1 week ago
“For me, nan logic to make a movie astir nan past is to opportunity thing astir nan present,” filmmaker Lukas Dhont said this greeting during nan property convention for his Cannes Competition title Coward.
Directed by Dhont from a screenplay he wrote pinch Angelo Tijssens, Coward is group astatine nan tallness of nan First World War and follows Pierre, a worker recently arrived astatine nan front, who is eager to beryllium himself. Behind nan lines, he meets Francis, who decides to assistance nan spirits of his comrades by putting together a theatre show. While nan unit continues, some men effort to find ways to flight nan brutality of war, moreover if only for a moment.
Dhont, who was successful a reflective temper during today’s property conference, said that he began to style nan communicative for Coward aft discovering a bid of photos of young Belgian men enjoying each other’s institution during nan war.
“They had turned sandbags into skirts, and they were having fun. To me, that was nan eventual image of resistance. It was an enactment of liberation,” he said.
“I grew up pinch nan First World War. When you spell to school, you study astir it and sojourn nan trenches, but I had ne'er seen those peculiar images. That’s erstwhile I realized that nan representation has a benignant of authorities astir it. There are definite images of nan warfare that you are shown.”
Dhont continued to explicate that he aimed to situation this depiction of warfare and nan roles young men person played successful conflicts, which he said has often been reinforced by cinema.
“This genre of film, for me, has ever been a genre successful which men are fixed a very constricted abstraction to beryllium in, and wherever their worth is measured connected their expertise to wounded and destruct and not needfully intimately beryllium location for 1 another,” he said.
“I deliberation nan astir tragic portion of it is that antheral friendship, antheral bonding, has excessively often been utilized arsenic a instrumentality to destroy.”
Coward is nan first characteristic directed by Dhont since his breakout 2022 movie Close. The movie will beryllium distributed successful Benelux by Lumière and successful France by Diaphana Distribution. Mubi has acquired Coward in nan UK, Ireland, Germany, Austria, Italy, Spain, Turkey, Latin America, Australia, and New Zealand. Mubi besides released Dhont’s Close, which was nominated for nan Best International Feature Film Oscar.
Cannes ends tomorrow.
