Cannes’ 2018 Critics’ Week lineup has been announced. Dedicated to directors’ first and second films, this year’s sidebar is much more female-friendly than the fest’s recently announced Main Competition. Of the seven features selected to screen in Critics’ Week, four are directed by women, about 57 percent. This figure marks a significant increase from 2017’s 42 percent.
“Fuga” (“Fugue”), Agnieszka Smoczyńska’s follow-up to “The Lure” is among the titles screening in Critics’ Week. The drama centers on a woman suffering from memory loss who leaves her family, begins a new life, and then returns home two years later. Also screening is the animated doc “Chris The Swiss,” Anja Kofmel’s investigation into what happened to her cousin during the Croatian War of Independence. Other features screening include Zsófia Szilágyi’s “Egy Nap” (“One Day”) and Rohena Gera’s “Sir.” The former follows the day in the life of a woman dealing with financial and family troubles, and the latter, set in Mumbai, is a romance about a servant and her employers’ newly single son.
While the ratio of women-helmed films in the Critics’ Week competition is impressive, the sidebar’s other categories are disappointing, to say the least. None of the special screenings films are directed by women. Three of 10 shorts showing in competition are from female filmmakers: Jacqueline Lentzou’s “Ektoras Malo: I Teleftea Mera Tis Chronias,” a portrait of a young woman who learns she is sick, Charline Bourgeois-Tacquet’s comedy “Pauline Asservie,” about the wait for a very important text, and Camille Lugan’s “La Persistente,” a story following a young man determined to get his stolen bike back.
The 2018 Cannes Film Festival runs May 8–19.
All the women-directed films selected for Critics’ Week are below. List adapted from Screen Daily.
COMPETITION
Chris The Swiss, Anja Kofmel
Egy Nap (One Day), Zsófia Szilágyi
Fuga (Fugue), Agnieszka Smoczyńska
Sir, Rohena Gera
SHORT FILMS IN COMPETITION
Ektoras Malo : I Teleftea Mera Tis Chronias (Hector Malo — The Last Day Of The Year), Jacqueline Lentzou
Pauline Asservie (Pauline, Enslaved), Charline Bourgeois-Tacquet
La Persistente, Camille Lugan
