Terry Gilliam’s notoriously long-in-the-works “The Man Who Killed Don Quixote” will close next month’s Cannes Film Festival, president Pierre Lescure announced Thursday.
In addition, festival organizers confirmed that Lars von Trier’s “The House That Jack Built,” a serial killer drama starring Matt Dillon and Uma Thurman, would screen out of competition.
On Tuesday, festival general delegate Thierry Fremaux had signaled that the Danish director would be welcomed back to the festival seven years after he was declared “persona non grata” at the festival for comments he made about Adolf Hitler.
Three films were also added to the competition lineup, bringing the total to 21 films vying for this year’s Palme d’Or: French director Yann Gonzalez’s “Un couteau dans le coeur (Knife + Heart)” starring Vanessa Paradis; Kazakh filmmaker Sergey Dvortsevoy’s “Ayka;” and Turkish director and 2014 Palmed’Or winner Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s “Ahlat Agaci (The Wild Pear Tree).”
In addition, Kevin Macdonald’s “Whitney,” a doc about the late pop star Whitney Houston, will join the Midnight Screenings series, along with Ramin Bahrani’s adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451” starring Michael B. Jordan, Michael Shannon, and Sofia Boutella.
The festival also added three new films to the Un Certain Regard program: Alejandro Fadel’s “Muere, Monstruo, Muere;” João Salaviza and Renée Nader Messora’s “Chuva E Cantoria Na Aldeia Dos Mortos (The Dead and the Others)” and Ukranian director Sergey Loznitsa’s “Donbass.”
This year’s festival runs from May 8 to May 19.