Cannes Festival to Open With Marion Cotillard, Adam Driver Starrer ‘Annette’

The film in which I sang and acted as a "Singing Leader" will open on Cannes Film Festival this July! Can't wait to see it on the big screen! So grateful looking back to be able to work with director Leos Carax (Holy Motors) and musical director Marius de Vries (Lalaland, Moulin Rouge a.o.). - You can watch the trailer here:

My experience on set:

We filmed most of the scenes in Luik (Liege) Belgium, with a French speaking crew, because of Leos Carax being a French man himself. I was surprised to see how different the set was from Hollywood American filmsets, British Filmsets and Dutch filmsets I was on previously. The French way, or the 'Leos Carax' way of filming was that everyone wasn't allowed to speak on set, except for the lines in your role/character. This caused us to win lots of time, that you would normally loose on getting the set quiet again before rolling. And we finished each day at 19.00 hours sharp. No overhears whatsoever. I've never experienced that on a filmset before either. It was quite the experience!

The rehearsals were a lot of fun too, where we had to learn different musical pieces from the composers of the band "Spark". It felt like I was in a musical theatre rehearsal, even though it was very much a film set too. The best combination!

This is what Variety wrote about it: on Variety.com:

The 74th edition of the Cannes Film Festival is set to open with Leos Carax’s anticipated romantic musical film “Annette” with Adam Driver and Marion Cotillard on July 7. The movie will also play in competition.

“Annette” will be released simultaneously in theaters in France by UGC. The film marks Carax’s English-language debut. It features original songs by the Sparks, the art-rock band founded in 1971 by Ron and Russell Mael.

“Annette” is represented in international markets by Kinology. Amazon Studios has U.S. and Canadian rights.

The film produced by Charles Gillibert (CG Cinéma International), Paul-Dominique Vacharasinthu (Tribus P. Films) and Driver, in association with Amazon Studios, Arte and Canal Plus.

Described as “visionary and enigmatic” by the festival, Carax has directed several cult movies through his long career, notably Pola X in 1999 and “Holy Motors” in 2012, both of which competed at Cannes. The difficult financing of Carax’s 1990 film “Les Amants du Pont Neuf” is a thing of legend in French cinema history. Eventually completed, it played the 1991 Cannes festival in an out of competition slot.

“Every Leos Carax film is an event. And this one delivers on its promises! Annette is the gift that lovers of cinema, music and culture were hoping for, one that we have been yearning for during the past year,” said Pierre Lescure, Cannes Film Festival president.

“We couldn’t have dreamed of a more beautiful reunion with cinema and the silver screen, in the Palais des festivals where films come to assert their splendor,” said Thierry Frémaux, Cannes’ chief. “Carax’s cinema is an expression of these powerful gestures, these mysterious alchemies that makes the secret of cinema’s modernity and eternity,” added Fremaux.

The festival will this year not be held in its usual mid-May slot. Instead, it will run July 6-17, 2021. It was previously announced that American director Spike Lee will be president of the jury that discerns the festival’s major prizes.