With the Cannes Film Festival less than a week away, I’m deciding to take a closer look at some of the films in competition.

I’ve always regarded Cannes as the “world’s festival” as opposed to other popular festivals. If you look at the lineups year in and year out, they are purposefully international and deliberately created to highlight auteurs. Of course every festival wants great films and great directors, but Cannes has garnered a reputation of finding small films by great filmmakers while also honoring filmmakers that have made their name at Cannes. I’m talking about Haneke, Tarantino, Soderbergh, Malick, Herzog, Bresson, Coen Bros, Almodovar, Fellini, Kar-Wai, Leigh, Coppola, Scorsese, and dozens of others. It’s hard to pinpoint the kind of film that Cannes likes to have in its competition, but one could easily say it is in most cases anti-Hollywood. Now, that doesn’t mean a film can’t compete in Cannes and then go on to be successful in the States, but looking at Cannes’ past, although classic films both compete and win, there doesn’t seem to be any correlation between Cannes success and box office success in America. Read More…