The 59th annual Festival de Cannes will be showing a twenty-minute preview of Oliver Stone's next film, World Trade Center. According to Hollywood Reporter, the preview will be shown during the "Cannes Classics" component of the festival. From the Festival de Cannes website, it's not clear exactly when the screening should be taking place, but I presume it would be around when they screen Oliver Stone's Platoon.
Paul Greengrass's United 93 was the first released film that dealt directly with the events of September 11, 2001, and had opened the Tribeca Film Festival in New York. The film has generally been received quite well by audiences and critics, though we are still awaiting its European release! Nina has seen it, and has written an extremely eloquent review, here.
Oliver Stone is not shy of contreversy, and more specifically, of conspiracies. It's difficult to tell in which direction he intends to go with this story, but we'll see soon enough (the film is expected to be released on August 9 of this year). From Rotten Tomatoes:
"This is the true story of Will Jimeno and John McLoughlin, two Port Authority police officers who rushed into the burning World Trade Center on 9/11 to help rescue people but became trapped themselves when the tower collapsed. A race against time ensued to free them before their air ran out."
The cast includes Nicolas Cage, Maria Bello, Jude Ciccolella, Patti D'Arbanville, and Maggie Gyllenhaal. From the brief outline, it sounds as though the film will focus directly on those involved in the rescue operations; no word so far on secret super special agents with conflicting conscience.
Ladder 49 had been the most recent film to address at least the themes of the WTC rescue operation; that movie had been about firefighters, and was some sort of dedication to the heroes of September 11, 2001, though it did not directly cite those events.
Though I'm probably closer to Cannes than many of you, I don't have the means of going to the festival this year (it starts next week, on May 17). If anyone out there has the opportunity to attend, please let us know what you find out!
