Cannes Festival 2012: the young director Isabell Šuba has a short film in the competition. A good reason to celebrate; however, when she arrives things aren’t what she expected. Šuba’s chauvinist and incompetent producer clearly has very different expectations as to the festival’s function. He takes every opportunity to make sexist remarks and lesbian jokes that only serve to reveal his medieval ideas about gender.
Interviews end in disaster and opportunities to pitch a new project are frantically sought. The smouldering conflict between director and producer escalates when the two must present a project together. Isabell in the film is actually played by actor Anne Haug, her producer played by actor Matthias Weidenhöfer and Šuba herself plays an Arte editor. And of course there are the non-fiction cameos by festival goers and journalists. Her film is a disturbing snapshot of the festival industry.
Šuba’s previous work CHICA XX MUJER dealt with how young women in Venezuela navigate the price of beauty in a country where cosmetic surgery is on the rise. With this film, she was invited to the 2012 Cannes Film Festival and immediately decided to take the opportunity to shoot her first feature-length film. She handed over her identity to actress Anne Haug who “performed” Šuba at all the official and unofficial festival events. Since not one female director had a film in the 2012 competition, Šuba correctly points to the gender politics of the festival and industry as a whole in her guerrilla-style shoot. The film is a welcome intervention into the film festival politics that is worth seeing.

Sebastian Markt