Directors’ Fortnight head Julien Rejl on Animation for Adults and How to Mix Cannes Veterans and Rookies

Julien Rejl readily admits his way of thinking about the Directors’ Fortnight has changed since he joined in 2022. During his first editions, he was “probably more interested and focused on discoveries”.

“But I was trying to think what the real difference can be between us and the other sections of the Cannes Film Festival,” he tells The Film Verdict. “If you look at the Fortnight’s history, it’s also about eclecticism, diversity and being able to host and welcome filmmakers from different generations and genres.”

The key to his work, he says, is in reflecting on the “perpetual adaptation to the ecosystem of festivals and trying to surprise” an audience which comprises both professionals and the ticket-buying public. Unlike the official selection, the Fortnight sells tickets for its screenings – and this offers executives a glimpse of how people react to the films. During his tenure, he worked with the Chantal Akerman Foundation in ushering in a People’s Choice award; he also kickstarted year-long tours of Fortnight entries across France and the world.

His desire to engage with the audience fed into his embrace of animation films: the Fortnight screened only one animation feature in 2024 and in 2025, but there are three this year (plus another three shorts). Beyond that, Rejl is also keen to emphasize the Fortnight’s lineup contains both first-timers and old-timers – a move that demands some dexterity.

The Film Verdict: Why would you want animation films to have more of a presence at the Fortnight?

Julien Rejl: With the development of new technologies, with the arrival of AI, with new ways of making animation and also the fact that it becomes easier and easier to make animation today… for instance, a film like Flow two years ago was made on open source software by the director, and he was able to do it by himself without a big team.

And I also have the intuition, it’s not really based on statistics or whatever, that among arthouse exhibitors, there is still this misunderstanding that animation is [just] for children or for younger audience. And I’ve seen many films in my youth, or when I travel to some festivals, and I see that animation could be so much more than that. I do have the deep conviction that when the audience will change their mind, there will be some kind of revolution in arthouse cinema. So I do have this conviction that our mission is to be able to help this movement to happen.

TFV: So how do Sebastien Laudenbach’s Viva Carmen and Kohei Kadowaki’s We Are Aliens fit into what you just said about the reinvention of animation cinema?

Rejl: There’s even a third film you didn’t mention, the one by Quentin Dupieux [Vertiginous]! These three films are very, very different from each other. We Are Aliens is a first feature film, so I was very happy to be able to discover new talent from animation. I was completely amazed by this film, that the film is built mainly on impressionist images rather than a real narrative; it was perfectly what I was looking for… The drawings in We Are Aliens, the landscape, the city and the light are so realistic that to me it’s like it creates emotions that a camera wouldn’t be able to do for a lot of filmmakers. This film incarnates perfectly what we need to discover in the Fortnight.

Sebastien’s film is very different because, first, it’s someone that we know from his previous work. It’s a film that wants to address [issues about] families, and a director who wants to address a large audience. But with the objective of being able to reach maybe a wider audience, Sebastien’s style, in terms of colors and shadows, the fact that you see the pencil almost on the screen, in everything you see into the image, it was like fireworks. So to pick this film was to say, look, you can also make a film that is a little less “arthouse”, a little less niche, and could open to a bigger audience. And at the same time, it’s 200% personal.

TFV: And then there is, as you said, Quentin Dupieux’s Vertiginous, but he’s a much more established filmmaker who started out in the Fortnight…

Rejl: Yes, the film with Jean Dujardin [Deerskin, 2011].

TFV: There’s quite a few returnees this year as well. Quentin, of course, and there’s Lisandro Alonso, and Alain Cavalier.

Rejl: The Directors’ Fortnight has always been considered as a home for filmmakers. It’s not just a launching platform; it’s a place for cinephiles. There are some long-term friendships with filmmakers who are strong voices of contemporary cinema who need to come back home once in a while.

Like Vertiginous, you know, I haven’t heard about the film until I saw it. And when I did, I found it very funny and very surprising. I phoned Quentin and I said, “How did you do that?” And he said, “It’s a film I made in three weeks. I was giving a master class at a school. The students know how to make motion captures, so we decided to make a film. I directed it like I was doing a normal movie, but with this 3D motion capture which was completely new for me. It was like an experiment.” And as this is an experiment I’m very proud of putting it into the Fortnight, and it makes sense.

The same for Lisandro. He made a film with Viggo Mortensen [Jauja, after the Argentinean director’s string of films at the Fortnight], then he made Eureka, and I think he was not so happy with [the experience at] Cannes Premiere a few years ago. So when he made [Double Freedom], he thinks, well, “This is my kind of movies, the boldest side of my work. This is why I was also selected in Fortnight in the past, I think this movie fits your program better than the other one.” When we watched the film, we found it fantastic, actually – so to me, it’s normal that we also welcome back these great filmmakers. Because the most beautiful thing of the Fortnight is to be able to see during the same day We Are Aliens and, in the next screening, Alain Cavalier’s film, without any hierarchy.

TFV: How about Bruno Dumont’s Red Rocks and the masterclass? It’s a late announcement, and a film which differs greatly from his films in recent years.

Rejl: First of all, I would say that I do have a great connection and a real love for Bruno’s work. I come from the north of France, so this is a film that’s very special to me because it talks about my roots. A few years ago, I was a little disappointed by The Empire… I think maybe it was time for Bruno to embark on a new departure with his films. We saw his film very late, and it was hardly finished, coming from the post-production lab. I already had many French films into the selection. I also had Alain Cavalier, who is a big name, and Quentin Dupieux; we need to find the right balance between the established filmmakers and new ones.

So with Bruno’s film, it was like, okay, what can I do? I love him and I think it’s important to be able to welcome him back to the Fortnight when he tried to do something new. Bruno has already been at the Fortnight many times, lots of people are waiting to see him in [the official] competition and not here. So what does it mean to have a selection in Fortnight today? And when I had the idea of a special screening with a real masterclass to talk about his filmmaking, how it evolved, and why he’s making a film with a very low budget today, in the north of France with international partners… so when I called him and I said, “I think the best spot for your film in Cannes is a special screening followed by a long conversation on stage to explain how do you make films today and why you changed.” And he said, “Okay, I think you’re right. This is the right spot for it.”

TFV: Radu Jude’s presence also surprised us, because of his well known loathing of festival glitz and glamor. So how did you manage to convince Radu to come to Cannes with Diary of a Chambermaid?

Rejl: Radu was never selected in the Fortnight, or in Critics’ Week, or in the official selection for a feature film. So I was expecting also the right film to invite him to Cannes. It wasn’t so difficult to convince him because, as you know, Radu is very much a cinephile and I think he loves the Fortnight. When I talked to him the first time about the editing of the film, we right away started talking about Rivette and the filmmakers we loved. It was a cinephile’s discussion, and at the end of it, it was obvious Radu would say yes.

TFV: Female directors are also quite prominent in the selection this year.

Rejl: Well, first, I would say that, honestly, we didn’t talk about whether a film was made by a man or a woman in the selection process. When we see that we have lots of women’s film on the shortlist, we are very happy they are present and they make very interesting films. But it’s not something we are aiming to find – just to be precise about that.

For instance, when you see Sarah Arnold’s [Too Many Beasts], it was a completely unexpected film. We were very happy to find a parodic detective story, which doesn’t quite exist anymore in French cinema today, and then especially in festivals like Cannes – people would expect we take a more serious film or social drama rather than this kind of funny film. And we immediately liked the way she was playing with codes within the genre.

It’s Clio Barnard’s third time at the Fortnight. [I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning] is an adaptation of a novel and it’s British cinema in all its splendour, like when they succeeded in make strong social dramas with very good characters and very good actors, and the fact that you feel the landscape, you feel the reality of the region she’s shooting. So again, when you saw the film, you don’t think, this is a female subjectivity or a female gaze. She’s just making a very strong film about these characters, because she cares. No matter the “gaze” behind the film, they’re just making strong films. And this is pure cinema.

The interview was edited and condensed for clarity. –ed.