“For me, the reason to make a film about the past is to say something about the present,” filmmaker Lukas Dhont said this morning during the press conference for his Cannes Competition title Coward.
Directed by Dhont from a screenplay he wrote with Angelo Tijssens, Coward is set at the height of the First World War and follows Pierre, a soldier newly arrived at the front, who is eager to prove himself. Behind the lines, he meets Francis, who decides to lift the spirits of his comrades by putting together a theatre show. While the violence continues, both men try to find ways to escape the brutality of war, even if only for a moment.
Dhont, who was in a reflective mood during today’s press conference, said that he began to shape the story for Coward after discovering a series of photos of young Belgian men enjoying each other’s company during the war.
“They had turned sandbags into skirts, and they were having fun. To me, that was the ultimate picture of resistance. It was an act of liberation,” he said.
“I grew up with the First World War. When you go to school, you learn about it and visit the trenches, but I had never seen those particular images. That’s when I realized that the memory has a kind of politics about it. There are certain images of the war that you are shown.”
Dhont continued to explain that he aimed to challenge this depiction of war and the roles young men have played in conflicts, which he said has often been reinforced by cinema.
“This genre of film, for me, has always been a genre in which men are given a very limited space to exist in, and where their value is measured on their ability to hurt and destroy and not necessarily intimately be there for one another,” he said.
“I think the most tragic part of it is that male friendship, male bonding, has too often been used as a tool to destroy.”
Coward is the first feature directed by Dhont since his breakout 2022 film Close. The film will be distributed in Benelux by Lumière and in France by Diaphana Distribution. Mubi has acquired Coward in the UK, Ireland, Germany, Austria, Italy, Spain, Turkey, Latin America, Australia, and New Zealand. Mubi also released Dhont’s Close, which was nominated for the Best International Feature Film Oscar.
Cannes ends tomorrow.
