At a festival where everyone was told to avoid political statements, the juries made their views loud and clear by choosing films to award with their activists caps on.
Read MoreJafar Panahi, after his Palme d’Or win for It Was Just an Accident
The kind of beautiful women attending this year’s Festival de Cannes, as photographed at the Kering Women in Motion Awards dinner
The difference between us: Another Cannes Film Festival dispatch
Never before did I notice such a gender divide and so much incredibly superfluous mansplaining as I did this year on the Croisette.
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Don’t be fooled by the official images, those trains are no longer allowed on the red carpet in Cannes
Oops they did it again: a first dispatch from Cannes
Well, I’m almost there, writing this on the flight, but the trials and tribulations have already started. And the controversies too.
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Laetitia Ky in a still from Erige Sehiri’s ‘Promised Sky’
Cannes Line-Up announcement 2025: Wondrous women filmmakers, returning favorites and a Spike Lee joint
You have to love Spike Lee for crashing Thierry Frémaux’s insiders party at the line-up press conference… via social media of course!
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Oscar-winning director Michel Hazanavicius at Ciné Lumière in London to present his latest
‘The Most Precious of Cargoes’ is the French-born director’s foray into animation and features the narration of legendary actor Jean-Louis Trintignant in what would turn out to be his last role.
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The Cannes Diaries: Opening day and setting up the theme of the festival
Every once in a while, I get asked what I’ll do when AI takes over my work. Thank goodness French filmmaker Quentin Dupieux has given me plenty of ammunition to squash that line of inquiry once and for all.
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Golden Globes and Academy Awards nominee Jeffrey Wright visit the lounge in 2023
The DPA Gift Suite returns to the Croisette and it's a must-visit
For those lucky enough to be VIPs and on Nathalie Dubois’ list, a stop by the Marriott is a yearly event we anticipate with bated breath.
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Poster by Takeshi Kitano, titled, appropriately by the Japanese actor, writer, comedian, painter and director “Takeshi”
Cannes' Quinzaine and Semaine announce line ups
And there are some must-watch films in there which cannot be missed.
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Emma Stone and Joe Alwyn in ‘Kinds of Kindness’, photo by Atsushi Nishijima, courtesy of Searchlight Pictures
This year's Festival de Cannes line up is announced
And it features the latest works from Yorgos Lanthimos, Karim Aïnouz, Ali Abbasi, David Cronenberg, Paolo Sorrentino and Francis Ford Coppola, to name a few — phew!
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Anya Taylor-Joy as Furiosa in Warner Bros. Pictures’ and Village Roadshow Pictures’ action adventure “FURIOSA: A MAD MAX SAGA,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures
The Festival de Cannes makes first announcements
And these aren’t for the faint hearted, you’ll see.
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Marrakech Atlas Workshops announces 25 projects participating in upcoming 6th edition
The films — hailing from 11 countries with 11 helmed by women filmmakers — include the highly anticipated ‘Motherhood’ by Meryam Joobeur, Tunisian filmmaker Ala Eddine Slim’s next project, and Erige Sehiri’s follow up to her critically acclaimed ‘Under the Fig Trees’.
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A still from ‘Mornings in Jenin’, a series project participating in this year’s Qumra event
The Doha Film Institute's Qumra 2021 goes global with its virtual edition
For film insiders the Qumra event — held once a year in Doha, Qatar and bringing together industry experts and filmmakers from all over the world — was always a highly anticipated time to put on our calendars. But in the age of pandemic, where we need all the inspiration we can get to simply continue onward, Qumra has become a lifeline.
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An empty red carpet means anticipation. No red carpet means defeat.
Requiem for a Festival: Letter to a Cannes FF that might never happen
I wrote a letter to the Festival de Cannes. I asked it to help save cinema by not going online.
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A still from ‘Family Romance, Llc’ by Werner Herzog
The Cannes 2019 Diaries: Wondrous Werner Herzog, 'Papicha' is my new heroine and the life surreal of a film journo
In ‘Family Romance, Llc’ Werner Herzog finds a new way to work through the difficulties life throws our way — outsource them to an agency specializing in family connections. He does it with his usual flair for our human ridiculousness and making the impossible seem real. During the junket following the screening, I loved listening to my esteemed colleagues’ confused explanations of stories they thought they’d seen like this one in documentaries, or even completely convinced this was a reality film, instead of fiction. And Herzog himself quite perfectly, calmly and smoothly shooting down each and all of their perplexed ideas.
‘Family Romance, Llc’ was a Special Screening at this year’s Festival de Cannes.
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Alain Delon, photo courtesy of the Festival de Cannes
Cannes Film Festival announces Competition, Un Certain Regard titles and an honorary Palme d'or to Alain Delon
As a young girl, I remember watching anything that had Alain Delon in it. I had a super crush on him and, lucky me, no film of his was deemed inappropriate by my parents. So along with Luchino Visconti’s ‘The Leopard’ and ‘Rocco and his Brothers’, I also caught Delon in films like ‘The Swimming Pool’, ‘Zorro’ and yes, even ‘The Concorde… Airport ‘79’. In fact, from the latter I required that a friend of the family who knew how to knit make me a royal blue crew neck wool sweater that looked just like his. I would find you a photo but I would have to watch that entire film all over again and well, I’ve moved on from my pre-pubescent crush. And my taste in film has highly improved.
But Alain Delon remains the fascinating man, the sultry sex symbol that could even steal women away from Mick Jagger. And this year’s he’s the Festival de Cannes honorary Palme d’Or recipient. Kudos to the festival for finally getting the reclusive actor to accept their coveted lifetime award.
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La Pointe courte © 1994 Agnès Varda and her children - Montage and design : Flore Maquin
The Cannes Film Festival unveils its poster which pays tribute to the late, great Agnès Varda
As I learned at this year’s Qumra, held by the Doha Film Institute, the grand dame of French New Wave cinema Agnès Varda was all about finding the stories, the viewpoints that no one else would bother with. The Festival de Cannes, in its poster just unveiled for the 72nd edition of the festival, pays homage to La Varda but also to her indomitable spirit by showing the filmmaker on her first cinematic venture perched high up on a platform, atop the shoulders of a crew technician. She’s is looking to capture that image, that viewpoint which no one else would have even thought about. She is Varda, in all her perfectly humble and adventurous attitude. The same Varda who asked me, to my utter disbelief, if I’d liked her “little film” a few years ago in Cannes.
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Bill Murray and Adam Driver in a still from ‘The Dead Don’t Die’
This year's Cannes Film Festival opens with Jim Jarmusch's zombie extravaganza 'The Dead Don't Die'
I tweeted about this beauty a couple of weeks ago and stand by my word. I’m typically not a zombie kinda girl but utter Jim Jarmusch’s name and I can’t watch it fast enough. So the buzz was deafening around ‘The Dead Don’t Die’ from the time the first images of the film were released, building up to a cacophony of joy when the trailer was first shown. And don’t even get me started on Adam Driver. I mean, the man is taller than Bill Murray, which is saying a lot, and all the handsome of a young Keanu Reeves, plus acting talents to boot.
Then, this morning Cannes announced it will open its 72nd edition of the festival with the Jarmusch film, in Competition no less. On Tuesday May 14th, on the screen of the Grand Théâtre Lumière, the film by the American director and screenwriter will be this year’s first Palme d'Or competition screening.
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The Qumra Diaries: Discovering Agnès Varda in the land of cinema
It is obvious from the moment one steps on a Qatar Airways aircraft that cinema is important in Doha. I mean, just going through the entertainment system on my particular flight, I found ‘Rebecca’ by Hitchcock, Barry Jenkins’ hauntingly touching and all too true ‘If Beale Street Could Talk’, Paul Dano’s intimate portrayal of a family struggling to remain a single nucleus ‘Wildlife’ and even the 2019 Best Picture Oscar winner ‘Green Book’.
Qatar knows good cinema and nowhere is that better understood than in the welcoming arms of the Doha Film Institute.
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Adriano Tardiolo in a still from Alice Rohrwacher's 'Happy as Lazzaro'
The Cannes Diaries 2018: The inimitable Adriano Tardiolo in Alice Rohrwacher's 'Happy as Lazzaro'
In the midst of the screening of Alice Rohrwacher's latest 'Happy as Lazzaro' ('Lazzaro Felice') I was overcome by a nearly unbearable sense of pride at being Italian. It's something I've come across one or two times before and I believe it is due to this new wave of fellow compatriot filmmakers who have brought back the idea of magic to Italian cinema.
As I sobbed in my seat, I realized that all the inspiration that lacked in our movies from about the late Seventies to now, has surged powerfully into a movement that has infiltrating the old status quo and created a brand new tsunami of talent in the process. And that simply takes my breath away.
When I sat with Rohrwacher a day later, she admitted that while in the past there existed a competition between Italian filmmakers as to who would be named the best one, now there is a stronger sense of community among the younger talents and that has made for better cinema.
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Victor Polster in a still from Lukas Dhont's 'Girl'
The Cannes Diaries 2018: Lukas Dhont brings to Cannes his perfect 'Girl'
At the center of filmmaker Lukas Dhont's groundbreaking first feature 'Girl' -- screening at this year's Festival de Cannes in Un Certain Regard -- is a teenager who wants to be a ballerina. Complex, as all teenagers typically are, beautiful, painfully honest and exquisitely feminine, the only twist here is that Lara was born a boy. And it's obvious from her very first moments on the screen that having that part of the body which separates the boys from the girls is something utterly unbearable for Lara.
But instead of creating conflict around this beauty, be it coming from her family, friends and the world at large, Dhont brings us instead into a world where a girl born into a boy's body who begins treatment to transition to her true self when we first meet her, has all the support she could ever hope for. And yet, her own passions, her self discipline, her sense of displacement inside the body fate dealt her at birth create enough strife, hold-your-breath moments and emotions to fully charge a one hour and forty-five minutes film. And fill our dreams for days and days to come.
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