The prolific, and outspoken actress and producer will head the jury which will award the Étoile d’Or to one of the fourteen films by first- or second-time directors in the festival’s international competition.
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Claes Bang in a still from 'The Square' directed by Ruben Östlund
Claes Bang on doing sex scenes, working on the Oscar-nominated 'The Square' and the one word that defines him
I meet Danish actor Claes Bang at the Dubai International Film Festival, at the height of the sexual harassment tidal wave of scandals that has engulfed the entertainment industry since early October 2017. Major Hollywood players keep falling around us, left and right and in fact, not even a week after my interview with Bang, another filmmaker whose film is featured at the festival, Morgan Spurlock, comes out with his own confession of wrongdoings, on Twitter.
Yet Bang seems unaffected by the hoopla, his soave behavior unchanged as he gazes deep into my eyes and with an almost unrelenting stare. He also sits quite close to me and doesn't care about crossing into my personal space often, during our interview. I don't mind one bit, it's actually refreshing to talk without reservations about sex with a spellbinding man I'll probably never meet again. I won't even have to go out with him, or have to sit through a glass of wine together, while I struggle to keep quiet and "let the man talk" -- as my BFF has often admonished me -- while sitting on my hands to avoid moving them around too much.
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Photo courtesy of the Venice International Film Festival
"That feeling, to say NO!" -- Three Questions with Penelope Cruz
This coming March, Cruz will receive an honorary prize from France’s Academy of Arts and Techniques of Cinema during the 43nd Cesar Awards ceremony, the country's equivalent to the Oscars. And she deserves that and more, in my book. So here are three questions with a woman who represents the spirit of "duende" that je-ne-sais-quoi only genuine Spanish women possess.
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