Cannes Directors’ Fortnight Unveils 2024 Line-Up: U.S. Directors Tyler Taormina, Carson Lund, Ryan J. Sloan & India Donaldson Make Cut

Cannes parallel section Directors’ Fortnight has unveiled the line-up for its 56th edition running from May 15 to 23.

The section, launched in 1969 and overseen by the French Directors Guild, will present 21 feature films and 10 short films.

This selection is the second line-up for Delegate General Julien Rejl, who took up the role last year.

The section will open with with late director Sophie Fillières’ final feature This Life of Mine, starring Agnès Jaoui as a woman whose sense of self starts to unravel as she turns 55.

Fillières died shortly after completing the shoot and her children have dedicated themselves to finishing post-production.

French director Jean-Christophe Meurisse’s dark comedy Plastic Guns will close the selection.

Inspired by a true story, the mistaken identity tale follows the case of Frenchman who is arrested by police in the belief that he is a man wanted for the murder of wife and children.

This year’s line-up features a quartet of films by emerging U.S. directors: Tyler Taormina’s Christmas Eve In Miller’s Point, Carson Lund’s Eephus, India Donaldson’s Good One and Ryan J. Sloan’s Gazer.

Christmas Eve In Miller’s Point is the third feature from Taormina, after Happer’s Comet and Ham on Rye. Written by Taormina, Eric Berger and Kevin Anton, it follows four generations of the Balsano family as they gather for what may be the last Christmas in the family home. Read more details here.

The cast stars Michael Cera (Life & Beth), Elsie Fisher (Barry), Maria Dizzia (The Good Nurse), Francesca Scorsese (We Are Who We Are), Ben Shenkman (Billions), Gregg Turkington (Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania), Sawyer Spielberg (Masters of the Air) and newcomer Matilda Fleming.

Eephus, revolving around the final game of a small-town baseball team, is the feature directorial debut of Lund, who also takes a cinematography credit on Christmas Eve In Miller’s Point.

India Donaldson’s Good One, about a 17 year-old on a weekend backpacking trip in the Catskills contending with the competing egos of her father and his oldest friend, world premiered in Sundance earlier this year, where she spoke to the Deadline Studio. Watch her interview here.

Sloan’s Gazer is also a first film. Set on the outskirts of Newark, New Jersey, the paranoia thriller stars Ariella Mastroianni as a young mother with a rare degenerative brain condition called dyschronometria.  

Unable to find steady work with her condition, she desperately takes a job from a mysterious woman with a dark past.

Established directors in the mix include French filmmaker Patricia Mazuy’s Visiting Hours (La Prisonnière De bordeaux) starring Isabelle Huppert and Hafsia Herzi as women who bond while visiting their husbands in prison.

Directors’ Fortnight 2024 Line-Up