Penelope Cruz and husband Javier Bardem’s latest movie Everybody Knows is to open the Cannes Film Festival.
The husband-and-wife Oscar winners both star in the Spanish-language psychological thriller by Iranian director Asghar Farhadi, in which Penelope plays Carolina, a Spanish woman living in Buenos Aires, whose return to her hometown with her husband and children is upset by unexpected events and unveiled secrets.
Cannes organizers have previously favored films by French and American filmmakers to open the festival, but Everybody Knows marks the second Spanish picture to open the event, following Pedro Almodovar’s Bad Education, which introduced Cannes in 2004.
According to Variety, this decision reflects the outlook of artistic director Thierry Fremaux, whose new aim is to kick off proceedings with films that merge a critically acclaimed auteur with an attractive, glamorous cast.
Farhadi is a revered writer and director, with his previous films A Separation and The Salesman both winning Oscars. The latter also competed at the French festival in 2016.
Everybody Knows, or Todos Lo Saben in Spanish, is produced by Alexandre Mallet-Guy and Alvaro Longoria, while Memento Films International is handling worldwide sales and will release the movie in France on 9 May (18).
The film is entirely in Spanish, and while Farhadi does not speak the language, Mallet-Guy, who has collaborated with the filmmaker on two previous occasions, insisted it was no impediment.
“He has a wonderful intuition and a talent for listening to the music of words,” he said of the director, during the film’s shoot last summer in Torrelaguna, a small town north of Madrid, Spain.
This year marks the 71st edition of the Cannes Film Festival, which will take place from 8 to 19 May.
