The Cannes Film Festival has unveiled its official poster for this year’s 71st edition, featuring an image from Jean-Luc Godard’s 1965 film “Pierrot le Fou.”
The poster, designed by 27-year-old graphic designer Flore Maquin, is inspired by the work of French stills photographer Georges Pierre and features “Pierrot le Fou” stars Jean-Paul Belmondo and Anna Karina.
The new poster shows Belmondo and Karina leaning out of their cars to share a kiss. The two play lovers on the run who settle for a time on the French Riviera, which is also where the Cannes Film Festival takes place.
Across a 30-year career starting in 1960, photographer Pierre, who died in 2003, worked with some of the biggest names in French cinema, including Godard, Jacques Rivette, Alain Resnais, Louis Malle, Robert Enrico, Claude Sautet and Bertrand Tavernier, as well international filmmakers such as Polish directors Andrzej Żuławski and Andrzej Wajda. He also founded the Association des Photographes de Films, in order to achieve recognition for stills photographers as artists in their own right.
Last year’s festival poster caused controversy after it was suggested that the central image of Italian actress Claudia Cardinale had been airbrushed to make her appear thinner. Cardinale herself dismissed the furor, saying: “It’s a poster, which beyond representing me, represents a dance, a flight. The photo was retouched to accentuate the effect of lightness and to transpose me into a dream character; it’s a sublimation. Concerns over realism have no place here.”
This year’s Cannes Film Festival runs May 8-19, and will open with the world premiere of Asghar Farhadi’s “Everybody Knows,” starring Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz. The official lineup will be unveiled Thursday.
Cate Blanchett serves as president of this year’s official competition jury.