2008 Cannes Film Festival

2008 Festival poster

The 61st Annual Cannes Film Festival was held from May 14 to May 25, 2008. In addition to films selected for competition this year, major Hollywood productions such as Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and Kung Fu Panda had their world premieres at the festival.

The British press reported the list of films in competition this year was notable for its absence of British films for the second successive year.

Feature film competition

Festival line-up

	English title	Original title	Director(s)	Country
Opener	Blindness		Fernando Meirelles	Brazil
Closer	What Just Happened		Barry Levinson	United States

Films in competition

English title	Original title	Director(s)	Country
24 City	二十四城记/二十四城記 Er shi si cheng ji	Jia Zhangke	China
Adoration		Atom Egoyan	Canada
Blindness		Fernando Meirelles	Brazil
Changeling		Clint Eastwood	United States
Che (Part I: The Argentine and Part II: Guerilla)		Steven Soderbergh	United States
A Christmas Tale	Un conte de Noël	Arnaud Desplechin	France
The Class	Entre les murs	Laurent Cantet	France
Delta		Kornél Mundruczó	Hungary
Il Divo		Paolo Sorrentino	Italy
Frontier of Dawn	La frontière de l'aube	Philippe Garrel	France
Gomorrah	Gomorra	Matteo Garrone	Italy
The Headless Woman	La mujer sin cabeza	Lucrecia Martel	Argentina
Leonera		Pablo Trapero	Argentina
Linha de Passe		Walter Salles and Daniela Thomas	Brazil
My Magic		Eric Khoo	Singapore
Palermo Shooting		Wim Wenders	Germany
Service	Serbis	Brillante Mendoza	Philippines
Lorna's Silence	Le silence de Lorna	Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne	Belgium
Synecdoche, New York		Charlie Kaufman	United States
Three Monkeys	Üç Maymun	Nuri Bilge Ceylan	Turkey
Two Lovers		James Gray	United States
Waltz with Bashir	ואלס עם באשיר Vals Am Bashir	Ari Folman	Israel

Films out of competition

English title	Original title	Director(s)	Country
The Good, the Bad, the Weird	좋은 놈, 나쁜 놈, 이상한 놈 Joheunnom nabbeunnom isanghannom	Kim Ji-woon	South Korea
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull		Steven Spielberg	United States
Kung Fu Panda		John Stevenson and Mark Osborne	United States
Vicky Cristina Barcelona		Woody Allen	United States

Midnight screening

English title	Original title	Director(s)	Country
The Chaser	추격자 Chugyeogja	Na Hong-jin	South Korea
Maradona		Emir Kusturica	Serbia
Surveillance		Jennifer Chambers Lynch	United States

Special screening

• Of Time and the City (by Terence Davies, UK)
• Chelsea on the rocks (by Abel Ferrara)
• Sanguepazzo (by Marco Tullio Giordana, Italy-France)
• C'est dur d'être aimé par des cons (by Daniel Leconte)
• Ashes of Time Redux (by Wong Kar-wai, China)
• Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired (by Marina Zenovich, USA-UK)

Un certain regard

• Afterschool, by Antonio Campos
• De ofrivilliga, by Ruben Östlund
• Je veux voir, by Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige
• Johnny Mad Dog, by Jean-Stephane Sauvaire
• A Festa De Menina Morta, by Matheus Nachtergaele
• La Vie moderne, by Raymond Depardon
• Le Sel de la mer, by Annemarie Jacir
• Los Bastardos, by Amat Escalante
• O' Horten, by Bent Hamer
• Parking, by Chung Mong-Hong
• Soi Cowboy, by Thomas Clay
• Tokyo!, by Michel Gondry, Leos Carax and Bong Joon-ho
• Tokyo Sonata, by Kiyoshi Kurosawa
• Tulpan, by Sergey Dvortsevoy
• Tyson, by James Toback
• Versailles, by Pierre Schoeller
• Wendy and Lucy, by Kelly Reichardt
• Wolke 9, by Andreas Dresen
• Yi Ban Haishui, Yi Ban Huoyan, by Fendou Liu

Competition shorts

• 411-Z, by Daniel Erdélyi
• Buen Viaje, by Javier Palleiro
• De moins en moins, by Mélanie Laurent (France)
• El Deseo (film), by Marie Benito
• Jerrycan, by Julius Avery
• Love You More, by Sam Taylor-Wood
• Megatron, by Marian Crişan
• My Rabbit Hoppy, by Anthony Lucas
• Smafuglar, by Rúnar Rúnarsson

Juries

International competition

• Sean Penn, American actor and director (president)
• Jeanne Balibar, French actress and singer
• Rachid Bouchareb, Franco-Algerian director
• Sergio Castellitto, Italian actor and director
• Alfonso Cuaron, Mexican director
• Alexandra Maria Lara, German/Romanian actress
• Natalie Portman, Israeli-American actress
• Marjane Satrapi, Iranian-French author and director
• Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Thai director

Un certain regard

• Fatih Akin, Turkish-German director (president)

Director Clint Eastwood at the festival promoting Changeling

Camera d'or

• Bruno Dumont, French director (president)

Cinefoundation and short films

• Hou Hsiao Hsien, Taiwanese director (president)
• Olivier Assayas, French director
• Susanne Bier, Danish director
• Marina Hands, French actress
• Laurence Kardish, American curator

Awards

• Palme d'Or - Laurent Cantet for Entre les murs
• Grand Prix - Matteo Garrone for Gomorra
• Prix de la mise en scène - Nuri Bilge Ceylan for Üç Maymun
• Prix du Jury - Paolo Sorrentino for Il Divo
• Prix du scénario - Luc & Jean-Pierre Dardenne for Le Silence de Lorna
• Prix d'interprétation féminine du Festival de Cannes - Sandra Corveloni in Linha de Passe directed by Walter Salles and Daniela Thomas
• Prix d'interprétation masculine du Festival de Cannes - Benicio del Toro in Che directed by Steven Soderbergh
• Prix du 61^ème anniversaire - ex aequo, Catherine Deneuve for Un conte de Noël, and Clint Eastwood for Changeling
• Camera d'Or - Steve McQueen for Hunger
• Palme d'Or - Short Film - Megatron (film) directed by Marian Crişan

External links

• Official Cannes Festival Site (in English)
• Cannes Film Festival 2008 Coverage at About.com
• Official Selection, Edition 2008