Asghar Farhadi’s Spanish-language Everybody Knows to open Cannes

The latest film from the double-Oscar-winning Iranian director Asghar Farhadi is to open the 71st Cannes Film Festival next month.

Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem will open the Cannes Film Festival, in Asghar Farhadi’s Everybody Knows

Everybody Knows – a psychological thriller starring Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem – will be the first film in neither English nor French to open the prestigious event since Pedro Almodovar’s Bad Education in 2004.

It’s also the first time in six years that the opening film of the festival will be part of the Official Competition; in recent years, the festival has opened with higher profile, English or French films, with the potential to attract more media coverage, such as Woody Allen’s Cafe Society in 2016, the critically slated biopic Grace of Monaco in 2014 and The Great Gatsby, the previous year.

Farhadi’s eighth feature will be his third to compete at Cannes, after his French-language The Past in 2013 and 2016’s The Salesman, which won him the Best Screenplay prize, before going on to win the Best Foreign Language Oscar.

Everybody Knows – or Todos Lo Saben, in its native Spanish – will screen at the Palais des Festivals on the Croisette on 8th May. The winner of the Palme d’Or, selected by a jury headed by the actress Cate Blanchett, will be announced eleven days later.

Most of the other contenders for the prizes will be announced next week; Cannes often adds one or two more films, closer to the festival.