"Mad Max Fury Road" shines on day 2 of Festival de Cannes

The main competition was officially opened as the 68th Festival de Cannes entered its second day on Thursday.

Italian director Matteo Garrone's Il Racconto Dei Racconti (Tale of Tales) was the curtain raiser for the main competition followed by the Japanese movie Umimachi Diary directed by Kore-Eda Hirokazu. However, the spotlight of the day seemed to be all on Australian director George Miller's Mad Max Fury Road.

Miller, an Oscar-winning director, took the audience by storm Thursday with the latest installment of his Mad Max franchise shown at the Out of Competition section of the ongoing 68th Festival de Cannes (Cannes Film Festival).

Haunted by his turbulent past, Mad Max believes the best way to survive is to wander alone. Nevertheless, he becomes swept up with a group fleeing across the Wasteland in a War Rig driven by an elite Imperator, Furiosa, played by Oscar winner Charlize Theron.

With his movie described as an "intimate" and "pro-feminist" movie, Miller said: "Initially, there was never a feminist agenda, it was just the story."

"The story needed a warrior. But it couldn't be a man, because a man taking five wives from another man is an entirely different story. So then we created Furiosa, and everything grew out of that, " said Miller.

Theron, who risks everything to save five women in the movie, said: "Women are just as complex and interesting as men. He (George Miller) was really interested in discovering all of that, through just his need and want for the truth."

As the Max in the fourth installment of the Mad Max franchise, British actor Tom Hardy took the relay of Mel Gibson, who played the leading role Max in the first three Mad Max movies.

He said he felt "a little bit crestfallen" at the beginning, because "Mad Max is synonymous with Mel Gibson and there is a group of people who love Mel as Max, so if it's not Mel as Max."

"You have to pay respect to the legacy of Mel Gibson, and Mel was synonymous as Max," said the new Max Tom Hardy, during a press conference earlier Thursday afternoon.

Miller created Mad Max in 1979, then continued to make it into a franchise with Mad Max 2 and Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome in 1985. His animated movie Happy Feet won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature in 2007.

As for the main competition, Italian director Matteo Garrone's latest film Il Racconto Dei Racconti (Tale of Tales) opened the official competition of the ongoing 68th Festival de Cannes (Cannes Film Festival).

The film of three neighboring kingdoms is inspired by the stories of the 17th century Italian fairy-tale author Giambattista Basile, whose fables inspired many fables, including the story of Cinderella.

This time, Garrone decided to shoot the film entirely in English with an international crew, including Mexican actress Salma Hayek, French actor Vincent Cassel, British actor Toby Jones and the Oscar winner, French music composer Alexendre Desplat.

Asked about why the movie was filmed in English instead of Italian, Garrone said felt a link between Basile, an Italian 17th century author, with Shakespeare.

"I thought English would be the best language, and also a way of giving Basile an international spotlight," explained Garrone, who shot the film in Italy to feel closer to his root and culture.

For the Mexican actress Salma Hayek, who plays the role of a queen who was obsessed with the wish for a child, the movie was very special, because "even though it is a fairy-tale and fable, but it (story) doesn't go where fairy-tales and fables usually go, it goes in a very special place and in a unique way."

She described the working process with the genius Italian director as "being a color in a brush that kept transforming and transforming until the artist said Ok."

Garrone, a Cannes regular, won the Grand Prize of the festival in 2008 and 2012, respectively with Gomorrah and Reality.

The second film in competition screened on Thursday was the Japanese movie Umimachi Diary directed by Kore-Eda Hirokazu.

The movie is how three sisters bounded with their teenage half- sister after their father died.

The 68th Festival de Cannes runs from May 13 to 24. All the winners of the prizes, including the top prize Palme d'Or will be announced at the closing ceremony on may 24.