63rd Festival de Cannes - The Competition

Directed by: Apichatpong WEERASETHAKUL
Country: UNITED KINGDOM, THAILAND, FRANCE, GERMANY, SPAIN
Year: 2010
Duration: 113 minutes

SYNOPSIS

Suffering from acute kidney failure, Uncle Boonmee has chosen to spend his final days surrounded by his loved ones in the countryside. Surprisingly, the ghost of his deceased wife appears to care for him, and his long lost son returns home in a non-human form. Contemplating the reasons for his illness, Boonmee treks through the jungle with his family to a mysterious hilltop cave -- the birthplace of his first life...

Directed by: Xavier BEAUVOIS
Country: FRANCE
Year: 2010
Duration: 112 minutes

SYNOPSIS

A monastery high in the mountains of the Maghreb, some time in the 90s...
Eight French Christian monks live in harmony with their Muslim brothers.
But violence and terror are slowly taking hold of the region. Despite the ever-growing danger that surrounds them, the monks' resolve to stay - whatever the cost - grows stronger day by day...

Directed by: Mathieu AMALRIC
Country: FRANCE
Year: 2010
Duration: 111 minutes

SYNOPSIS

Joachim, a former Parisian television producer had left everything behind - his children, friends, enemies, lovers and regrets to start a new life in America. But he returns with a team of New Burlesque strip-tease performers whom he has filled with romantic dreams of a tour of France, of Paris!

Traveling from town to town, despite the cheap hotel rooms and lack of money, the curvaceous showgirls invent an extravagant fantasy world of warmth and hedonism that wins an enthusiastic response from men and women alike.

But their dream of a tour culminating in a last grand show in Paris goes up in smoke when Joachim is betrayed by an old friend and loses the theatre where they were due to perform. An obligatory return journey to the capital violently reopens the old wounds of his past...

Directed by: LEE Chang-dong
Country: KOREA (South)
Year: 2010
Duration: 139 minutes

SYNOPSIS

Mija lives with her middle-schooler grandson in a small suburban city located along the Han River. She is a dandy old lady who likes to dress up in flower-decorated hats and fashionable outfits, but she is also an unpredictable character with an inquisitive mind. By chance she takes a "poetry" class at a neighborhood cultural center and is challenged to write a poem for the first time in her life.
Her quest for poetic inspiration begins with observing the everyday life she never intentional took notice of before to find beauty within it. And with this, Mija is delightfully surprised with newfound trepidation as if she were a little girl discovering things for the first time in her life.
But when she is suddendly faced with a reality harsh beyond her imagination, she realizes perhaps life is not as beautiful as she had thought it is...

Directed by: Abbas KIAROSTAMI
Country: FRANCE, ITALY
Year: 2010
Duration: 106 minutes

SYNOPSIS

This is the story of a meeting between one man and one woman, in a small Italian village in Southern Tuscany.
The man is a British author who has just finished giving a lecture at a conference. The woman, from France, owns
an art gallery. This is a universal story that could happen to anyone, anywhere.

Directed by: Alejandro GONZÁLEZ IÑÁRRITU
Country: SPAIN, MEXICO
Year: 2010
Duration: 138 minutes

SYNOPSIS

"Biutiful" is the story of Uxbal.
Devoted father. Tormented lover.
Mystified son. Underground businessman.
Friend of the disposed. Ghost seeker. Spiritual sensitive.
A survivor at the invisible margins in today’s Barcelona.
Uxbal, sensing the danger of death, tries to reconcile with love and save his children, as he tries to save himself.
Uxbal’s story is simple: just one of the complex realities that we all live in today.

Directed by: Daniele LUCHETTI
Country: ITALY, FRANCE
Year: 2010
Duration: 98 minutes

SYNOPSIS

Claudio works on a site in the suburbs of Roma. He is madly in love with his wife who is pregnant with their third child. However, a dramatic event comes to upset this simple and happy life. In a rage for life, Claudio energetically fights against the injustice that fell upon him. Love and support from his friends and family as well as the laughter of his children will help him to triumph against the odds.

Directed by: Mahamat-Saleh HAROUN
Country: FRANCE, BELGIUM, CHAD
Year: 2010
Duration: 92 minutes

SYNOPSIS

Present-day Chad. Adam, sixty something, a former swimming champion, is pool attendant at a smart N’Djamena hotel. When the hotel gets taken over by new Chinese owners, he is forced to give up his job to his son Abdel. Terribly resentful, he feels socially humiliated.
The country is in the throes of a civil war. Rebel forces are attacking the government. The authorities demand that the population contribute to the "war effort", giving money or volunteers old enough to fight off the assailants. The District Chief constantly harasses Adam for his contribution. But Adam is penniless; he only has his son....

Directed by: Rachid BOUCHAREB
Country: FRANCE, ALGERIA, BELGIUM, TUNISIA, ITALY
Year: 2010
Duration: 137 minutes

SYNOPSIS

After losing their family home in Algeria, three brothers and their mother are scattered across the globe. Messaoud joins the French army fighting in Indochina; Abdelkader becomes a leader of the Algerian independence movement in France and Saïd moves to Paris to make his fortune in the shady clubs and boxing halls of Pigalle. Gradually, their interconnecting destinies reunite them in the French capital, where freedom is a battle to be fought and won.

Directed by: IM Sang-soo
Country: KOREA (South)
Year: 2010
Duration: 107 minutes

SYNOPSIS

Lee Euny is hired as a housemaid in an upper class family. Soon enough, master of the house Hoon will become her lover. The family’s world will begin to fall apart.

Directed by: Takeshi KITANO
Country: JAPAN
Year: 2010
Duration: 109 minutes

SYNOPSIS

In a ruthless battle for power, several yakuza clans vie for the favor of their head family in the Japanese underworld. The rival bosses seek to rise through the ranks by scheming and making allegiances sworn over saké. Long-time yakuza Otomo has seen his kind go from elaborate body tattoos and severed fingertips to becoming important players on the stock market. Theirs is a never-ending struggle to end up on top, or at least survive, in a corrupt world where there are no heroes but constant betrayal and vengeance...

Directed by: Mike LEIGH
Country: UNITED KINGDOM
Year: 2010
Duration: 129 minutes

SYNOPSIS

Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter. Family and friendship.
Love and warmth. Joy and sadness. Hope and despair.
Companionship. Loneliness. A birth. A death. Time passes...

Directed by: Doug LIMAN
Country: USA
Year: 2009
Duration: 106 minutes

SYNOPSIS

As a covert officer in the CIA’s Counter-Proliferation Division, Valerie leads an investigation into the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Valerie’s husband, diplomat Joe Wilson, is drawn into the investigation to substantiate an alleged sale of enriched uranium from Niger. But when the administration ignores his findings and uses the issue to support the call to war, Joe writes a New York Times editorial outlining his conclusions and igniting a firestorm of controversy.

Soon after, Valerie’s covert status is reported by a high-profile Washington journalist. With her cover blown and her overseas contacts placed in mortal danger, Valerie is pushed to the breaking point as her career and private life collapse. After years serving the government, Valerie -a mother, a wife and a field officer with an impeccable record-now struggles to save her reputation, her career and her family.

Directed by: Ken LOACH
Country: UNITED KINGDOM, FRANCE, BELGIUM, ITALY, SPAIN
Year: 2010
Duration: 109 minutes

SYNOPSIS

Liverpool, August 1976. 5-year-old Fergus met Frankie on his first day at school. They’ve been in each others’ shadow ever since. As teenagers they skipped school and drank cider on the ferry over the River Mersey, dreaming about travelling the world. Little did Fergus realise his dream would come true as a highly trained member of the
UK’s elite special forces, the SAS.

After resigning in September 2004, Fergus persuaded Frankie (by now an ex-Para)to join his security team in Baghdad. £10,000 a month, tax free. Their last chance to "load up" in this increasingly privatised war. Together they risked their lives in a city steeped in violence, terror and greed, and awash with billions of US dollars. In September 2007, Frankie died on Route Irish, the most dangerous road in the world.

Back in Liverpool, a grief-stricken Fergus rejects the official explanation, and begins his own investigation into his soul mate’s death. Only Rachel, Frankie’s partner, grasps the depth of Fergus’s sorrow, and the lethal
possibilities of his fury. As Fergus tries to find out what happened to Frankie on Route Irish, he and Rachel grow closer. As he approaches the truth behind Frankie’s death,
Fergus struggles to find his old self and the happiness he shared with Frankie twenty years earlier on the Mersey.

Directed by: Sergei LOZNITSA
Country: GERMANY, UKRAINE, NETHERLANDS
Year: 2010
Duration: 127 minutes

SYNOPSIS

"My Joy" is a tale of truck driver Georgy. Georgy leaves his home town with a load of goods, but he is forced to take a wrong turning on the motorway, and finds himself in the middle of nowhere. Georgy tries to find his way, but gradually, against his will, he becomes drawn in the daily life of a Russian village. In a place, where brutal force and survival instincts overcome humanity and common
sense, the truck driver’s story heads for a dead end...

Directed by: Nikita MIKHALKOV
Country: RUSSIA
Year: 2010
Duration: 150 minutes

SYNOPSIS

A searing, epic tragedy of lives caught up in the violent, unstoppable wheels of an earth-shattering war - the long-awaited sequel to Nikita Mikhalkov's Academy Award-winning "Burnt by the Sun".
1941. Five years have passed since the destinies of General Kotov and his family were irrevocably changed.
At the beginning of the war, Kotov miraculously escapes from the camp to which he was sentenced. Believed dead by the Soviet administration, he enrolls as a private in a voluntary battalion and goes to the front. On the battlefield, he is merciless in combat against the Germans. After being gravely injured, Kotov is repeatedly offered an honourable discharge but, believing his wife Maroussia and his daughter Nadia to have died in a labour camp, chooses to remain with his comrades.
In fact, things are very far from what Kotov believes. The two women are alive. Nadia, now an army nurse and convinced that her father is not dead, searches for him far and wide.
1943. KGB Major Arsentiev - Kotov’s nemesis, the man responsible for his arrest and condemnation - is ordered by Stalin himself to locate the former General. Will Arsentiev find him in a country devastated by war? And why has Stalin ordered him to find Kotov now, after so long?

Directed by: Kornél MUNDRUCZÓ
Country: HUNGARY, GERMANY, AUSTRIA
Year: 2010
Duration: 105 minutes

SYNOPSIS

Long ago, a young man fathered a child without ever knowing what became of him. Now 17, his son Rudi returns home hoping to reunite with his family after years spent in an institution. Returning to his mother, he hopes to find acceptance, affection, and most importantly, who his father is, but finds that he is not welcome. Almost by accident, Rudi slips into a casting session. The director of the film is transfixed by his innocence and thinks he has found his lead. But a terrible event soon compromises Rudi’s good intentions. He becomes a hunted murderer, and the director realizes that Rudi, this peculiar and silent boy, is his son and his own monstrous creation. The director now has no other choice but to accompany his son on his inevitable, brutal path and their common search for redemption.

Directed by: Bertrand TAVERNIER
Country: FRANCE, GERMANY
Year: 2010
Duration: 139 minutes

SYNOPSIS

France, 1562. The wars of religion between Catholics and Protestants rage against a backdrop of intrigue and shifting alliances.

Marie de Mézières, a beautiful young aristocrat, and Henri de Guise, one of the kingdom's most intrepid heroes, are in love, but Marie's father promises her hand in marriage to the Prince of Montpensier. The prince takes Marie back to his chateau, where she is tutored by Chabannes, the Protestant deserter he protects, who soon falls in love with the young woman. Then, on their way back from battle, Henri de Guise and the Duke d'Anjou, the heir to the throne, stop at the chateau. Henri and Marie realize their feelings for each other are as strong as ever...

Directed by: WANG Xiaoshuai
Country: CHINA
Year: 2010
Duration: 110 minutes

SYNOPSIS

Lin, a sea captain, returns from a 6 month journey when he is told that his 25-year-old son Lin Bo has been gunned down by the police. In his quest to understand what happened, he realizes he knew very little about his own son. He starts a journey back to Chongqin, a city he once lived. He will understand the impact of his paternal repeated absence on the life of his child.