Cannes 2019 Opens Amidst Glitz & Glamour

Special Correspondent Malti Sahai

CANNES: Cannes 2019 opened amidst glitz and glamour and a suitably splashy takeover of the red carpet for the screening of Jim Jarmusch’s The Dead Don’t Die, a star-studded zombie film that finds Bill Murray, Chloe Sevigne and Adam Driver battle against a horde of the undead.

The movie, Jarmusch’s third with indie studio Focus Features, unfolds in the peaceful town of Centerville, which suddenly finds itself under attack by zombies. Murray, Driver and Sevigny play the small-town sheriff’s deputies battling the reincarnated corpses breaking out from their graves. The big names in the film also include Selina Gomez, Steve Buscemi, Rosie Perez, Danny Grover, Iggy Pop, Tom Waits, and Caleb Landry, Jones and Tilda Swindon. When the team walked up the red carpet to be greeted at the top of the stairs by Cannes Film Festival general delegate Thierry Frémaux and president Pierre Lescure, Cannes witnessed a sensational star-studded celebration.

Jarmusch also wrote the script for this dark comedy, which not only opened the festival but is also competing for the Palme d’Or, the festival’s top prize. The film will debut in theatres in France on the same day as its Cannes screening and Focus will be releasing it in the US exactly one month later on June 14. The pride of place on the red carpet was also given to the eminent nine-member ‘Jury of the Competition Section’ including president - Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu (Director, producer and screenwriter from Mexico); and members: Elle Fanning (Actress from the United States); Maimouna N’Diaye (Actress and director from Burkina Faso); Kelly Reichardt (Director, screenwriter and editor from the United States); Alice Rohrwacher (Director and screenwriter from Italy); Enki Bilal (Author of graphic novels and director from France); Robin Campillo (Director, screenwriter and editor from France); Yorgos Lanthimos (Director, screenwriter and producer from Greece); and Pawel Pawlikowski (Director from Poland).

These nine members of this year’s gender-balanced jury will decide the Palme d’Or from a lineup that includes films from festival regulars Pedro Almodovar, Ken Loach, Terrence Malik, Arnaud Desplechin and the Dardenne Brothers, Quentin Tarantino and Abdellatif Kechiche.

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