Cannes Film Festival 2011: Hot Top Five
The Cannes Film Festival began in 1946 and has been held every year since to celebrate and reward the great actors, directors and writers of the time.
This year is no different. The Cannes Film Festival will be taking place from the 11th - 22nd of May and with over 80 films being screened over the 12 days the big question is, which are the ones to watch?
Tipped to be one of the most successful films at the years festival is The Tree of Life. Written and directed by Terrence Malick, it is one of the most anticipated films from the Festival's line-up.
Malick is renowned for the large time periods between his film releases, and this time is no different. It has been five years since his last release, and although that is nothing compared to the 20 year time lapse between Days of Heaven (1978) and The Thin Red Line (1998), the wait has tortured his fans.
His latest instalement centres around a family with three sons in the 1950's. The storyline follows the eldest child, Jack, through his life and witnesses his loss of the innocence that being a child brings.
His parents conflicting views of the world lead Jack to become a lost soul in his adult life, searching for something more to life. After discovering the his lifes purpose, Jack is able to forgive his father and take his first steps on the path of life.
The film offers a unique angle as it sees Pitt and Penn as father and son in different time periods.
We Need To Talk About Kevin sees the return of Scottish writer and director Lynne Ramsey. Ramsey is predominantly known for her debut feature Ratcatcher in 1999, which was screened at the 1999 Cannes Film Festival and won her numerous awards including the Carl Foreman Award for Newcomer in British Film at the 2000 BAFTA Awards.
We Need To Talk About Kevin is a film adaptation from Lionel Shriver's 2003 novel of the same name and is about a mothers recount of the events leading up to, and that follow on from, her son's massacre of students and teachers at his high school.
Tilda Swinton plays the part of the mother and the story centres around her characters feelings of grief and responsibility for her child's actions. She tries to deal with this by writing letters to her estranged husband who, up until the massacre, had been deluding himself into thinking he had a perfectly normal, happy family.
The third must see film at Cannes is The Skin I Live In. From Spanish writer and director Pedro Almodóvar, this film promises to be a "horror story without screams or fights."
The film follows Robert Ledgard (Antonio Banderas), a plastic surgeon who is obsessed with creating a new type of indestructible skin in order to save his wifes life.
The film is based on the book Tarantula by Thierry Jonquet and will hopefully join Almodóvar's list of highly successful films such as All About My Mother, which won the Cannes Film Festival Awards for Best Director and Audience Award, and Volver which won the Cannes Film Festival Awards for Best Screenplay and Best Actress as well as many others.
Julia Leigh will be making her directorial debut at this years Cannes with the beautifully dark and haunting Sleeping Beauty.
The film tells the tale of Lucy (Emily Browning), a young university student that is drawn into the world of prostitution by Clara, a Madame who tells Lucy she is a unique beauty and that by working together, Lucy can become even more beautiful and talented.
Clara warns Lucy that although this life can give her anything she desires, discretion is vital, and the consequences for any breaches of discretion are very serious.
The Sleeping Beauty script made the blacklist of unproduced screenplays in 2008, which sparked a buzz in Hollywood and made it one of the hottest unproduced screenplays around.
A regular at Cannes, Lars Von Trier returns with the screening of his lastest film, Melancholia.
Sisters Justine and Claire have their relationship challenged in this sci-fi thriller when a nearby planet threatens to collide with Earth.
After her recent marriage, Justine becomes melancholic, which allows her to stay calm under the realisation that the end of the Earth is near, whereas her sister begins to fall apart.
The opposing personalities of the sisters drive them further apart in a time when they should be coming closer together.
With an all-star cast including Kirsten Dunst, Charlotte Gainsbourg and Keifer Sutherland, many have speculated that this film could rival Trier's greatest successes, such as Breaking The Waves, Dancer In The Dark, Dogville and Antichrist.
