By Armando

Amid the usual excitement, the 2016 Cannes Film Festival is in full swing, premiering some of the year’s biggest films. One of the more anticipated titles is Steven Spielberg’s return to family film territory, The BFG.

An adaptation of Roald Dahl‘s classic novel about a young girl who befriends a “big friendly giant,” the movie reunites Spielberg with Mark Rylance, who won an academy award for Spielberg’s 2015 movie Bridge of Spies.

“I have a lot of acquaintances over 44 years [as a filmmaker],” he told reporters at the Cannes Film Festival Saturday. “And I haven’t brought a lot of people into my life from the movies … ” Clearly Rylance is an exception.

The BFG marks the actor and director’s second collaboration, and with a third under way, the director said he’s become close with the actor. Similarly, Rylance complimented Spielberg’s commitment to storytelling, saying, “How you tell a story — Steven’s constantly always thinking about that. So, you feel very confident as an actor that what you’re doing is going to be placed into a well-told story.”

So far, the collaboration is another success. The Telegraph UK call Rylance “as good a fit for the film as Spielberg: his BFG could almost be the distant ancestor of his indelible forest-dwelling troublemaker Johnny “Rooster” Byron in the Jez Butterworth play Jerusalem.”

The BFG comes to theaters July 1, 2016. Also stars Ruby Barnhill as the impulsively kidnapped orphan Sophie who befriends the title giant.