Day 3 at Cannes offered us our first major rush of emotion with the screening of Robin Campillo's BPM (Beats Per Minute) in the Official Selection, as well as an awards ceremony at the UniFrance Pavilion and a dinner held in honor of Sandrine Kiberlain.
Beating Hearts
"This is a unique film": That's how Costa Gavras summed up BPM (Beats Per Minute) by Robin Campillo immediately after the screening. This film, which chronicles the first years of Act Up as well as a harrowing love story, was, for many of the spectators present, the first moment of highly-charged emotions in this year's Official Selection.
At UniFrance
Tokyo, Hamburg, Johannesburg, Ottawa: These are the cities of origin of the four winners of the Best Film Review Competition jointly organized by the Agence pour l’Enseignement Français à l’Etranger (AEFE) and UniFrance as part of UniFrance's online French Film Festival MyFrenchFilmFestival.com. Adèle Juillard and Fatima Sanogo, who are both studying French at foreign high schools, were at the UniFrance Pavilion to receive their awards in the presence of Isabelle Giordano and Marie-Christine Saragosse, CEO of France Médias Monde, who also met with the winners from Tokyo and Hamburg via a video duplex set-up.
At the same time, Agnès Varda, JR, Barbet Schroeder, Juliette Binoche, and Claire Denis were at the UniFrance lounges to meet with international media. Later in the evening, a dinner was held in honor of Sandrine Kiberlain, who is president of the Caméra d'Or jury this year, accompanied by her fellow jury members (photo) and friends.
At the Film Market
International distributors attended the first screening of Dr. Knock by Lorraine Lévy, the new film starring Omar Sy. The actor's performance in this film has been eagerly awaited following the excellent reception of Two is a Family, which is the most successful majority-French film to date in international theaters in 2017, currently credited with over 3.8 million admissions abroad. Before the Cannes Festival kicked off, Dr. Knock had already been acquired in ten countries.
