a list of all my reviews from last year's fest.

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