Cannes 2018 Spotlights Lives of People on the Margins of Society

Egyptian director A.B.

Shawky’s feature debut, “Yomeddine,” didn’t win any prizes at Cannes last Saturday, but in its own profoundly empathetic way, the film might be considered the face of the festival’s 71st edition — one that looked thin on paper, got off to a clunky start but ultimately delivered strong, powerful stories of people living on the margins.

For the lead role, Shawky cast Rady Gamal, a nonprofessional actor badly disfigured by a long-ago case of leprosy, who breaks audiences’ hearts at one point when his character, attacked by strangers who view him as some kind of contagious monster, cries out, “I am a human being!”Those words, reminiscent of “The Elephant Man,” might just as well have been uttered by Marcello Fonte, who won the best actor prize from the Cate Blanchett-led jury for his role in Matteo Garrone’s “Dogman” — practically the definition of an underdog as a disrespected,

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