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The 65th annual Cannes Film Festival was held from 16 to 27 May 2012. Italian film director Nanni Moretti was the President of the Jury for the main competition and British actor Tim Roth was the President of the Jury for the Un Certain Regard section. French actress Bérénice Bejo hosted the opening and closing ceremonies.
Contents
- Official selection
- Competition
- Un Certain Regard
- Out of Competition
- Special Screenings
- Short Films
- Cinfondation
- Directors Fortnight
- International Critics Week
- Cannes Classics
- Camra dOr
- Cinfoundation and short films
- Parallel sections
- Independent awards
- References
The festival opened with the US film Moonrise Kingdom, directed by Wes Anderson and closed with the late Claude Miller's final film Thérèse Desqueyroux. The main announcement of the line-up took place on 19 April. The official poster of the festival features Marilyn Monroe, to mark the 50th anniversary of her death.
The Palme d'Or was awarded to Austrian director Michael Haneke for his film Amour. Haneke previously won the Palme d'Or in 2009 for The White Ribbon. The jury gave the Grand Prize to Matteo Garrone's Reality, while Ken Loach's The Angels' Share was awarded the Jury Prize.
Official selection
The official selection was announced on 19 April at Grand Hôtel in Paris. Among comments after the announcement, journalists noted the unusually high number of Hollywood films in the line-up, the absence of any female director in the main competition, as well as the absence of competing first-time feature film directors. The festival's artistic leader Thierry Frémaux responded that people should not focus only on the competition films: "The selection is an ensemble; you have to consider the whole package."
Competition
The following films were selected as In Competition:
Un Certain Regard
The following films were screened in the Un Certain Regard section:
Out of Competition
The following films were screened out of competition:
Special Screenings
The following films were screened in the Special Screenings section:
Short Films
Out of 4,500 submissions, the following films were selected for the short film competition:
Cinéfondation
The Cinéfondation section focuses on films made by students at film schools. The following entries were selected, out of more than 1,700 submissions from 320 different schools:
Directors' Fortnight
The line-up for the Directors' Fortnight was announced at a press conference on 24 April. The following films were selected:
International Critics' Week
The line-up for the International Critics’ Week was announced on 23 April at the section's website. The feature competition consists entirely of directorial debuts, something the section's artistic director Charles Tesson stressed was not intentional, but only the way it turned out when the submissions had been judged by quality. The following films were selected:
Cannes Classics
The following films were screened in the Cannes Classics section. The Hungarian "montage film" Final Cut: Ladies and Gentlemen, directed by György Pálfi, was selected as the closing film for the Cannes Classics section.
Competition
Un Certain Regard
Caméra d'Or
Cinéfoundation and short films
International Critics' Week
Official selection
The Palme d'Or was won by the French-language film Amour directed by Michael Haneke. Haneke previously won the award for The White Ribbon in 2009. Love tells the story of an elderly couple preparing for death. During his acceptance speech, the director said "A very, very big thanks to my actors who have made this film. It's their film. They are the essence of this film."
Moretti said that none of the winners had been selected unanimously, and described such an outcome as "a middle ground that would have pleased no one". He revealed that Holy Motors, Paradise: Love and Post Tenebras Lux were the entries that most had divided the jury.