The Portlanders Who Made It to Cannes

The Cannes Film Festival lineup features five Portlanders. Six, if you count Ron Funches.

Festival de Cannes kicks off today with the expected headliner, Woody Allen, and the expected entourage of Allen's indie-famous film offspring.

But, peer closely down the end of your nose.

Behind Allen's Cafe Society, which stars Kirsten Stewart and Jesse Eisenberg as snobbish lovers in 1930s Hollywood. Behind Keanu Reeves's horrifying (on purpose) Neon Demon. Behind the Iggy pop doc Gimme Danger. And even behind the three female-directed films (#CannesSoCocky)…

Five Portlanders are making their international debut.

Raging Gopher Productions' Cold Sun is the newest indie flick from Portlander Isaac Medeiros. It is a comedic 1920s western in which a motherly prostitute, an ex-priest, two convicts and an aspiring movie-maker galavant through the Californian desert.

Repping Portland at the Festival are the Cold Sun actors David Anthony Velarde, who studied under Ms. Kelly Quinett Eviston of Days of Our Lives, Joseph Thomas Bailey, who started his TV career serendipitously while working as a body guard in Chicago, Brent Kublick, the Portland native who starred as Drunk Guy #1 in Wild, and the cinematography of Eric Hepperle.

While all three actors have appeared on Grimm and Leverage (and Bailey did a feature called Portlangrad) this is the first feature from any of them to get a shot at crossing the eye balls of Woody Allen. Or the eye balls of someone whose eye balls also watched Woody Allen's movie. Cold Sun had a private screening, held for distribution companies interested in buying films.

Also in attendance, kind of: Ron Funches, who Portlanders will probably always call a Portlander, even though he left for L.A. in 2012.

Funches stars in Trolls, which screens at Cannes just behind Cafe Society and debuts in Portland this November.

Ron Funches in Trolls - image from Dreamworks Entertainment Ron Funches in Trolls – image from Dreamworks Entertainment

Willamette Week

Willamette Week’s reporting has concrete impacts that change laws, force action from civic leaders, and drive compromised politicians from public office. Support WW's journalism today.