So Francis Ford Coppola’s upcoming film, “Tetro” was invited to play the Cannes Film Festival out of competition and, seemingly disappointed, the filmmaker decided to pass and take the film to the much-less prestigious (no offense) Seattle Film Festival instead, right?
“While I very much appreciate the invitation, this is an independent film, self-financed and self released, and I felt that being invited for a non-competition gala screening wasn’t true to the personal and independent nature of this film,” he wrote in a statement at the time.
While the film hasn’t been thrown back into competition, it will now open the 41st edition of Directors’ Fortnight (May 14-24), which is the Cannes sidebar and obviously runs during the same period.
“After Coppola announced that he wouldn’t show ‘Tetro’ out of competition, we asked to screen it for the Quinzaine,” Fortnight head Olivier told Variety. “We loved it! And our enthusiasm convinced Coppola that an opening Fortnight slot would be the ideal place to debut his film.”
Directors’ Fortnight will also screen the openly-gay romantic comedy, “I Love You Phillip Morris,” which stars Jim Carrey and Ewan McGregor. Lynn Shelton’s sort-of-mumblecore film, “Humpday,” (apparently better, slightly bigger budget), will also screen.
“Tetro” stars Vincent Gallo as an exiled writer who’s visited in Buenos Aires by his estranged younger brother, but Coppola recently got into further details of the film via Empire. “This is not an epic about immigrants in 1905, like ‘The Godfather’ or anything. This is a real, specific drama, albeit poetic drama. I think ‘Tetro’ is the most beautiful film I’ve ever done in terms of how it was made. I don’t know what people will make of the picture, but just the filmmaking part of it, I’ve learnt to put it together beautifully.”
The film also stars 17 year-old sailor Bennie (relative newcomer Alden Ehrenreich) who plays the brother on his journey to find his poet sibling Tetro (Gallo). Once he finds him, the two brothers reflect on their troubled past with composer father Carlo (Klaus Maria Brandauer).
“Tetro” hits U.S. theaters in limited release on June 11.
