Cannes 2023; Mia Wasikowska’s ‘Club Zero’ marks a record for female directors at the Cannes Film Festival

Despite calling a day on her career in Hollywood, Australian actress Mia Wasikowska certainly hasn’t been resting on her laurels. Instead, the Alice In Wonderland and Only Lovers Left Alive actress will be front and centre today with the premiere of her new film, Club Zero, as the final week of Cannes Film Festival 2023 continues. Mia’s performance could also prove vital for its director, Austrian Jessica Hausner, with the film screening in competition for the vaunted Palme d’Or.

Cannes Film Festival’s synopsis of the film seems almost as enigmatic as the feature itself, writing; “a private school, somewhere, some time. The newest member of the staff, Miss Novak, proposes a novel course on nutrition. Soon, her students become devoted followers under her influence, all joined together as part of the mysterious Club Zero.”

Wasikowska’s return to cinema comes after a tell-all interview earlier this year, in which she detailed her reasons why she decided to quit Hollywood. ““I didn’t entirely like the lifestyle of going back-to-back-to-back. I felt really disconnected from any greater community,” she told the New York Post, “I was doing it since I had been 17 — well, more like 15 — but really working a lot from 17. I spent 10 to 15 years, completely like, new city, new country, every three months. And it’s like starting school again every few months. Especially when you’re younger, when you don’t have that base. I found that really hard.”

That led the actress to move back to her native Sydney to pick up smaller, independent roles including working with Jessica Hausner, who already has made a name for herself at the festival through her films Lovely Rita, selected for Un Certain Regard in 2001, 2019’s Joe (her first in competition) and her school film Inter-View received a Special Mention as part of the Cinéfondation in 1999.

What marks the film’s importance this year though is that Hausner is one of seven female directors to have films screened in competition at Cannes 2023; this marks a record number of female directors in the running for the prestigious Palme d’Or, breaking a previous record Cannes made in 2022 by including five female-directed films as part of it’s “in competition” category.

Only two females in the history of the Palme d’Or have won the illustrious prize; New Zealand director Jane Campion for The Piano in 1993 and then Julia Ducournau in 2021 for her body-horror/psychological drama Titane.

Who are the other female directors in competition at Cannes Film Festival 2023?

Jessica Hausner is joined this year by the following female directors, all vying for the Palme d’Or:

• Alice Rohrwacher - La Chimera
• Catherine Breillat - Last Summer 
• Justine Triet -  Anatomie d’une chute 
• Ramata-Toulaye Sy - Banel et Adama
• Kaouther Ben Hania - Olfa’s Daughters
• Catherine Corsini - Le Retour