Cannes, May 19: Britain’s Ken Loach sought Wednesday to match the Oscar success of “The Hurt Locker” when he sent his own Iraq war film into the battle for the Cannes top prize.
“Route Irish,” named after the most dangerous stretch of road in Iraq that leads from the airport to Baghdad’s Green Zone, had a press screening at the French Riviera film festival a day ahead of its red carpet premiere.
Loach, who scooped the top prize at Cannes in 2006 with a film about Ireland’s fight for independence from British rule, only entered “Route Irish” into the Cannes race a couple of days before the festival kicked off last week.
The film follows two British former soldiers who go to Iraq as private security contractors.
When one is killed on Route Irish in mysterious circumstances, his friend — wracked by guilt — rejects the official explanation and tries to find out what really happened.
Feature films about the conflict in Iraq had been viewed as commercial and critical poison until last year’s “The Hurt Locker,” a nerve-jangling story about a US Army bomb disposal squad in Iraq.
When that film, by US director Kathryn Bigelow, took the best picture Oscar award in March, critics were forced to revise the conventional wisdom that any movie depicting the unpopular war was destined for failure.
Then this year came the political thriller “Green Zone,” starring Matt Damon, best known for his portrayal of amnesiac assassin Jason Bourne in the trilogy of “Bourne” blockbusters.
“Green Zone,” which follows a US army officer as his team hunts in vain for weapons of mass destruction in the period just after Saddam Hussein was toppled, was a critical and commercial success.
Loach, whose “Route Irish” is one of 19 films vying for the Palme d’Or to be handed out on Sunday, last year entered “Looking For Eric” for the top prize at Cannes.
That movie starred former Manchester United football star Eric Cantona as the imaginary mentor of a Manchester postman down on his luck.
Loach is the second British director in this year’s race, the other being Mike Leigh, who is presenting “Another Year.”
The 12-day festival has hit the halfway mark with Leigh’s tale of a happily married middle-aged couple leading the race, according to a panel of international critics.
A slew of movies screening at the 63rd Cannes festival play out family and marital dramas, with the Iraq war, France’s colonial fall-out in Algeria and the Russian front in World War II providing wider historical themes.
Critics cited in trade papers Screen and Le Film Francais both tip Leigh as potential Palme winner to date.
But another panel of film supremos in Screen believe a costume drama by France’s Bertrand Tavernier, “The Princess of Montpensier”, may be headed for the stars, along with a rare offering from Africa, “A Screaming Man” by Mahamat-Saleh Haroun.
French critics on the other hand favour “Biutiful” by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, the Mexican director behind “Amores Perros” and “Babel”.
—Agencies