A taste for cinema

You are all invited to the sixtieth anniversary of La Semaine de la Critique!

We are celebrating films in a cinema, on the brand-new silver screen of the fully renovated Miramar Theatre, ensuring you better comfort and films excellent screening conditions. This renovation is undoubtedly the best anniversary gift we could have asked for. After a special “support” edition, coming back to Cannes to experience our selection of first and second films is a celebration in and of itself.

For sixty years, La Semaine has been striving to offer first works the best display, to provide a springboard so they may be seen in cinemas throughout the world. As usual, the winners will be selected by a distinguished jury. We are absolutely delighted that the president of this year’s jury is Cristian Mungiu, the leading figure of Romanian avant-garde, who won the Palme d’Or for his film 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days. After all, he did put his work as a director aside to create the Bucharest Cannes Film Festival to share the best international arthouse films with his fellow citizens.

We are equally convinced that it is by showing beautiful films that we make people love cinema, see and make films. That’s why our institution organises film literacy workshops year-round, all across France, and that we have created an annual Young Critics’ Award.

For La Semaine’s sixtieth anniversary, we chose to aim for the horizon. 60 years onward, such is the focus of this edition and of the videos we recorded with those who’ve brightened up our days over the last few years of the selection.

And putting the finishing touches to the celebration, we asked film professionals from around the world to hear them talk about film criticism and answer Louis Delluc’s question: “Does film criticism help make films?”

Let’s already agree that it helps appreciate them and know about them. As this sixtieth edition will remind us with gusto.

Philippe Rouyer
Président of the French Union of Film and TV critics