28/06/2021 - The leading German sales and production outfit is repping 14 films in the selection, including the much-anticipated competition titles Memoria and Three Floors

We are by no means out of the pandemic yet, but the 74th Cannes Film Festival (6-17 July) is set to be the great physical restart for the film industry after a year of primarily online events. The Match Factory, run by Michael Weber, is set to have its biggest festival to date, with 14 films spread across the whole selection and others available in the concurrent Marché du Film (6-15 July). The company will also be bringing a similar-sized team to the festival as it did to prior editions, and all of the filmmakers selected are planning to attend, barring travel restrictions.

Three Floors [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] by Nanni Moretti, adapted from the novel by Israeli writer Eshkol Nevo, is one of its most hotly anticipated competition titles. Held over when last year’s edition couldn’t take place physically, this ensemble piece will depict the stories of three families living in three separate apartments in the same bourgeois condominium. Moretti himself will play a role, with the additions of Alba Rohrwacher and Riccardo Scamarcio, who join his acting troupe for the first time. The Italian maverick took home the Palme d’Or 20 years ago for The Son’s Room [+see also:
trailer
film profile] and was jury president in 2012.

Two East Asian greats constitute The Match Factory’s other two competition films. They are Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Memoria [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile], a large-scale co-production starring Tilda Swinton, funded by Colombia, Thailand, France, Germany, Mexico and Qatar, and Drive My Car by Ryusuke Hamaguchi, recently a Grand Jury Prize winner at Berlin for Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy. Drive My Car is the first Japanese production that the company is representing.

In the Official Selection, we also have Great Freedom [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Sebastian Meise
film profile], a story of homosexual discrimination in post-war Germany by Austrian director Sebastian Meise. Franz Rogowski, who has recently appeared in sundry great works in German cinema, leads the cast. Joining it in Un Certain Regard are Let It Be Morning [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] by Eran Kolirin, a French-Israeli production, and Tatiana Huezo’s Prayers for the Stolen [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile], part-financed by The Match Factory itself.

Rounding off its Official Selection films are Evolution [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Kornél Mundruczó and Kata W…
film profile], a theatrical adaptation by Kornél Mundruczó, Marco Bellocchio’s heartfelt documentary Marx Can Wait [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] (the festival is awarding Bellocchio an honorary Palme d’Or in tandem), both in the new Cannes Premiere section; and Mariner of the Mountains by Karim Aïnouz and the pandemic portmanteau film The Year of the Everlasting Storm, bothin Special Screenings.

Simón Mesa Soto’s Amparo [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] is The Match Factory’s ticket in the Critics’ Week, whilst the Italian anthology film Futura, Murina by Antoneta Alamat Kusijanović, and Miguel Gomes and Maureen Fazendeiro’s The Tsugua Diaries [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: João Nunes Monteiro
interview: Maureen Fazendeiro and Migu…
film profile] will debut in the Directors’ Fortnight.

Furthermore, the company will continue proffering its Berlin titles from earlier in the year, along with upcoming films by Lukas Dhont and Golden Lion winner Lorenzo Vigas. With Filmfest München getting under way next week, Dietrich Brüggemann’s Nö [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Dietrich Brüggemann
film profile] and Andreas Kleinert’s Dear Thomas [+see also:
film review
interview: Andreas Kleinert
film profile] are also on sale in what will be a July to savour for the venerable Berlin-based outfit.