Cannes 2024: ‘Furiosa’ lands six-minute standing ovation
Almost a decade after George Miller took his film Mad Max: Fury Road to the Cannes Film Festival, the Australian filmmaker is once again being celebrated in France after the premiere of Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga.
The audience of the apocalyptic action movie reportedly went into a frenzy for Miller’s new film and gave it a six-minute standing ovation. The upcoming feature stars Anya-Taylor Joy as the titular Imperator Furiosa, with Chris Hemsworth and Tom Burke also featuring.
After the Cannes screening of Furiosa, Taylor-Joy blew kisses to the camera while Hemsworth appeared to have tears in his eyes. Miller took to the microphone briefly and told the audience, “We worked very hard on this film, and it’ll be very interesting to see what you make of it. Thank you for having us.”
Taking place prior to the events of Fury Road, Furiosa tells the origin story of the titular character, with Taylor-Joy taking on the role from Charlize Theron. In her early life, Furiosa is captured and taken prisoner by Hemsworth’s character, Warlord Dementus and his gang of bandits.
It appeared that spirits were high after the screening of Furiosa and there was a party held on the beach for the cast members, a handful of industry figures, plus Cannes jury president Greta Gerwig and Cannes president Iris Knobloch.
Taylor-Joy recently spoke of the difficulties she had in making Furiosa, in which she has barely any dialogue across a film that runs for around two and a half hours, and the actor admitted to feeling “lonely” during the production.
Speaking with The New York Times, Taylor-Joy explained, “I’ve never been more alone than making that movie. I don’t want to go too deep into it, but everything that I thought was going to be easy was hard.”
“Like I knew I was going to need the two years that it took for the movie to come out to deal with it,” the actor added, and when pressed for an answer about just what lengths she went to in making Furiosa, she batted away the question with, “Talk to me in 20 years.”
Evidently, the production of Miller’s film was difficult for some of the cast members, but looking at the reception the movie got at the Cannes Film Festival, seemingly it was worth the hardship for the end product.
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