From left: Rithy Panh, Akuol de Mabior, Mo Amer, Annemarie Jacir and Bao Nguyen
Along with Akuol de Mabior and Bao Nguyen, the group of five esteemed filmmakers will receive production grants to work on individual short films which will world premiere at the 2027 Rotterdam Film Festival.
Read More
It is unusually quiet here in Cannes, although everyone is expecting it to get rowdy and noisy later tonight, when a “high octane midnight screening” event of the original ‘The Fast and the Furious’ is slated to take place. But for me, this first day on the ground has been all about a soulful Mexican film, ‘Ashes’ by Diego Luna. Yes, that Diego Luna!
Read More
The choice to feature Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis as ‘Thelma & Louise’ on the official poster of the upcoming 79th edition of the Festival de Cannes seems baffling. Until you dig deeper…
Read More
Asghar Farhadi directing Isabelle Huppert on the set of ‘Parallel Tales’ which will world premiere in Cannes
Festival director Thierry Frémaux and festival president Iris Knobloch announced the majority of the titles earlier today, from the Pathe Palace in Paris and there are some surprises, mostly from the films left out, so far.
Read More
Jafar Panahi, after his Palme d’Or win for It Was Just an Accident
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 More
The kind of beautiful women attending this year’s Festival de Cannes, as photographed at the Kering Women in Motion Awards dinner
Never before did I notice such a gender divide and so much incredibly superfluous mansplaining as I did this year on the Croisette.
Read More
Don’t be fooled by the official images, those trains are no longer allowed on the red carpet in Cannes
Well, I’m almost there, writing this on the flight, but the trials and tribulations have already started. And the controversies too.
Read More
Laetitia Ky in a still from Erige Sehiri’s ‘Promised Sky’
You have to love Spike Lee for crashing Thierry Frémaux’s insiders party at the line-up press conference… via social media of course!
Read More
‘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.
Read More
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.
Read More
Golden Globes and Academy Awards nominee Jeffrey Wright visit the lounge in 2023
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.
Read More
Poster by Takeshi Kitano, titled, appropriately by the Japanese actor, writer, comedian, painter and director “Takeshi”
And there are some must-watch films in there which cannot be missed.
Read More
Emma Stone and Joe Alwyn in ‘Kinds of Kindness’, photo by Atsushi Nishijima, courtesy of Searchlight Pictures
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!
Read More
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
And these aren’t for the faint hearted, you’ll see.
Read More
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’.
Read More
A still from ‘Mornings in Jenin’, a series project participating in this year’s Qumra event
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.
Read More
An empty red carpet means anticipation. No red carpet means defeat.
I wrote a letter to the Festival de Cannes. I asked it to help save cinema by not going online.
Read More
A still from ‘Family Romance, Llc’ by Werner Herzog
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.
Read More
Alain Delon, photo courtesy of the Festival de Cannes
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.
Read More
La Pointe courte © 1994 Agnès Varda and her children - Montage and design : Flore Maquin
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.
Read More