Gus Van Sant gets Cannes slot for Restless

Gus Van Sant’s teen drama Restless will open the parallel Un Certain Regard section of this year’s Cannes film festival on May 12, organisers said.

Starring Henry Hopper, son of the late Dennis Hopper, as “a funeral-crashing dropout with a ghost friend”, in the words of one of his character’s antagonists, Restless is among 20-odd films in the special category. Restless was supposed to unspool at Sundance, but was yanked from the line-up a few weeks before the start of the mid-winter US film festival, reportedly because Mr Van Sant felt it needed more work. Something of a regular at Cannes, Mr Van Sant, 58, won the Palme d’Or in 2003 for Elephant and collected the festival’s 60th anniversary prize in 2007 for Paranoid Park. His first Cannes nomination was To Die For in 1995.

This year’s official Cannes selection is to be announced in Paris on Thursday.