Marco Bellocchio will receive the Palme d’Or at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival. Second guest of honor at the 74th edition after Jodie Foster at the opening ceremony, the Italian director will present his new feature film ‘Marx can wait’ in the Cannes Premiere section on Friday 16 July, after meeting the public the night before at the “Rendez-Vous con…”. And during the Closing Ceremony, Saturday 17 July, the Festival will award him the Palme d’Or of Honor, a tribute to his unique work that has marked contemporary cinema with strength and freedom. Marco Bellocchio will present a deeply moving and painful personal documentary in the Official Selection at Cannes. Through this film with the enigmatic title, the filmmaker tries to understand, humbly and in retrospect, the suicide of his twin brother at the age of 29. A family tragedy from which he has never truly recovered, both a source of guilt and inspiration. Mixing excerpts from his films and conversations with people close to him, he investigates this fraternal figure who never ceases to haunt his filmography After directing a cult film with his first feature film, ‘Fists in the Pocket’ (1965), who inaugurated a new era of Italian cinema by moving away from the codes of neorealism, Marco Bellocchio, still an eternal voice of dissent at the age of 81, shot ‘Salto nel Void’, which won best actor awards for Michel Piccoli Anouk Aimée in Cannes in 1980. He was subsequently regularly selected in competition at Cannes, with ‘Henry IV’ in 1984, ‘The Prince of Homburg’ in 1997, ‘The nurse’ in 1999, ‘The hour of religion – The smile of my mother ‘in 2002,’ Vincere ‘in 2009 and’ Il Traitore ‘in 2019. “Marco – says Pierre Lescure, president of the Cannes Film Festival – has always questioned institutions, traditions, personal and collective history. In each of his works, almost involuntarily, or at least in the most natural way possible, he revolutionizes the established order ”. “We are proud – adds Thierry Frémaux, General Delegate – to honor Marco Bellocchio, one of the great masters of Italian cinema with 56 years of fascinating work, as we did with his director friends Bernardo Bertolucci, Manoel de Oliveira and Agnès Varda. He is a director, an author and a poet. Awarding him the Palme d’Or of Honor is a natural thing for us and for all those who admire his work ”.