Cannes 2022 Truman Show poster plays on fine line between fiction and reality
The poster for the 75th edition Festival de Cannes has been released, featuring a reference to the 1998 film "The Truman Show", starring Jim Carrey.
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Instead of a red carpet, audiences at the 75th Cannes Film Festival will be invited to reach for the heavens - or the stars as it were.
Festival organisers said they wanted the poster to represent a "poetic" celebration of the quest for expression and freedom.
"An upward journey to contemplate the past and move ahead towards the promise of a revival."
From Tuesday, 17 May to Saturday, 28 May, the 75th edition is keen to keep its annual promise of Hollywood glamour, fresh new faces and a host of familiar names from the cinema family.
The poster takes its cue from Peter Weir and Andrew Niccol’s "The Truman Show" (1998) - a modern reflection of Plato’s cave, where viewers witness the border between reality and fiction.
Carrey's Truman, having spent his whole life unknowingly raised as the subject of a 24/7 reality show escapes from the set, discovering that the sky is a painted wall with a staircase leading to the exit.
Extreme world
"Just as the unforgettable Truman embodied by the one-and-only Jim Carrey whose fingers brush his horizon, the Festival de Cannes takes the extreme nature of the world in its stride in order to grasp it again," the Festival statement said.
In reference to the "extreme nature of the world", festival director Thierry Frémaux and festival president Pierre Lescure cited the example of the Ukraine crisis at the press conference last Thursday, saying it would certainly be present in the minds of festival goers this year.
In a nod of solidarity, several Ukrainian directors are expected at the Festival and two films are to be screened as part of the official selection.
"Butterfly Vision" (Bachennya Metelyka) a first feature by Maksim Nakonechnyi will appear as part of Un Certain Regard competition. It follows the story of a young female soldier who is kidnapped, only to be later part of a prisoner swap.
"The Natural History of Destruction" by veteran director Sergei Loznitsa is part of the special screenings. Based on a text by the German essayist W. G. Sebald, it describes the massive destruction of German towns by Allied air raids in World War II.
Loznitsa is no stranger to Cannes, where he presented his film "Maidan" about the Kyiv pro-democracy protests and "Donbass" about the start of the conflict in eastern Ukraine.
Contemplation
The Festival made it clear in March that it would not accept any Russian delegations to the Croisette while the conflict continued in Ukraine, with the exception of artists who had defected, like Kirill Serebrennikov, whose film "Tchaikovsky's Wife" is running in competition. The director is currently living in exile in Berlin.
"As in 1939 and in 1946, (during the first and second World Wars) the Festival is once again asserting its strong conviction that art and cinema are where contemplation and the renewal of society unravel," organisers said.
This year, 18 films are scheduled to premiere in competition at Cannes, including highly anticipated films from directors such as James Gray, David Cronenberg, Park Chan-wook, Kelly Reichardt and Claire Denis.
Out of competition, the festival will also see the premieres of Baz Luhrmann’s "Elvis", George Miller’s "Three Thousand Years of Longing" and "Top Gun: Maverick" starring Tom Cruise, who will host a special masterclass for festival-goers.
The festival is set to open with the zombie comedy "Final Cut"from director Michel Hazanavicius.
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