The 70th edition of the Cannes Film Festival announced its official selections this morning with no Chinese films chosen for the Competition, the Un Certain Regard sidebar, or special screenings.
The annual festival held each May on the French Riviera is both legendarily glamorous and the world’s most prestigious presentation of cinema—titles spotlighted at Cannes set the agenda for the international arthouse circuit over the year to come while also establishing early Academy Awards contenders.
This year’s festival is set to unspool from May 17 through May 28. In past years, Cannes has featured Chinese-language cinema by King Hu, Chen Kaige, Zhang Yimou, Hou Hsiao-Hsien, Wong Kar-Wai, Lou Ye, Ang Lee, Johnnie To, and Jia Zhangke, but this year, while Japan and South Korea are well-represented, the only Chinese element seems to be the corpse of the titular teenage “China Girl” washed ashore on Bondi Beach in a special presentation of the new season of Jane Campion’s television series, Top of the Lake.
