This is interesting, unless my memory is faulty, I don’t remember the closing night film for the Cannes Film Festival ever being announced prior to the line-up being announced. This year the 2013 Cannes Film Festival line-up will be announced on Thursday, April 18 and we already know Baz Luhrmann‘s The Great Gatsby will open the fest, but now Deadline is reporting Jérome Salle‘s Zulu starring Forest Whitaker and Orlando Bloom will serve as the closing night feature.
Zulu is based on the novel by Caryl Férey and was shot in South Africa. Taking place in Cape Town, Whitaker and Bloom play cops investigating the murder of two women. Here’s a lengthier synopsis:
As a child, Ali Neuman (Whitaker) narrowly escaped being murdered by Inkhata, a militant political party at war with Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress. Only he and his mother survived the carnage of those years. But as with many survivors, the psychological scars remain. Today, Ali is chief of the homicide branch of the South African police in Cape Town. One of his staff is Brian Epkeen (Bloom), a free-wheeling white officer whose family was originally involved in the establishment of apartheid but who works well with Neuman. Together they have to deal with crime that inevitably exists in sprawling areas of un -and under- employed people, crime exacerbated by gangs, both local and from other parts of Africa. Their job gets even more difficult when the corpses of two young women are found. A new evil has been introduced in the city and a new drug has been introduced to its residents, including both murder victims. At the chaotic crossroads where brutality and modernization collide, the echoes of apartheid still resound in the shadows of a society struggling toward reconciliation.
Salle was the writer and director of the film Anthony Zimmer, which was later remade and became The Tourist starring Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie. Zulu is his first English language feature.
Alexandre Desplat scored the film which was previewed for distributors in Berlin this February and has yet to have any takers.
Picture and synopsis via Shadow and Act.
