The EnergaCamerimage International Film Festival has unveiled the first batch of films selected for its 2024 main competition: a trio of aesthetically adventurous stories about women.
The selection includes Jacques Audiard's Cannes Jury Prize winner Emilia Perezthe arthouse drama by Magnus von Horn The girl with the needleand Rachel Morrison's boxing biopic The fire inside. Camerimage organizers will unveil the rest of this year's competition selection – which usually totals around a dozen films – in the coming days.
As previously announced, this year's Camerimage competition will be judged by a jury led by jury president and two-time Oscar winner Cate Blanchett.
Emilia Perez AND The girl with the needle both premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May and both were selected by THRby critics among the best films of the 2024 edition.
“Zoe Saldaña, Selena Gomez and the divine Karla Sofia Gascón illuminate Audiard's fabulous musical in which a Mexican drug lord enlists the help of a lawyer to undergo gender affirmation surgery and start a new life,” he wrote THRDavid Rooney's chief critic in his summary of Emilia Perezcontinuing: “The French director (The Prophet, Rust and Bone) has always been adventurous, and his latest creation deftly ranges between styles: it is a narrative of redemption with an undercurrent of Almodóvarian humor, moments of melodrama, noir, social realism , a hint of telenovela camp and an escalation of suspense touched by tragedy.
From The girl with the needle, THR Critic Leslie Felperin said: “In von Horn's insightful, sad and urgently timely drama, Vic Carmen Sonne gives a multi-layered performance as a seamstress in post-war Copenhagen, left high and dry when her wealthy lover gets her pregnant but won't marry her This leaves her with two choices: abort with a knitting needle or have the baby and hand it over to a sinister woman (the great Trine Dyrholm) who runs a clandestine adoption agency.
Written by Barry Jenkins (Moonlight), The fire inside is the directorial debut of cinematographer Rachel Morrison. The film was a critical favorite at this year's Toronto Film Festival, where THRThe reviewer of described it as “a dramatic, engaging, no-punches account of the rise of Claressa Shields, the black teenager from Flint, Michigan, who would become the only American boxer, male or female, in the history of the sport to win consecutive gold medals at the Olympic Games.”
The 2024 Camerimage festival opens on November 16 with a screening of Steve McQueen's World War II epic Blitz. Other highlights announced include a special honor for Shogun star Hiroyuki Sanada and the world premiere of Alec Baldwin's independent western Rust. A special round table will then be held Rustit is the first screening to honor the memory of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, who was tragically killed in an on-set accident during production. Camerimage famously focuses on achievement in the art of cinematography. Blanchett and her fellow jurors will reveal the winners of the festival's Golden Frog awards at a ceremony on November 23.