The 72nd Cannes Film Festival will open with the main competition screening of the American director and screenwriter Jim Jarmusch’s new film, The Dead Don’t Die.
The screen of the Grand Théâtre Lumière will display the film on 14 May as part of this year’s first Palme d’Or competition screening.
The film takes place in the sleepy small town of Centerville, something is not quite right. The moon hangs large and low in the sky, the hours of daylight are becoming unpredictable, and animals are beginning to exhibit unusual behaviors. No one quite knows why. News reports are scary, and scientists are concerned. But no one foresees the strangest and most dangerous repercussion that will soon start plaguing Centerville. The dead rise from their graves and savagely attack and feast on the living, and the citizens of the town must battle for their survival.
The independent filmmaker’s newest foray into genre film (after the western with Dead Man, Samurai/crime film with Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai, and his vampire film, Only Lovers Left Alive ) promises to be “the greatest zombies cast ever disassembled”: Bill Murray, Adam Driver, Tilda Swinton, Chloë Sevigny, Steve Buscemi, Danny Glover, Caleb Landry Jones, Rosie Perez, Iggy Pop, Selena Gomez, RZA, Sara Driver, Austin Butler, Luka Sabbat, Eszter Balint, Carol Kane and Tom Waits. The Dead Don’t Die also reunites Jarmusch with many of his frequent collaborators, including Director of Photography Frederick Elmes (Night on Earth, Paterson, Broken Flowers) and Editor Affonso Gonçalves (Only Lovers Left Alive, Paterson).
The Dead Don’t Die is Jarmusch’s 13th feature film and stands as not just a humorous and sometimes scary subversion of the genre (with a nod to George Romero’s seminal film, Night of the Living Dead) but also a tribute to cinema itself.
Since Stranger Than Paradise, Caméra d’or winner at the Festival de Cannes in 1984 which was a landmark in the history of new independent American cinema, Jarmusch has been sharing with us his artful, soulful universes, inspired soundtracks, offbeat humour, and the meanderings of his anti-heroes in an always slightly strange world. At Cannes, his elegant, rock and roll cinema, often presenting an alternative America, has been honoured with four awards, including the Short Film Palme d’or in 1993 for Coffee and Cigarettes: Somewhere in California and the Grand Prix in 2005 for Broken Flowers.
In 2016, Jarmusch had two films in the Official Selection: Paterson with Golshifteh Farahani and Adam Driver, and Gimme Danger, the music documentary on Iggy and the Stooges.
