Twenty years after drawing a record-breaking 22-minute standing ovation at its Cannes debut, Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth will return to the festival as a pre-opening selection in a newly restored 4K print. Del Toro himself will attend the screening, one of the marquee events in this year's Cannes Classics lineup, which was unveiled Tuesday.
At the opposite end of the program, Rob Cohen's street-racing blockbuster The Fast and the Furious gets a midnight slot at the Grand Théâtre Lumière, with Vin Diesel, Michelle Rodriguez, and Jordana Brewster expected on the Croisette for the occasion. The 2001 film arrives in a new restoration 25 years after its original release.
The full Cannes Classics section spans 22 feature restorations, three short films, and six documentaries, and is dedicated to the memory of production designer Dean Tavoularis, who worked on The Godfather, Apocalypse Now, and Bonnie and Clyde. Tavoularis died in Paris on April 22 at the age of 93, according to Deadline.
The restoration slate draws from across continents and eras. Armenian filmmaker Artavazd Pelechian will attend screenings of four of his works collected under the Pelechian Project, covering films made between 1966 and 1975. Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski and his wife Ewa Piaskowska will be present for the restored print of his 1982 film Moonlighting. Dario Argento will attend a screening of Giuseppe Patroni Griffi's 1968 film Love Circle, for which Argento wrote the screenplay. Other restorations include Andrzej Wajda's Man of Iron, Luchino Visconti's The Innocent, and Akira Kurosawa's Sugata Sanshiro.
The documentary program is anchored by Dernsie: The Amazing Life of Bruce Dern, drawn from more than 50 hours of conversations filmed across four years and featuring interviews with Quentin Tarantino, Billy Bob Thornton, Walton Goggins, Patty Jenkins, and others. Bruce Dern and his daughter Laura Dern will both attend. A second portrait, Maverick: The Epic Adventures of David Lean, rounds out the director-focused strand, alongside films examining the legacies of Vittorio De Sica and Chris Marker. Mark Cousins returns with The Story of Documentary Film (The 70s).
Three short films will screen in a dedicated program. Among them is Torino Shadow, a new work by Chinese filmmaker Jia Zhang-Ke, created for Italy's Museo Nazionale del Cinema Torino. The film stars Zhao Tao as a woman who travels from southern China to Turin to see her husband, only to find herself alone and rediscovering cinema. Jia and Tao will attend. The other shorts come from Dustin Yellin and Iranian filmmaker Amirhossein Shojaei, with Paul Rudd and Darren Aronofsky also expected to appear at the festival in connection with the program.
Two new feature films round out the section. Bérenger Thouin's The Golden Age is a fictional portrait of a woman navigating the 20th century. Jean-Gabriel Périot's A Life, A Manifesto traces the life of critic, filmmaker, and revolutionary Michèle Firk.
Screenings will take place across the Buñuel and Agnès Varda theaters and at the Cinéma de la Plage. The Cannes Film Festival runs May 13 through May 24.
