At the end of a selection marked by a majority of films dealing with the duality of suspicion / guilt, the Palme d’Or at the 76th Cannes Film Festival went to ‘‘Anatomy of a Fall’’, a French family drama which dissects the mechanisms of suspicion (and the resulting guilt) weighing on a wife after the (accidental?) defenestration of her husband.
Thus, the director Justine Triet enters the annals of the Croisette for having won the tenth French Palme d’Or and the third for women, 30 years after ‘‘The piano’’ by New Zealander Jane Campion, and two years after ‘‘Titane’’ by his compatriot Julia Ducournau, member of the Jury this year.
Five years have passed since the terrorist attacks in Paris, on November 13, 2015. At the time when France commemorates the event and round tribute to the victims of these attacks, President François Hollande, who was in office during these tragic events, granted an exclusive interview to Global Watch Analysis.
The former President evokes the memory of the attacks, the pain of the victims and their families and his concern not to fall into the trap set by the terrorists: to divide the French and to pit them against each other.
Commenting on the recent polemics, which have inflamed certain Muslim countries, on the subject of the cartoons of Prophet Mohammed, François Hollande addresses the Muslim populations “who may have been struck by these cartoons”. While reassuring them that French secularism does not mean “the crushing of religions”, but their recognition as elements of freedom, he reminds them that “freedom is a rule in France” where law authorizes caricature and derision, but not hatred. And that no one in France has the right to attack people because of their religious affiliation.
