EDITO BY PIERRE LESCURE

President of the Festival de Cannes and Cinéfondation

We are being promised a “post-Covid” world, which would appear to be the quintessence of perfection bathed in harmony, purged of half-blood, numbed from all pain and washed free of the dregs.
May I humbly confess that the so-called “pre-Covid” world suited me rather well, as it is filled with artists who express themselves, using handheld cameras, through the search for their identity and spread their stories and emotions wherever they go, thanks to dynamic networks such as La Fabrique Cinéma de l’Institut français and L’Atelier de la Cinéfondation. When artists speak loud and clear to be seen, heard, and known, just like Danielle Arbid, 2021’s exuberant patron, who has provided us with a turbulent, restless and unruly oeuvre for 20 years – indeed her work is censored in Lebanon, her home country. Her sensual cinema – a cinema of the senses – restores bodies to grace, for example. Bodies that are so often manhandled in the Middle East. In doing so, she demonstrates how the seventh art is first and foremost an art of desire. Hers is manifest, effervescent and joyous. Her multifaceted films, right up to her latest Simple Passion (Passion Simple) combines different narrative forms and alternates fiction, first-person documentary and arthouse, at the crossroad of genres, without boundaries or preconceptions.
Danielle Arbid’s cinema of desire is exemplary of the best of the “pre-Covid” world, which we want to protect, defend and embellish, for today and for the future.
 
Picture © Olivier Vigerie

EDITO BY NIVINE KHALED

Director of the French language and diversity of French-speaking cultures at the OIF

At Cannes, the International Organization of the Francophonie (OIF) is celebrating the filmmakers it has supported. Three of them are featured this year, from Morocco, Haiti and Egypt. 
Throughout the year, the Fonds Image de la Francophonie (Francophonie image fund) supports films and series from all the French-speaking developing countries, African and Caribbean countries, as well as from Lebanon, South-East Asia and Vanuatu. In addition to this assistance, which is essential, the OIF supports them with advisory and promotional activities and by facilitating joint productions between developing countries.  
This is because, together with La Fabrique Cinéma, we share this sense of urgency to encourage those who bring films to life: the producers. We want them to help them to be firmly established, united, connected and visible.  At Cannes, and across the five continents, let’s continue to make this cultural and linguistic diversity stronger, because that is what will make beautiful films of the future.
 
Picture © DR