Cannes Film Festival opens with award for Robert De Niro

The Cannes Film Festival began on Tuesday (13) with the awarding of an honorary Palme d'Or to American actor Robert De Niro and the film "Fuori", by Italian director Mario Martone, in the running for the Official Selection award of its 78th edition.

The ceremony was hosted by French actor Laurent Lafitte and opened with the screening of the film "Partir un jour", the first feature film by Amélie Bonnin with Juliette Armanet, in a politicized atmosphere, with an open letter condemning the Israeli military campaign in Gaza, which created pressure on the jury.

There are 22 films in competition, including Martone's Italian "Fuori," which returns to the competition three years after "Nostalgia." Based on the 1983 novel "L'università di Rebibbia," the biographical drama stars actress Valeria Golino and tells the story of writer Goliarda Sapienza, who was arrested for stealing some jewelry but experiences a rebirth when she meets some young prisoners.

Brazil is also in the running for the Palme d'Or with "The Secret Agent", by Pernambuco filmmaker Kleber Mendonça Filho.

The feature film, starring Wagner Moura, is set in Recife in the 1970s, during the Brazilian Military Dictatorship.

In addition to the main competition, Italy will also have two representatives in the parallel "Un Certain Regard" section, aimed at films with unusual styles and non-traditional stories.

They are: "Testa o croce?", by Alessio Rigo de Righi and Matteo Zoppis, and "Le città di pianura", by Francesco Sossai.

The first is a Western starring French actress Nadia Tereszkiewicz, Italian Alessandro Borghi and Oscar-nominated American actor John C. Reilly. The film is inspired by the legend of post-unification Italy, when on the outskirts of Rome American and Italian cowboys challenged each other to see who was better at taming wild horses. Legend has it that the Italians won.

Sossai's work is set in Veneto, a region in northern Italy that the director explores as if it were a continent.

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