Festival Lumière 2025: 5 events not to be missed

This Saturday begins the Lyon festival dedicated to heritage cinema which will see Michael Mann honored. Review of some of the forces present.

SUPER MANN

After Isabelle Huppert Lumière Prize 2024, it is the turn of Michael Mann to be honored with the “Nobel Prize for Cinema” (dixit Thierry Frémaux, grand organizer of the event). Mann it’s The sixth sense, Last of the Mohicans, Heat, Ali, Collateral, Miami Vice…, an esthete of film and digital. The American will give a masterclass, see his complete work screened and will be celebrated during an evening worthy of the heyday of Maritie and Gilbert Carpentier with music, guests and glitter, on Friday October 17.

WHO SOWS THE WIND…

In Lyon, the week is also punctuated by film concerts at the city Auditorium. On the program are two silent films by the Swede Victor Sjöström: The Ghost Cart (1921) and The Wind (1928). The latter is a pure disaster film at the height of the great Lillian Gish (1m66). She plays a young woman who arrives on a ranch exposed to the mercy of violent winds. She soon finds herself a prisoner of the elements in the middle of indescribable chaos and undergoes repeated assaults from suitors. The staging vibrates through every pore of its film to reflect the ambient madness. The projection promises to be grandiose.

WHO’S WOO?

This summer in the desert releases the update in 4K ofFoolproof by John Woo (1992) after years of invisibility for a dark story of rights, had the effect of a bomb. Nothing has changed: the beauty of the choreography, the lyricism of the editing, the suavity of the violence, the incandescence of the sequences in the hospital, the charismatic irony of Chow Yun-fat… In short, if Woo, once the god of action cinema, has not given only good news lately (his remake of The Killerhelp!), it is good to remember its past greatness. The Chinese master, 79 years old, will be in Lyon for a masterclass and will present, in addition Foolproof, The Killer (the 1989 original of course!) and A bullet in the head (1990).

RITT INITIATIVE

Focus on the committed American filmmaker, Martin Ritt (1914 – 1990). Annoyed by the witch hunt which will curb his desire for cinema forcing him to go back to the stage where he will meet James Dean in particular, Ritt will explode his ideals bright red in his upcoming film. Neither big nor small filmmaker, the man is still sitting on a few classics including The wildest of all (Hud, 1963), neo-western with his “muse” Paul Newman in one of his least likable roles; The spy who came in from the cold (1965) straight and paranoid adaptation of John le Carré with Richard Burton or even Norma Rae (1979) in which Sally Field causes chaos in a textile factory in a Catholic town in the South of the United States by forcing her colleagues to form a union. But if you want to get off the beaten track, head over to Man (1967) anti-racist, feverish and sensual western which leans towards the Ball of Suet de Maupassant with Newman as beautiful as the God he never ceased to be.

THE CLASSICS OF TOMORROW

Thierry Frémaux, an ace in events as well as in cinema, sees his Lyon gathering as a huge, flashy red carpet (bring in Natalie Portman, Sean Penn, Juliette Binoche, Isabelle Huppert, etc.) So that the heritage doesn’t gather too much dust, we add new additions here and there that are supposed to gleam next to the lifted charms. This year, festival-goers will be able to have a look while staying in 2025. Among the fifteen films offered in preview, we note the Frankenstein by Guillermo del Toro (Netflix product, so it’s worth discovering it in extra-large), Springsteen, Deliver to Nowhere by Scott Cooper (Frémaux being the boss’s biggest fan ever); The richest woman in the world by Thierry Klifa with Zaza in Bettencourt; Two pianos by Arnaud Desplechin with Civil, Glenn Gould style… All in all, don’t miss Arco by Ugo Bienvenu, an intoxicatingly poetic animated film with a cool voice cast: Swann Arlaud, Alma Jodorowsky, Vincent Macaigne… A colorful story where a worried present meets a future under a bell through the help of a too-curious little boy. There are robots, dinos, rainbows and a lot of cuteness.

Lyon Lumière Festival from October 11 to 19. Info: www.festival-lumiere.org