Strong presence for UK films in Cannes

The UK has a strong presence at the Cannes Film Festival this year, with directors Andrea Arnold and Ken Loach both screening movies in competition.

Co-producers on Andrea Arnold’s American Honey included Film4 and the British Film Institute, as well as London-based Protagonist Pictures and Pulse Films. The movie follows the adventures of a teenage girl as she travels across America’s Mid-West with a magazine sales crew.

Arnold won an Oscar in 2003 for her short film Wasp. Since then her feature productions have included directing Michael Fassbender in one of his early leading roles in the Essex-shot social drama Fish Tank and a 2011 adaptation of Wuthering Heights that filmed in North Yorkshire.

Ken Loach is a Cannes veteran, acclaimed British filmmaker and serial nominee for the Palme D’Or. He won the coveted prize in 2006 for his drama The Wind That Shakes the Barley, set during the Irish War of Independence in the early 1920s.

This year Loach brings I, Daniel Blake to the Cannes Film Festival. Loach filmed on location in London and Newcastle to tell the story of a middle-aged carpenter forced to claim benefits after injuring himself at work.

British short films are also ably represented at this year’s festival. Sara Dunlop’s Dreamlands was filmed in Margate on the Kent coast and tells the story of a young woman meeting a boy at the end of a long summer. 

Elsewhere, this year’s Cinéfondation selection includes In the Hills, a film by Hamid Ahmadi that follows a young immigrant making a new life in the Cotswolds region of south-central England. 

The UK is present in bigger films too. Steven Spielberg’s new children’s adventure The BFG has made its debut at Cannes out of competition and includes scenes shot in Buckingham Palace and at Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire, while the Isle of Skye in western Scotland was used for visual effects plate shots.

In the coming days a UK-backed shoot could still claim the Palme D’Or. Either way, Britain’s status as a top filming location means its representation at Cannes is likely to grow in the coming years. 

 



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