One of these days, I’ll find the time and an invite and brave the over-crowded and advertisement laden Croisette for the worlds biggest, most prestigious film festival. Variety had a large article yesterday evening featuring some knowns and some guesswork on what is going to be at the festival this year. Announcements of the full line-up will be made, I believe, next Tuesday. Sean Penn is heading the Jury this year for the festival which runs May 14-25.

Here is what I’m really looking forward to hearing about at this years festival.

Turkey:

Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s “Daydreams” – After catching his excellent sun-soaked and snow splattered Climates (My review here), I’m curious to hear about whatever this man chooses to work on.

South Korea:

Kim Jee-woon’s The Good, the Bad, the Weird – If you’ve not managed to catch a film by this filmmaker (The Quiet Family, A Tale of Two Sisters and A Bittersweet Life to name a few), you are denying yourself. A director who makes very handsome and upscale film that effortlessly span across genre and show a lot of healthy restraint; with his latest is attempting to mash genres within a single film. Certainly this could be the companion piece to Takashi Miike’s Sukayaki Western Django which will be sharper in visuals and focus. Kim Jee-woon is a very detail oriented director while Miike is all about rough, raw and speed.

Iceland:

Baltasar Kormakur’s White Night Wedding – Folks outside of Iceland should really be paying more attention to Kormakur’s interesting body of work which includes a slacker dramedy, a stylish set-in-America-but-very-much-feels-like-Iceland noir and the very strange and very, very good contemporary-issue science drama Jar City. I really do not have much detail on The Night Wedding, but I am very interested regardless of what he is doing.

Canada:

Atom Egoyan’s Adoration – Egoyan may have dropped the ball lately with Felecia’s Journey, Ararat and Where the Truth Lies, but really, coming off The Sweet Hereafter was there any more room to go up? Here’s hoping people can find new reasons to love one of the great modern Canadian auteurs.

Brazil:

Fernando Meirelles’ Blindness – We have a review of the rough-cut of the film right here, but we are unsure of just exactly what changes (if any) have been made to the film, and I’m personally anticipating the critical response of the worldwide media on this very upscale apocalyptic drama.

China:

Jia Zhangke’s The Age of Tattoo – One of these days I’m going to go on a Zhangke marathon. Currently Still Life and The World are sitting on my desk waiting, as Zhangke continues to rack up awards around festivals.

Germany:

Wim Wenders The Palermo Shooting – Wenders has been lukewarm for me lately (Wings of Desire remains a favourite, of course), but a cast featuring Milla Jovovich, Dennis Hopper and Lou Reed is loopy enough to raise an eyebrow. The shooter is a camera not a gun, FYI.

Japan:

Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Tokyo Sonata – Always a pleasure to have new Kurosawa, especially when it stars Kôji Yakusho (Retribution, Babel). It looks like the horror maestro is making a more drama driven film this time around.

Documentary:

James Toback’s Tyson and Marina Zenovich’s Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired are on the docket. I don’t recall documentaries ever getting real steam out of Cannes in the past (outside of Michael Moore’s dreadfully undeserved Fahrenheit 9/11 which actual won the Golden Palm), but these two entries definitely feature interesting subjects (more on the Polanski doc here, as it already played at Sundance)

Compilation:

Tokyo! features three short films set in the titular city (Bong Joon-ho (Memories of Murder, The Host), Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Science of Sleep) and Leos Carax (Pola X, The Lovers on the Bridge). There has been a number of these, along the lines of Paris Je T’aime, A Chacun Son Cinema, etc. recently and also an upcoming one film called I Heart New York featuring many more filmmakers, but this last one will not likely be ready for Cannes.

The Rest:

Of course, there are many side-bars and markets outside the main competition and high profile premieres (Steven Spielberg’s Indiana Jones is set to open the festival, and Barry Levinson’s What Just Happened? (starring Robert DeNiro, Catherine Keener and John Turturro amongst others) is set to close, and it is always a pleasure to read what critics and audiences cheer or jeer at during the big film party on the old-continent.