The director of Holy Motors returns to his neo-baroque roots and wild, sophisticated staging stories about love, akin to Bad Blood and The Lovers on the Bridge. Annette is a spectacular musical based on an idea and songs by the legendary band Sparks (the festival program also includes an excellent documentary by Edgar Wright on the band's work). The combination of the imaginations of Carax and the Mael brothers provides a stunning effect, as if this extraordinary trio wanted to give us something unique in these strange, pandemic times, which can only be appreciated on the big screen. The romance of a celebrity and stand-up comedian (Adam Driver) and a famous singer (Marion Cotillard), who have a daughter with a beautiful voice, unfolds like the darkest Disney fairy tale in a surprising, almost operatic setting. Carax talks about jealousy, greed, the dark sides of human nature, sometimes unexpectedly making the main character similar to himself and settling accounts with his past. A great, breathtaking, inspired spectacle.
Cannes IFF 2021 - Best Director
Leos Carax was born in 1960 in the Suresnes suburbs of Paris as Alexandre Oscar Dupont. His professional name, Léos Carax, is an anagram of his first and middle names, ‘Alex Oscar’. At barely 20 years of age, he worked as a film critic for ‘Cahiers du Cinéma’, the magazine edited by Serge Daney, where Carax published his first article – an enthusiastic review of Sylvester Stallone’s directorial debut Paradise Alley (1978). Only a few years later, Carax began filming his directorial debut, Boy Meets Girl, which generated significant buzz at the Cannes Film Festival and already displayed characteristic elements of his directorial style: a love for silver screen poetics, a melancholy sensitivity and an ironic sense of humor. His sophomore effort, The Night Is Young (1986) received an award for innovation at the Berlin Film Festival, followed by The Lovers on the Bridge, a financial flop that nonetheless received an award from the European Film Academy. After an eight-year hiatus, Carax returned with the full-length feature Pola X, a loose adaptation of a Herman Melville novel (he made only one short film in the meantime entitled Sans titre). One of his later shorts introduced the character of Monsieur Merde, who would return several years later in the Carax film Holy Motors. Holy Motors was the hit of the 2012 Cannes Film Festival, catapulting its director into the pantheon of leading contemporary filmmakers.
1980 Strangulation Blues (short)
1984 Chłopak spotyka dziewczynę / Boy Meets Girl
1986 Zła krew / Mauvais sang / The Night Is Young (aka Bad Blood)
1991 Kochankowie z Pont-Neuf / Les amants du Pont-Neuf / The Lovers on the Bridge
1997 Sans titre (short)
1999 Pola X
2006 My Last Minute (short)
2008 Merde (segment in: Tokyo!)
2009 42 One Dream Rush (co-dir., short)
2012 Holy Motors
2021 Annette