Saatchi & Saatchi New Directors Showcase Bows in Cannes

Can it be 20 years? Really?  Seems so. The Saatchi & Saatchi New Directors Showcase debuted for the first time in 1991—before the internet, before web video, before virals, before digital, before everything that informs and bedevils the industry today.  And still this event remains one of the biggest draws at the Cannes Lions Festival each year. This year, the agency trucked out its New Directors Showcase with a few little special touches. 

Commenting on the showcase content, Richard Myers, Saatchi & Saatchi’s Creative Director for Global Culture, says, “If a theme emerges from this year’s Showcase, it’s probably the affirmation that creativity has not become a casualty of recession. There’s humour – both off the wall and more conventional.  There’s genuine visual exploration and pioneering.  And there’s no shortage of real filmmaking craft.”

To find the featured directors, Saatchi invited submissions from directors across the globe and tapped into its global worldwide.  From an initial line-up of several hundred candidates, the agency’s Worldwide Creative Board made the final selection of just 20.

To celebrate the NDS’ 20th anniversary, the agency employed new animation technology to make it appear as though the late Paul Arden, the former Saatchi London creative star turned director, was on stage with Myers to present the showcase.  Both appeared as holograms created by Musion and Square Zero.  Arden introduced the first ever New Directors’ Showcase back in 1991, when he was Executive Creative Director of Saatchi & Saatchi London.  He passed away two years ago.

Past Showcases have featured directors such as Michel Gondry, Spike Jonze, Danny Kleinman, Tarsem, Jonathan Glazer, David Cronenberg, Mark Romanek, Jason Reitman, Chris Palmer and Chris Cunningham.
 
A full list of directors who were included in this year’s NDS appears below, with their production company affiliations.  To view the work of the NDS, click here.