“Star Wars” will be bringing a galaxy far, far away to the 2018 Cannes Film Festival.
The French festival announced on Friday that “Solo: A Star Wars Story” will be premiering out of competition at their prestigious event, shortly ahead of its release in French theatres on May 23.
As surprising as it may sound, this isn’t the first time a “Star Wars” flick has come to the French Riviera festival. 2002’s “Star Wars: Attack of the Clones” and 2005’s “Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith” both premiered at Cannes.
Fans across the United States and Canada will be able to catch “Solo: A Star Wars Story” in theatres starting May 25.
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The festival also announced earlier this week that husband and wife Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem will kick things off in Cannes with their new film “Everybody Knows”.
The psychological thriller by Oscar-nominated Iranian director Asghar Farhadi centres on Carolina (Cruz), a woman whose life is turned upside-down when she returns from South America to her hometown of Madrid with her Argentinian husband and children in tow. “Everybody Knows” marks the sixth time the Oscar-winning acting couple will have appeared on-screen together in a feature film.
Cruz, Bardem, and Farhadi are no strangers when it comes to Cannes. Cruz shared the Best Actress award for her performance in 2006’s “Volver” and Bardem was last on La Croisette with the Sean Penn-directed film “The Last Face” in 2016. Farhadi has previously had two films play in competition at the festival: “The Past” in 2013 and “The Salesman” in 2016.
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“Everybody Knows” is only the second Spanish-language film to open the star-studded festival. In 2004 Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodovar’s “Bad Education” with Gael Garcia Bernal opened the annual event.
In January, Cate Blanchett was named president of the jury for the festival, which runs from May 8 to 19.
