Directed by Ramin Bahrani from a screenplay by Ramin Bahrani & Amir Naderi, the drama is based on Ray Bradbury’s dystopian novel of the same name, depicting an alternate tomorrow in which media are an opiate, facts and history are rewritten, and “firemen” burn books.

Jordan portrays Montag, a young fireman who begins to question his beliefs and turns against his friend and mentor, Captain Beatty, played by Shannon. Sofia Boutella stars as Clarisse, an informant who becomes newly politicised through her interactions with Montag.

“I have always loved Ray Bradbury’s prophetic novel,” says Bahrani. “The concept is so provocative. Three years ago, I started to think about it again, because the world was frighteningly catching up to what he had envisioned. Bradbury said that we demanded, we elected, for the world to become this way. That’s different than having a totalitarian government take over. I found that to be true, because we have willingly given up our knowledge, identity, books, history, dreams, culture – everything – to tech companies, big business and politicians.”

The film follows Montag, the most popular fireman in his district, with a mandate to achieve happiness and social harmony by burning books, physical or electronic, deleting and altering history, art, photos and facts, and replacing words with simplistic emojis. “Natives”, or citizens, mainly stay home, happily interacting with screens and getting anything they need from “Yuxie,” an advanced AI personal assistant that listens to and watches them at all times. “Eels” fight to save books, knowledge and culture. When firemen catch them, they punish Eels in public burnings, which are broadcast to the city on giant building-screens; the Eels’ digital identities and histories are wiped clean and they are banished to Talay City, a poor slum with very little technology.

Captain Beatty (Michael Shannon) is Montag’s mentor and friend, and the head of the regional fireman brigade. He is grooming Montag to take his place, but Beatty also harbours a secret: a desire for knowledge and books, exactly what he trains Montag to burn. Beatty manages to ride a fine line of contradiction to survive within the Ministry. He finds himself losing control of Montag, his prized student, who is haunted by dreams and increasingly questioning his beliefs. Interacting with Clarisse (Sofia Boutella), an Eel-turned-informant, Montag is drawn to forbidden knowledge. The turning point comes when an old woman burns herself alive, in front of Montag, for her books. Now, Montag must know why.

His first step: steal a book. Next: find Clarisse to explain it to him.

Through Clarisse, Montag connects with rebel Eels who are preserving books by memorising one author’s work and “becoming” that novel. They have developed OMNIS, a way to store all of humanity’s art, history and literature in a microscopic strand of DNA – an advanced form of a technology that exists today. The Eels need Montag to use his status as a fireman to protect OMNIS.

Conflicted and suspicious Beatty realizes that Montag has aligned himself with Clarisse, betraying him and the Ministry. Beatty confronts Montag, resulting in a series of fiery standoffs in which Beatty tries to bring his apprentice and only friend back into the fold. But Montag can’t be saved. He has a goal: save the OMNIS. Mentor and apprentice will have to face the inevitable tragedy that neither friend wants: One of them will have to be destroyed.

“This is a good time for “Fahrenheit 451” to come out, because it seems like we are drifting away from pure information as a society. Everything now is more oriented to opinion and propaganda, and the technology that’s available is allowing us to create a dangerous non-reality,” Shannon says.

“For my character Beatty, it’s not even important whether something is a lie or the truth. That’s an antiquated notion, and that’s something we’re seeing in our culture today. But my own personal mantra is ‘pay attention’ – we think we’re getting all the information and facts, but often you can’t rely on the validity of what you’re reading or seeing these days.”

Says Michael B. Jordan of his character, “He’s the golden boy, you know? And with that type of pressure on him, there’s also a pressure to continue down that path – not to go back, not to turn left, not to make any mistakes. I think the message of the film and the book is very important today, when our freedom of choice and freedom of speech – our rights as human beings – are being tested. Don’t always do what you’re told. Do what you feel is right. That’s something my character Montag learns as he starts to question what the Ministry taught him and slowly but surely begins to think for himself. Know that you have freedom of choice. Don’t rely on someone else to tell you what is true or what your reality is.”

Everybody Knows

Iranian master Asghar Farhadi kicks off the festival with a psychological thriller about a family reunion going awry, featuring Spanish stars Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem. While Farhadi, 45, won an Oscar and the Golden Bear at Berlin for his 2011 breakthrough film, “A Separation”, he is yet to take home the coveted Cannes prize.

BlacKkKlansman

US director and activist Spike Lee’s drama is based on the real-life story of an African-American police officer who infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan in 1978. John David Washington plays him with Adam Driver as his Jewish police partner. The film will open in the US on the first anniversary of a white supremacist march in Charlottesville where an anti-racism activist was killed.

Under the Silver Lake

Four years after giving Cannes audiences nightmares with his thriller “It Follows”, David Robert Mitchell returns with another spine-chiller, this time about the mysterious murder of a billionaire.

Dogman

Italian director Matteo “Gomorra” Garrone’s new work is not for the faint-hearted. Dubbed an “urban Western”, the film is inspired by the gruesome murder by dog groomer and cocaine addict Pietro De Negri in the late 1980s.

Three Faces

Little is known about this portrait of three women by the Iranian dissident Jafar Panahi, who is banned from travel by Tehran. The festival and US director Oliver Stone have pleaded with the authorities to let the director, who has faced years of harassment and arrest, fly to Cannes to show his film.

Leto

Russia’s Kirill Serebrennikov is another director who may not be able to present his work at Cannes. Under house arrest over highly disputed allegations of embezzlement, his film focuses on Soviet rock star Viktor Tsoi and the birth of Russian underground music in the 1980s.

At War

As France grapples with rail strikes and student protests, French director Stephane Brize’s gritty drama about factory workers battling to keep their jobs may hit a timely nerve.

Cold War

Amazon Studios is pinning its hopes on this tender black-and-white period romance set among the members of a touring folk group in the Eastern Bloc in the 1950s from Oscar-winning Polish-British director Pawel Pawlikowski.

The Image Book

Cinema’s oldest and most enigmatic rebel, French-Swiss legend Jean-Luc Godard, has let little slip about his new film other than this enigmatic synopsis: “Nothing but silence, nothing but a revolutionary song, a story in five chapters like the five fingers of a hand.”

Girls of the Sun

Kurdish women fighters battling the Islamic State are at the centre of French actor-director Eva Husson’s new film. Iranian star Golshifteh Farahani plays Bahar, the leader of the Yazidi Sun Brigade, who hunts down the extremists who had earlier captured her.

The Wild Pear Tree

Turkish auteur Nuri Bilge Ceylan, who won the Palme d’Or four years ago for “Winter Sleep”, is back with another Anatolian talkie, this time about a young provincial writer raging at his father.

Ayka

Kazakh Sergey Dvortsevoy — who won many fans and prizes for his 2009 debut “Tulpan” — was a late entry with his new docu-drama about a young homeless single mother adrift in the post-Soviet Central Asian state.

Capernaum

Lebanese actress-turned-film-maker Nadine Labaki’s third film is set in a Middle Eastern town. Her previous film “Where Do We Go Now?” premiered at Cannes in the Un Certain Regard section in 2010.

Burning

South Korean auteur Lee Chang-dong’s new mystery drama is drawn from a short story by Japanese master Haruki Murakami, “Barn Burning”, about a writer who becomes fascinated by a woman whose boyfriend burns barns. His first film in eight years, the cult director of “Oasis” and “Secret Sunshine” has an almost fanatical following.

Knife + Heart

French singer and actress Vanessa Paradis stars in the latest tale from Yann Gonzalez, who had a hit on the festival circuit with his quirky orgy drama, “You And The Night”, with Beatrice Dalle and former footballer Eric Cantona.

Asako 1 & 2

In this Japanese drama by Ryusuke Hamaguchi, a young woman meets her first love in Osaka. When he disappears without a trace, she moves on — until his perfect double shows up two years later.

Shoplifters

Japanese master Hirokazu Kore-Eda, a longtime sweetheart of the Cannes jury, returns with a tale of a family of small-time crooks who take in a child they find on the street.

Yomeddine

A Coptic leper and his orphaned apprentice leave the confines of their colony for the first time and embark on a journey across Egypt to search for what is left of their families.

Happy as Lazzaro

Rising star Italian director Alice Rohrwacher, already a prize winner at Cannes, is back with a time-travelling story which takes in the fascist 1930s.

Sorry Angel

The new film by Christophe Honore, the man behind the charming French musical “Love Songs”, is a gay love story when the AIDS epidemic was at its height.

Ash is Purest White

Chinese director Jia Zhangke’s new film is a story of “violent love” between a mobster and a dancer starring Zhao Tao and Liao Fan. It is a follow-up to his “Mountains May Depart”, which also competed for the Palme d’Or in 2015.

With the industry still reeling from the Harvey Weinstein scandal, and Cannes under fire for its dearth of women directors, Cate Blanchett and Kristen Stewart are likely to join actresses and women directors Saturday in a protest in support of the #MeToo and Time’s Up movements.

The new “Star Wars” spin-off, “Solo”, is the only Hollywood blockbuster in a slightly less starry line-up than usual.

But with no less than a dozen films with LGBT themes, and others tackling child abuse, male prostitution and an eye-watering DIY sex change, it has all the makings of a vintage year for scandal and controversy.

A new documentary about the tragic singer Whitney Houston by Oscar winner Kevin Macdonald reportedly includes a devastating revelation about the demons that dogged her short life.

“Black Panther” director Ryan Coogler — whose film is breaking box office records — is also likely to tackle the lack of black faces in Hollywood in a Cannes masterclass.

– Lesbian film banned –

With Monty Python’s Terry Gilliam fighting in the French courts to have his disaster-plagued “The Man Who Killed Don Quixote” shown, the first Kenyan movie to be selected for the world’s top festival has already been banned in its homeland for daring to depict a lesbian romance.

Despite a plea by US director Oliver Stone, Tehran has refused to lift a travel ban on Iranian master Jafar Panahi, whose “Three Faces” is in the running for the top Palme d’Or prize.

The dissident director made it clandestinely after being banned from making films for 20 years for his activism after the “stolen election” of 2009.

Appeals to bail Russia’s Kirill Serebrennikov, under house arrest in Moscow on embezzlement charges his supporters claim are political, have also fallen on deaf ears.

Festival director Thierry Fremaux told reporters Monday that it was ironic that both Iran and Russia should be “punishing the directors when neither film is political”.

Serious doubts also hang over whether Gilliam’s Pythonesque movie will be allowed to close the festival after it became embroiled in a bitter legal battle over who owns the rights.

Judges in Paris will decide Wednesday whether the film, which Gilliam has laboured on for nearly two decades, can be shown.

– ‘Problem with women’ –

But it is Cannes’ “dismal” record on female directors, and Saturday’s red carpet protest led by A-list stars, which may generate the most political heat.

Long before Weinstein had been accused of attacking four women at the festival, Cannes had been under fire for a “problem with women”.

Women have been stopped on the red carpet in previous years for not wearing high heels, and its dress code has been condemned as sexist.

But the Weinstein scandal has given its critics further ammunition, with screenwriter Kate Muir of Women and Hollywood lacerating the festival as “a two-week celebration of male brains and female beauty”.

The fact that only three out of 21 directors in the running for the top prize are women — the same number as last year — has also rankled.

While admitting that Cannes “will never be the same again” after the Weinstein scandal, Fremaux said he was against quotas.

Instead he put Hollywood star Blanchett — one of the first to call out Weinstein — at the head a majority-female jury alongside another of Weinstein’s victims, French “Bond” actress Lea Seydoux.

But Fremaux’s surprise decision to lift the festival’s seven-year ban on Danish director Lars von Trier has stoked feminist ire.

The ageing provocateur has been accused of sexual harassment by the singer Bjork, and his production company has been hit by multiple similar claims.

Von Trier sparked outrage during a 2011 Cannes press conference by saying that he was a Nazi who understood Hitler and sympathised “with him a little bit”.

But Michel Hazanavicius, the Oscar-winning director of “The Artist”, who is on the festival’s board, insisted von Trier was joking, while Fremaux said Monday that the Dane was not an anti-Semite.

Pointedly, however, he has not risked giving von Trier a press conference this time for his new serial killer flick, “The House That Jack Built” with Uma Thurman and Matt Dillon.

Hazanavicius said the veteran Swiss-French director Jean-Luc Godard, whose latest film is also at Cannes, has also said “much worse things than Lars von Trier on this very same topic”.

But that “doesn’t mean we have to condemn them” as artists, he added.

“It’s very difficult for people to accept the idea that you can be a jerk in your personal life and a great artist.”

The three-day take by the Marvel superhero epic gave it the second-highest second weekend of all time, behind only “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.” Only five movies have hit the $100 million mark in their second weekends.

“Avengers” sees a veritable army of superheroes — including Dr. Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch), Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), Ironman (Robert Downey Jr.) and Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman) — joining forces to save the universe from powerful purple alien Thanos (Josh Brolin).

Globally, “Avengers” has hit the $1 billion mark in just 11 days — the fastest ever — and it has yet to open in China.

But with its enormous success, “Avengers” has left little oxygen for its competitors. The second-highest North American grosser, new rom-com “Overboard,” trailed in its distant wake at just $14.7 million. Anna Faris and Eugenio Derbez star in the Lionsgate remake of a 1987 movie about a struggling single mother who persuades a rich playboy with amnesia that they are married.

In third spot was Paramount’s sci-fi horror film “A Quiet Place,” at $7.8 million. The near-wordless production stars actor-director John Krasinski and his real-life wife Emily Blunt as a couple silently struggling to protect their family from blind aliens that track their prey by sound.

STX comedy “I Feel Pretty,” starring Amy Schumer as a self-conscious woman who suffers a head injury and then sees herself as ravishingly beautiful, was fourth at $5.1 million.

And in fifth was “Rampage,” from Warner Bros., at $4.6 million. The film follows Dwayne Johnson as a primatologist who befriends an albino gorilla, which grows to enormous size after a rogue experiment before teaming up with Johnson against invading monsters.

Rounding out the top 10 were:

“Tully” ($3.28 million)

“Black Panther” ($3.25 million)

“Truth or Dare” ($1.89 million)

“Super Troopers 2” ($1.87 million)

“Bad Samaritan” ($1.76 million)

Classifying “Busted”, the first South Korean variety show created by Netflix, is hard.

“Busted! I Know Who You Are”, to give it its full name, is billed as a reality variety show but, assuming the first two episodes were not a fluke and the series will carry on in the same vein, it seems to blend drama, reality television and variety show all in one sitting. What is certain though is that the K-wave is washing over global audiences through the streaming platform. From the movie “Okja” to Korean dramas and even one stand-up comedy show, “Busted!” is already the most-anticipated series for fans of Korean entertainment.

“Busted!” is a mystery variety show that follows seven celebrities playing bumbling detectives who are charged with solving fictional crimes that involve hunting down stolen treasure or getting to the bottom of mysterious events. The programme’s star-studded cast is made up of K-variety veterans, namely Yoo Jae-suk, Lee Kwang-soo and Kim Jong- min, serious actors Ahn Jae-wook and Park Min-young and K-pop stars Sehun of Exo and Sejeong of Gugudan. The show also features guest appearances by other well-known |individuals who help complete the story in each episode.

And while the plots are provided, there’s no script, just plenty of chuckles. There are 10 episodes in the season, with two airing every week and the first shown last Friday.

To prepare the series Netflix teamed up with producers Cho Hyo-jin and Kim Joo-hyung of Company SangSang, all of whom have a successful track record in the K-variety scene having on put on such popular shows as “Running Man” and “X-Man in Korea”.

“Busted” will air in more than 190 countries and territories, reaching virtually all 117 million Netflix members around the world.

Like K-pop, movies and TV dramas, the K-variety show has proved popular with overseas viewers who enjoy watching celebrities, generally emcees, comedians, actors, K-pop stars and entertainers, perform in loosely scripted reality shows. Part of the popularity stems from the cast coming up with some entertaining improvisations to win the game, often revealing a side of themselves not known to the audience.

“Busted!” has all those ingredients but adds another layer, adding drama to the plot, using a regular cast and enhancing the show with different guests for every episode.

“At first, we weren’t really thinking about how to turn this into a global project. Our intention was to make it fun and entertaining,” says the producer Cho Hyo-jin.

“Creating a variety show that included reality and drama aspects was our initial focus and that led to the mysteries. Now we are hoping it will appeal as much to a global audience as the domestic one. I hope we have a great result and I am looking forward to it. Netflix gives us freedom without any language and cultural barriers,” he adds.

Leading emcee Yoo, who has fronted such smash hits as “Running Man”, “Infinite Challenge” and “Happy Together”, says he’s enjoyed being part of “Busted!”

“It’s my first time going international and I’m thrilled. I love trying something new and different. “Running Man” has a huge audience and I’m grateful for that. On the flip side it’s also a bit of a worry as “Busted!” will be watched all over the world. We don’t know how is will do but expectations are high.”

Both Yoo and Lee Kwang-soo of “Running Man” are already popular with international fans of K-variety shows. Lee, nicknamed Giraffe in reference to his height, is a born comic and keeps viewers giggling throughout the shows with his unexpected responses.

Veteran actor Ahn and actress Park are complete rookies to the variety show experience

“From my perspective, it wasn’t really much of a burden but more whether I would be able to fit in. But it worked out well and I was more confident by the end of the second episode. The team has a special layout system and that’s where you have to work your hardest. The ambience is great and we all had a lot of fun. The younger cast members were hard working and that prompted me to work harder too,” says Ahn, who has appeared in countless movies, TV dramas and musical plays.

The 10 episodes take the intrepid detectives across Korea from Seoul to Jeju Island and further afield as they hunt for treasure, solve crimes, battle vampires and more.

Cho says proudly that it’s the biggest production in Korea with more than 100 cameras capturing all aspects all the situation and requiring more than 400 crewmembers for the pre-production of all episodes, making it stand out from the conventional working of Korean productions. Each character uses his or her real name and is not asked to assume a different character, in short playing themselves as they really are. That’s not the same for the 56 guest actors appearing throughout the entire series, who are given scripted roles and whose faces will no doubt be familiar to anyone who watches South Korean TV dramas and movies.

“It’s my first variety show too,” says actress Park. “I liked the idea of showing the audience what I’m really like as a person. It was a little nerve-wracking at first because I’m not used to working without a script. But I got used to it after a while and just went with the flow. I did tell the producer before we started that I’m not physically strong and asked him not to put me in physically challenging positions. Of course, he did exactly that! And I complained.”

Park adds that she never thought about how she would act in her detective role. “I didn’t want to act but maybe one of the benefits of being an actress is I could get accustomed and adjust to the situation a little bit faster. It’s my first programme and it’s given me confidence. And maybe if I’m offered another variety programme, I’ll take it,” she adds.

The inclusion of Sehun, the young heartthrob of boy band Exo, is the magnet to attract young fans to watch the show. It’s his first variety show too but he had no problem fitting in thanks to the support of his senior colleagues.

“There’s lots to learn from them,” he says. “But if I had to pick just one thing, it would be professionalism. One mission took much longer than expected and everyone was tired. The producer said, okay, we’ll just do it quickly and get it over with but Yu said no, let’s try it again and do it this way.”

“Busted!” is also one of the few Netflix shows that doesn’t lend itself to binge watching. The streaming service will upload two new episodes weekly for five weeks, each with a new mission and each running for 100 minutes.

And that, along with the new guest stars, is what makes the show so exciting.

The three-day take by the Disney/Marvel superhero epic gave it the second-highest second weekend of all time, behind only “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.” Only five movies have hit the $100 million mark in their second weekends, according to Variety.com.

“Avengers” sees a veritable army of superheroes — including Dr. Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch), Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), Ironman (Robert Downey Jr.) and Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman) — joining forces to save the universe from powerful purple alien Thanos (Josh Brolin).

Globally, “Avengers” has hit the $1 billion mark in just 11 days — the fastest ever — and it has yet to open in China.

But with its enormous success, “Avengers” has left little oxygen for its competitors. The second-highest North American grosser, new rom-com “Overboard,” trailed in its distant wake at just $14.8 million. Anna Faris and Eugenio Derbez star in the Lionsgate remake of a 1987 movie about a struggling single mother who persuades a rich playboy with amnesia that they are married.

In third spot was Paramount’s sci-fi horror film “A Quiet Place,” at $7.6 million. The near-wordless production stars actor/director John Krasinski and his real-life wife Emily Blunt as a couple silently struggling to protect their family from blind aliens that track their prey by sound.

STX Films’ comedy “I Feel Pretty,” starring Amy Schumer as a self-conscious woman who suffers a head injury and then sees herself as ravishingly beautiful, was fourth at $4.9 million.

And in fifth was “Rampage,” from Warner Bros., at $4.6 million. The film follows Dwayne (The Rock) Johnson as a primatologist who befriends an albino gorilla, which grows to enormous size after a rogue experiment before teaming up with Johnson against invading monsters.

Rounding out the top 10 were:

“Tully” ($3.2 million)

“Black Panther” ($3.1 million)

“Truth or Dare” ($1.9 million)

“Super Troopers 2” ($1.8 million)

“Bad Samaritan” ($1.8 million)