Pixar’s ‘Inside Out’ Will Premiere at the Cannes Film Festival

I had the great fortune to see Pixar’s Up for the first time at the Cannes Film Festival, when it premiered there in 2009. Cannes is basically the best place on Earth to see a movie; the main theater at the festival has perfect projection and sound and the film’s 3D was so good my palms started sweating during the climactic setpiece because it felt like I was thousands of feet in the air. I’m not going back to Cannes this year (DAMMIT) but those in attendance will get a chance to have a similar experience when Pixar’s newest movie, Inside Out, makes its world premiere at the festival over a month before it opens in theaters.

There’s a lot on the line for Pixar with this movie. It’s the studio’s first release in almost two years, since 2013’s Monsters University. Their 2014 project, The Good Dinosaur, was delayed after its original director was fired; it’s now scheduled to open this fall. All of the delays and the generally so-so nature of Pixar’s recent output (Brave, Cars 2) has led many pundits to declare the studio’s golden age over and done with forever. Pixar needs Inside Out to be a creative and financial hit to prove the naysayers wrong.

If there’s anything amidst the turmoil that bodes well for Inside Out, which is set inside the mind of an 11-year-old girl and features the voices of Amy Poehler, Bill Hader, Lewis Black, and Mindy Kaling, it’s that the film is the first movie in six years from Pete Docter, a writer on the first two Toy Storys and the director of Monsters Inc. and Up. Clearly, they’re big fans of his at Cannes, and I can’t say I blame them.

Inside Out opens in theaters on June 19. The rest of the Cannes lineup includes films by Todd Haynes, Gus Van Sant, Denis Villeneuve, Woody Allen, and George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road.