Politics, always part of the heady mix fuelling the Cannes film festival, has come to the fore early in the 60th edition of the cinema event.
CANNES: Politics, always part of the heady mix fuelling the Cannes film festival, has come to the fore early in the 60th edition of the cinema event. Michael Moore, who won the festival’s Palme d’Or three years ago with Fahrenheit 9/11, and A—list star Leonardo Di Caprio, who this year unveiled an eco—documentary he made, led the charge at the weekend.
Moore presented Sicko, a harsh look at America’s deficient, privately run health system, and seized the opportunity of the media spotlight to take potshots at his favourite target US President George W Bush.
DiCaprio screened The 11th Hour, which proved disappointing to critics expecting a film similar to An Inconvenient Truth, the documentary fronted by Al Gore and presented at Cannes last year and talked over environmental issues with reporters.
The Titanic star was especially touchy over insinuations that his jet setting life was hypocritical in view of his “green” commitments, a sensitivity whose roots go back to 2000, when environmental activists claimed his film The Beach damaged part of a Thai national park during shooting.
Although neither of the films is competing for the Palme de ‘Or, others that were contenders also sallied forth with political messages.
Four Months, Three Weeks and Two Days used the premise of the horrific events surrounding a prohibited abortion in Romania under the rule of dictator Nicolae Ceausescu to look at the repression Communism inflicted on lives, and to promote feminism.
In Tehilim, a family drama set in Jerusalem and made by French director Raphael Nadjari, politics initially seems absent from the sparse story. But, little by little, the viewer is introduced to a world that is stuck between modernity and tradition, between spirituality and pragmatism, a world where a father figure maybe a representation of God is missing.
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