The last time we checked on Matt Damon he was in Australia, shooting Thor: Love and Thunder, and he had his family there with him for a few months while he was working. Love and Thunder wrapped a few weeks ago and now Matt’s in Cannes, seen here at the Hotel Martinez, one of the festival hotspots on the Croisette, ahead of the premiere of his new film, Stillwater. Stillwater is co-written and directed by Tom McCarthy who won Best Screenplay and Best Picture Oscars for Spotlight and whose work is consistently acclaimed both in film and television. So the expectations are high.
In Stillwater, Matt Damon plays a dad, described as an “Oklahoma redneck” whose daughter, Abigail Breslin, is in prison in Marseille for allegedly murdering her girlfriend. She says she didn’t do it. He’s trying to free her, and it’s loosely based on the Amanda Knox story. You can read more about Stillwater at Deadline, they just published a new interview with Tom McCarthy ahead of the film’s world premiere in Cannes.
As for Matt, well, given the subject matter and the fact that this is a Tom McCarthy picture, some people are already anticipating that he’ll make an award season run. Stillwater opens on July 30… which… I don’t know that this is a summer movie? Especially after the year we’ve had? Check out the trailer:
Then again, Matt has another release due out in the fall – The Last Duel, with Ben Affleck, Adam Driver, and directed by Ridley Scott. As I’ve written before, that film has always felt weird to me, especially with the medieval France costumes and whatever accents they’re going to be using. I wonder how Matt’s performances in both these projects will play off each other.
But we don’t have to get into that now. For now, Cannes is back, and the big stars are back in Cannes, and I think it might be his first time at the festival since Behind The Candelabra in 2013.
