Eclectic line-up revealed for Cannes sidebar

PARIS (AFP) ― The 2012 line-up of the Director’s Fortnight sidebar to the annual Cannes Film Festival was unveiled on Tuesday in Paris, an eclectic selection of 21 films of all formats.

“This line-up is above all one of enjoyment, and it’s made so that the spectator goes from laughing to tears from one film to another and within the same film,” said the sidebar’s new artistic director Edouard Waintrop.

“Deep emotion, that’s what drew me to cinema,” added the former newspaper cinema critic at the Paris press conference for the 44th edition of the sidebar, his first.

The fortnight will run from May 16 to 27 in parallel with the 65th Cannes festival and will feature two animations, two documentaries, as well as a heavy French and Latin American presence of six films each.

Helping to round out the programme will be the opener ― Michel Gondry’s New York production “The We and the I” ― the Chinese “Dangerous Liaisons” and British comedy “Sightseers.”

Cannes officials are also expected soon to reveal the composition of the nine-person Cannes jury headed by Italian director Nanni Moretti, whose potential names are already floating around the rumour mill.

These include German actress Diane Kruger and French designer Jean-Paul Gaultier, an ardent cinephile who has designed costumes for Pedro Almodovar films and expressed interest in jurying in the past.