Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” has been added to the competition lineup of this month’s Cannes Film Festival, general delegate Thierry Frémaux announced Thursday.
“We were afraid the film would not be ready, as it wouldn’t be released until late July, but Quentin Tarantino, who has not left the editing room in four months, is a real, loyal and punctual child of Cannes!” Fremaux said in a statement.
“Like for ‘Inglourious Basterds,’ he’ll definitely be there — 25 years after the Palme d’or for ‘Pulp Fiction’ — with a finished film screened in 35mm and his cast in tow (Leonardo DiCaprio, Margot Robbie, Brad Pitt). His film is a love letter to the Hollywood of his childhood, a rock music tour of 1969, and an ode to cinema as a whole.”
“Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” is set in Hollywood in 1969 and follows a fading TV actor (DiCaprio) who teams up with his stunt double (Pitt) to reclaim fame during Hollywood’s final years of its golden age. But always lurking in the shadows of what is, in a way, an otherwise sunny and colorful Hollywood fairy tale, is Charles Manson and the Manson Family murders that took place in this same time period.
Besides DiCaprio and Pitt, the cast includes stars playing real-life figures: Margot Robbie is playing the murdered film star Sharon Tate, with Bruce Dern portraying rancher George Spahn, Dakota Fanning as Squeaky Fromme, Damian Lewis as legendary actor Steve McQueen, Emile Hirsch as Jay Sebring, and Lena Dunham as “Gypsy” Share.
Sony Pictures is releasing “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” on July 26.
In addition to the Tarantino film, Frémaux announced that Abdellatif Kechiche’s four-hour “Mektoub, My Love: Intermezzo” will join the competition slate.
The festival will also have a midnight screening of Gaspar Noé’s 50-minute “Lux Aeterna” and two additions to the Un Certain Regard slate: Lorenzo Mattotti’s “La famosa invasione degli orsi in Sicilia” and Russian director Larissa Sadilova’s “Odnazhdy v Trubchevske.”
Finally, the festival added special out-of-competition screenings of actor-director Gael Garcia Bernal’s “Chicuarotes,” Chilean-born filmmaker Patricio Guzmán’s “La Cordillera de los sueños,” Leila Conners’ Leonardo DiCaprio’s climate-change documentary “Ice on Fire” and Dan Krauss’ film “5B” about the 1980’s AIDS crisis in San Francisco.