Never crowned on the Croisette, Jean-Luc Godard, who died in September, was entitled to a form of posthumous "celebration" Sunday at the Cannes Film Festival, with the screening of a documentary on the Swiss filmmaker and his latest project. "The room is full. It means that the second life, or the thousandth life, of Jean-Luc Godard begins now, with the films that remain, "said the general delegate of the Festival, Thierry Frémaux, in front of an audience that was present including filmmakers Jim Jarmush, Wang Bing (in competition this year with his documentary Jeunesse) or actress Salma Hayek.
In Godard by Godard, Florence Platarets returns -without commentary in voice-over- on the life of the agitator filmmaker of the New Wave, who died at the age of 91 while using assisted suicide, legal in Switzerland. The opportunity, through sometimes unpublished images, to see him direct his first feature film, the resolutely innovative À bout de souffle. But also, in a sequence much applauded by the spectators present, to return to the Croisette in May 1968. While the France was agitated by social unrest, Godard took the lead of a sling of filmmakers who ended up prematurely interrupting the Cannes Film Festival.
See alsoJournal de Cannes: the ghost of Godard passes, Cannes rewinds
Another memorable moment of the director at Cannes, where he won the Jury Prize in 2014 and a special Palme d'Or in 2018: in 1985, coming to present his feature film Detective, he receives in his face a cream pie. This portrait was followed by a short film presenting the latest work of Jean-Luc Godard under the name Film announcement of the film that will never exist: "Funny wars". Summed up as a collage of a succession of images and words, interspersed with small video extracts, it was an adaptation of the novel by the Belgian writer Charles Plisnier Faux Passeports, winner of the Prix Goncourt in 1937. This collection of short stories follows different characters between the October Revolution of 1917 in Russia and the 30s.