This year’s Palme D’Or winner to close French fest

BRAD Pitt and Laramie Eppler in “The Tree of Life”

Terrence Malick’s “The Tree of Life,” the Palme D’Or winner in this year’s Cannes, is the closing movie of the French Film Festival, set at Shangri-La Plaza Mall from June 8 to 19.

Top-billed by Brad Pitt and Sean Penn, the Cannes winner is distributed by local firm Pioneer Films, which lent it to the French embassy-sponsored festival. Pioneer lent two other high-profile French films—Luc Besson’s “Adele: Rise of the Mummy” and “Arthur 2: The Revenge of Maltazard,” to the fest.

Martin Macalintal, audio-visual attaché of the French embassy, said a diverse collection of films that represents contemporary French cinema was selected for the event.

Apart from Besson’s animated (“Arthur”) and action-adventure (“Adele”) flicks, there are drama (“7 Years”) and children’s (“Trouble at Timpeltill”) films on the list.

Also lined up is a retrospective of six movies starring actress Sandrine Bonnaire—spanning the period 1983 (“To Our Loves”) to 2009 (“Queen to Play”).

“Queen” costars Hollywood’s Kevin Kline and Jennifer Beals.

Included in the retro is the documentary directed by Bonnaire, “Her Name is Sabine.” Featured in the Directors’ Fortnight in Cannes 2007, the docu is Bonnaire’s tribute to her sister, who is autistic.

Christian Merer, counselor for Cooperation and Cultural Affairs, told the Inquirer that France and the Philippines have a long partnership in cinema that peaked when Lino Brocka and Mike de Leon films were shown in Cannes in the 1970s and 1980s.

Opening film

Merer said Dominique Farrugia’s “The Marquis,” a French production shot in Cebu and Manila, opens the fest.

“They brought in only the actors, but the crew is all-Filipino,” said Macalintal.

In time for Philippine Independence Day on June 12, the fest will feature several Filipino films: the shorts “Painted Reality” by Henry Burgos and Raya Martin’s “Boxing in the Philippine Islands,” along with the works of Auraeus Solito (the youth films “Pisay” and “Ang Pagdadalaga ni Maximo Oliveros” and the docu “Sacred Ritual of Truth”).

Solito was the lone Filipino with an entry at the Directors’ Fortnight of Cannes this year. Burgos cowrote Solito’s Cannes entry, “Busong”; his own short film, “Painted Reality,” was screened at the Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Festival (also in France) this year, too.

The French fest will move to Cebu from June 23 to 25 then to University of the Philippines Film Institute from June 28 to July 2.