A 20th feature has just rounded off the selection (see the article and the interview with artistic director Julien Rejl) of the 58th edition of the parallel Directors’ Fortnight (which will unspool from 13-23 May as an integral part of the 79th Cannes Film Festival): Red Rocks by France’s Bruno Dumont.

This is Dumont’s 12th fiction feature film, following, among others, four movies that were selected in competition at Cannes (the 1999 and 2006 Grand Prize winners L’humanité and Flanders, Slack Bay in 2016 and France in 2021), two at Berlin (Camille Claudel 1915 in 2013 and Jury Prize winner The Empire in 2024) and one at Venice (Twentynine Palms in 2003). This will be the director’s fourth time partaking in the Fortnight, after The Life of Jesus in 1997, Li’l Quinquin in 2014 and Jeannette, the Childhood of Joan of Arc in 2017.

The screenplay is set on the Côte d’Azur, where two gangs of children engage in their favourite game: jumping from the red rocks in the Mediterranean. Over the course of one summer, Géo, who has just turned five years old, discovers a world where friendship rubs shoulders with rivalry, and where the first flutters of the heart become a source of tension.

Standing out among the cast are Kaylon Lancel, Kelsie Verdeilles, Louise Podolski, Mohamed Coly, Alessandro Piquera and Meryl Pires.

Red Rocks, which is being produced by Portugal’s Rosa Filmes, and co-produced by France’s Luxbox (which is in charge of the international sales) and Tessalit, Italy’s Nightswim, Spain’s Andergraun Films , Mexico’s Sula Films and USA's Pulpa Films, and will be distributed in France by Les Films du Losange.