Cannes Film Festival is famed for bringing hard hitting movies to a wider audience with such a film last year 4month, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, a Romanian picture about illegal abortion.
And after the hype of Kung Fu Panda has ebbed away this year is no different as Friday featured two pictures that may hit a raw nerve with Cannes cinema go-ers.
First up Sean Penn used his position as head of the Film Festival jury to back new documentary The Third Wave.
With the likes of Natalie Portman and controversial filmmaker Michael Moore at it’s premiere on Friday The Third Wave, directed by Alison Thompson is a low budget documentary filmed by those who went to volunteer in Sri Lanka in 2004 after the tsunami.
The film focuses on three volunteers who, without the aid of the government, began the clean-up operation by looking for bodies and setting up their own infirmary.
The second film to shake up the Cannes audience was Ari Folman’s animation Waltz With Bashir.
This Israeli picture depicts the massacre of the Sabra and Shatila Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon in 1982.
The film’s main character is director Ari Folman himself who realises that there are major parts of his life, his experience as an Israeli soldier during the Lebanon war of the eighties, missing from his memory.
Ari decides to meet up with old friends and comrades to discover the truth about this time and about himself.
Folman unflinchingly depicts what young men do in a time of war and the atrocities of which humans are capable as well as pointing the finger at those he deems responsible.
Despite not having American distribution when premiered Waltz With Bashir is in the running for the Palme d’or.
FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw