CANNES: US filmmaker Jeff Nichols said Monday he hoped his rapturously received Cannes contender “Loving,” about an interracial couple’s landmark marriage-rights case, would help change the current vicious tone of America’s culture wars.
The movie, which prompted early Oscar buzz after a press preview, tells the story of Richard and Mildred Loving, a Virginia couple who battled before the Supreme Court in 1967 for their right as a white man and an African-American woman to live together as husband and wife.
Critics praised the film’s restrained style and knock-out lead performances by Joel Edgerton (“Zero Dark Thirty“) and Ethiopian-Irish actress Ruth Negga, best known for the BBC minizeries “Criminal Justice.”
Reporters peppered both stars and Nichols with questions as to whether they had already prepared their Academy Award acceptance speeches, to which the director quipped: “Let’s get through the press conference first.”
The Arkansas-born Nichols, who made the breakout hit “Take Shelter” and previous Cannes competition entry “Mud,” said overheated US debates in an election year tended to ignore “the people at the center of these things.”
“I hope this is the quiet film of the year. I didn’t want to make a courtroom drama, I wanted to make a movie about two people in love,” he said.
Meanwhile, Robert De Niro lit up the red carpet in Cannes on Monday where the film festival was to give a special screening of his new boxing movie in the evening.
De Niro, 72, is being honored in Cannes 36 years after his Oscar-winning performance as self-destructive boxer Jake LaMotta in Martin Scorsese’s 1980 classic “Raging Bull.”
A smiling De Niro, posed for photographers on the red carpet just hours before the premiere of “Hands of Stone,” a biopic about one of the greatest Latino fighters of all time, Roberto Duran, in which he plays his trainer Ray Arcel.
The movie tells the story of the Panamanian brawler (played by Edgar Ramirez) who took the WBC welterweight title from Sugar Ray Leonard in 1980, only to shock the world by walking back to his corner in the rematch five months later saying, “No more.”
“I’m excited to be coming back to Cannes especially with this movie that I’m so proud of,” said De Niro earlier this month.
The movie, which prompted early Oscar buzz after a press preview, tells the story of Richard and Mildred Loving, a Virginia couple who battled before the Supreme Court in 1967 for their right as a white man and an African-American woman to live together as husband and wife.
Critics praised the film’s restrained style and knock-out lead performances by Joel Edgerton (“Zero Dark Thirty“) and Ethiopian-Irish actress Ruth Negga, best known for the BBC minizeries “Criminal Justice.”
Reporters peppered both stars and Nichols with questions as to whether they had already prepared their Academy Award acceptance speeches, to which the director quipped: “Let’s get through the press conference first.”
The Arkansas-born Nichols, who made the breakout hit “Take Shelter” and previous Cannes competition entry “Mud,” said overheated US debates in an election year tended to ignore “the people at the center of these things.”
“I hope this is the quiet film of the year. I didn’t want to make a courtroom drama, I wanted to make a movie about two people in love,” he said.
Meanwhile, Robert De Niro lit up the red carpet in Cannes on Monday where the film festival was to give a special screening of his new boxing movie in the evening.
De Niro, 72, is being honored in Cannes 36 years after his Oscar-winning performance as self-destructive boxer Jake LaMotta in Martin Scorsese’s 1980 classic “Raging Bull.”
A smiling De Niro, posed for photographers on the red carpet just hours before the premiere of “Hands of Stone,” a biopic about one of the greatest Latino fighters of all time, Roberto Duran, in which he plays his trainer Ray Arcel.
The movie tells the story of the Panamanian brawler (played by Edgar Ramirez) who took the WBC welterweight title from Sugar Ray Leonard in 1980, only to shock the world by walking back to his corner in the rematch five months later saying, “No more.”
“I’m excited to be coming back to Cannes especially with this movie that I’m so proud of,” said De Niro earlier this month.
