In addition to the typical big-name high profile movie fare that usually debuts at the Cannes Film Festival, Sean Penn, this year’s Cannes Jury President, has handpicked an unlikely documentary to also make its debut this week.
“The Third Wave” a film by Australian-born director Alison Thompson was created out of footage Thompson and other volunteers took while doing relief work in Sri Lanka after the 2004 tsunami disaster. One of the reasons this film seems an unlikely choice for the high-brow festival is that Thompson is a Christian who has found an effusive supporter in Penn.

Penn is calling this movie a “must-see” for everyone and “inspires the very best in us.” Certainly Thompson’s quiet, positive, socially-aware view of Christianity may have a better shot of finding acceptance over such other Cannes fare as “Atheists Will Burn in Hell.”
Penn and Thompson will continue to work together as Penn is also involved in her next project “The Dirty Hands Caravan,” a documentary about a trip Penn took in a bio-fuel bus to New Orleans.