The Saatchi & Saatchi New Directors' Showcase in Cannes is always a hot ticket, as much for its showmanship as the films shown. This year was no exception, as the agency teamed up with Warp Records to present a live light show extravaganza starring Jamie Lidell...

The theme for this year's show was 'Hello Future', a concept devised by Saatchi & Saatchi's senior creative team Jonathan Santana and Xander Smith. The production was a firmly collaborative affair, with Santana and Smith working with independent producer Juliette Larthe to create a theatrical opening to the show, featuring graphics by artist Mark Titchner and projected visuals by Aaron Meyers that responded to the movements of Lidell. Marshmallow Laser Feast also contributed, providing the titles and graphics for the 'voice of the future'. A video of the opening is shown below.

The showcase itself contained film works by 17 directors. While all are relatively new to the ad industry (the official criteria for entry in the showcase being that their first film for advertising purposes was made after June 2009), for regular readers of the CR blog many should be familiar. Others are downright well-known: Daniel Wolfe, for example, has won much acclaim for his Plan B videos, and is unlikely to be new to many. However, there were nonetheless some treats to be seen. Here are a few of my favourites:

The Daniels

Andreas Roth, Dirt Devil

Neil Dowling/Nils Clauss

Andrew Ruhemann/Shaun Tan

Lernert & Sander

The General Assembly (eagle-eyed viewers will spot these last two from previous appearances on the CR blog, but both are too good to miss off)

The show also included the winner of the Saatchi & Saatchi and Vimeo music video competition, which invited young filmmakers to created a new promo for Moby, based on the Hello Future theme. The entrants could pick one of three tracks from Moby's new album, Destroyed, to set their video to. The winner was Alberto Gomez, who will be offered the chance to work on "a project in a key office in the Saatchi & Saatchi global network". His film is shown below.

The full list of films in the 2011 Saatchi & Saatchi showcase can be viewed online at youtube.com/nds.

The credits for the showcase event in Cannes are as follows:

Concept: Jonathan Santana and Xander Smith, Saatchi & Saatchi
Producer: Juliette Larthe
Video designers: Marshmallow Laser Feast
Performance software creation: Aaron Meyers
Performance artist: Jamie Lidell
Voice and sound artist: Clark
Graphics art director: Mark Titchner
Set designer: Gary Card
Animators: Andrew Osborne, Raffael Ziegler

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