The 57th Directors' Fortnight is held under the auspices of Todd Haynes, a 64-year-old American filmmaker and a crucial figure on the independent cinema scene, based in Portland, Oregon. His winding and unclassifiable body of work – which includes a dozen feature films over 30 years – emerged from the fervor of the 1990s, skillfully blending counterculture legacies and cinephile memories into versatile films. These range from the narrative experiments of Safe (1995) and I'm Not There (2007) to reflective melodramas like Far from Heaven (2003) or Carol (2015), through the glam explosion of Velvet Goldmine (1998) or the legal thriller Dark Waters (2020). As a producer, he has overseen the emergence of Kelly Reichardt, who is competing this year with The Mastermind. Filmmakers from the Société des Réalisatrices et Réalisateurs de Films came together to present him with the Carrosse d'Or, an honorary award accompanied by a screening and a discussion.
This prize means a tremendous amount to me, because of course it's the core honor of the Directors' Fortnite and the Quinzane. It comes out of a very specific history that is very political and that sort of drew a line in the sand in 1968 that separated the official Cannes festivities from something that was very auteurist and very much about standing outside the system. I have had a very fortunate ongoing career that has allowed me to maintain that standing in so many ways. Of course, I've worked with studios and I've worked with name actors and I've made films that engage with genre and have had different kinds of commercial success, but never really crossing over into that world of mainstream filmmaking.
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