Linklater to Storm the Beaches of Cannes

The lineup for the 2006 Cannes Film Festival has been announced, and Austinite Richard Linklater will have the distinction of being the first director to ever show films in the main competition and Un Certain Regard (the competition which grants money to the winner to enable French distribution).

Linklater’s Fast Food Nation, based on the book by Eric Schlosser and starring Ethan Hawke, Patricia Arquette and Kris Kristofferson, will appear in the main competition. His highly-anticipated, digitally-enhanced A Scanner Darkly, based on the Philip K. Dick novel and filmed here in Austin, will be a part of Un Certain Regard.

Ron Howard’s The DaVinci Code, based on based on historical non-fiction...just kidding, relax, based on that novel that everyone and their mother and the secretary in the cubicle next to them and their mother has read, will kick off the festival, screening out-of-competition. Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's Babel, starring Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett and Gael Garcia Bernal and Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette (which is cleverly doing a very indie-rock inspired marketing campaign) will also be premiering in competition.

Congrats to Linklater for breaking new ground at Cannes and making Austin proud!

Complete List of Films