Cannes 2022: Zelensky Opens 75th Festival, Serebrennikov Returns with Tchaikovsky Film

The 75th Cannes Film Festival (May 17-28, 2022) opened with a video address by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who quoted Charlie Chaplin's 'The Great Dictator' and urged cinema not to remain silent about war. Jury president Vincent Lindon called the edition 'dignified and respectful of wartime.' Director Thierry Fremaux set a tone of solidarity and civic engagement. Russian filmmaker Kirill Serebrennikov, recently freed from house arrest, presented 'Zhena Chaikovsky' (Tchaikovsky's Wife) in competition. The film explores the composer's disastrous marriage and his wife's obsession, shot chronologically to trace her evolution over decades. 'Le otto montagne' (The Eight Mountains), directed by Charlotte Vandermeersch and Felix Van Groeningen, adapts Paolo Cognetti's novel about a friendship between two men, starring Alessandro Borghi and Luca Marinelli. James Gray's autobiographical 'Armageddon Time' recalls his 12-year-old self in 1980s Queens, with Anne Hathaway and Anthony Hopkins, linking Reagan-era anxieties to present-day inequality. George Miller's 'Three Thousand Years of Longing,' based on A.S. Byatt's story, stars Tilda Swinton as a scholar who acquires a djinn (Idris Elba) offering three wishes. Miller returned to Cannes after 'Mad Max: Fury Road.' The festival also featured fewer attendees than usual.