The strong voices J-P Valkeapää from Finland, Levan Akin from Sweden and Shahrbanoo Sadat from Denmark will take part in the Cannes sidebar. 

Dogs Don’t Wear Pants (Finland/Latvia) by J-P Valkeapää is the director’s third feature after The Visitor (2008) and They Have Escaped (2014), which both screened at Venice.

Written by Valkeapää based on an idea by Juhana Lumme, the film tells of Juha who has lost his wife in a drowning accident. Years after he still feels numb and unable to connect with people. Meeting Mona, a dominatrix, changes everything.

In the title roles are Pekka Strang (Tom of Finland) and Krista Kosonen (Bullets). 

“This is a very strong film both on a visual and storytelling standpoint, a true whiplash!” said the Directors’ Fortnight’s new artistic director Paolo Moretti, when announcing the selection this morning. 

The film was produced by Aleksi Bardy and Helen Vinogradov of Helsinki filmi with support from the Finnish Film Foundation. SF Studios will release it in Finland.  World sales are handled by The Yellow Affair.

At the last Baltic Event where Dogs Don’t Wear Pants picked up the Baltic Event Works in Progress Award, the jury described it as “a film with a complex story. It deftly combined dark humour with a deeply felt sense of mourning. We were particularly impressed by the beautiful cinematography and film’s production value. We feel this film has real potential for international festivals and audiences.”

And Then We Danced (Sweden/Georgia) is the latest feature by the Swedish director of Georgian origin Levan Akin, who had his breakthrough with Certain People, launched at Tribeca in 2012. He also directed the youth drama The Circle, produced by ABBA’s co-founder Benny Andersson, which screened in Berlin 2015, and several episodes of SVT’s hit series Real Humans. 

Set in the conservative Georgian dance environment, And Then We Danced is a coming of age drama about a dancer who unwillingly falls in love with a rival. Moretti described it as “a film with a strong and elegant direction.” Swedish producer Mathilde Dedye of French Quarter Film said: “It's been a very special process to follow this film all along. Levan chose to work in a different way, with a very personal and urgent story. It is therefore really fantastic to be able to present the film to the world together with the Directors’ Fortnight." And Then We Danced will be released by TriArt in Sweden. Paris-based Totem Films is in charge of world sales.

The Orphanage (Denmark, Luxembourg, France, Germany, Afghanistan) is directed by Copenhagen-based Shahrbanoo Sadat of Afghan origin, who won the top award from the Directors’ Fortnight in 2016 with her debut film Wolf and Sheep. 

Produced by her long-time collaborator Katja Adomeit of Adomeit Film in Denmark, the film is set in the late 1980s in Kabul where the Soviet-Afghan conflict increases the number of orphans. The film centres on Qodrat (15) who is sent to a Soviet orphanage in Kabul. He uses his imagination and love of Bollywood movies to escape and dream of a better future.

Moretti said: “The film is funny, entertaining and moving at the same time. A true discovery.”

Scanbox will handle the Danish release and Luxbox world sales.   

A total of 24 feature-length films are taking part in the  51^st Directors’ Fortnight in Cannes unspooling May 15-25, 2019.