Léa Seydoux’s ‘The Second Act’ to Open Cannes Festival

Quentin Dupieux’s Le Deuxième Acte (The Second Act), starring Léa Seydoux and Vincent Lindon, will kick off the 77th Cannes Film Festival.

The French director will world premiere his latest film out of competition on May 14, with the surreal comedy to be released in French cinemas on the same day. Dupieux and his cast will walk the red carpet at the Grand Théâtre Lumière, to help launch the film and the wider Cannes Film Festival.

Cannes organizers praised the prolific French director for having “freed himself from convention through an already extensive body of work (13 feature films in 17 years), establishing the absurd as a genre in its own right and shaking up all the others – of which The Second Act is a perfect case in point!”

The marquee French festival earlier announced Barbie director Greta Gerwig will serve as the Cannes jury president, becoming only the second female director to take over the post, following Jane Campion in 2014.

Dupieux was a French electronic artist under his Mr. Oizo moniker before he added screenwriting and directing to his resume with a series of music videos, and later quirky features like 2011’s “killer tire” movie Rubber. His oddball mystery Wrong debuted at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. 

More recently, Dupieux’s Deerskin opened the Directors’ Fortnight lineup in Cannes in 2019, and his film Smoking Causes Coughing debuted out of competition in Cannes in 2022. The French director’s Yannick, a satire about high culture, low-brow critics and the intersection between art and entertainment, also won the Europa Cinemas Label prize for best European film at the 76th Locarno Film Festival, where it premiered.

The 77th Cannes Film Festival runs May 14-25, 2024.