Social conscience in a social setting

May 21, 2008 The films shown at the Festival de Cannes have always held up a mirror to the plight of people in the territories they hail from, sometimes in stark contrast to the excesses of the Croisette. The inclusion of the documentary "The End of Poverty?" in the Critics Week sidebar -- a sort of "An Inconvenient Truth" for global economics -- no doubt further pricked the consciences of those who saw it. "There's something a bit wrong about sitting in a room full of people with tuxedos watching a film about social deprivation," German director Andreas Dresen, whose "Cloud 9" unspooled in Un Certain Regard, told THR.

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