While I usually avoid making lists of awards-worthy films, rules are meant to be broken and this year it was something definitely worth doing.
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Clockwise from top left, Bong Joon-ho, Guillermo del Toro, Jodie Foster, Jafar Panahi, Kleber Mendonça Filho, Tahar Rahim, Laurence Fishburne and Nadine Labaki
Marrakech IFF announces personalities for stellar conversations, including Bong Joon-ho, Guilermo del Toro & Nadine Labaki
The Marrakech International Film Festival (MIFF) which this year will run from November 28th to December 6th, 2025, has announced its highly anticipated line up for their Conversation Program.
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Marrakech FF announces stellar line up, including world premiere of Meryem Benm'Barek's highly anticipated 'Behind the Palm Trees'
The festival will kick off with ‘Dead Man's Wire’, Gus Van Sant's dark and jubilant comedy and close with Annemarie Jacir’s Palestinian submission to the Oscars ‘Palestine 36’, with loads of wondrous films screening in between.
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Upcoming French Film Festival London at Ciné Lumière announces fantastic line-up
And don’t be surprised to find Jafar Panahi’s latest among the films, as that is the official entry to the International Feature Film Oscar race for France. Vive la France, I say!
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A still from Annemarie Jacir’s ‘Palestine 36’ courtesy of Philistine Films
Chloe Zhao's 'Hamnet', two Linklater titles and a Screen Talk with the elusive Daniel Day-Lewis at this year's BFI London Film Fest
The festival will open with Rian Johnson’s ‘Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery’ and close with Julia Jackman’s 100 Nights of Hero’. In between, masterpieces of cinema will rule over Old Foggy for nearly two weeks.
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Jafar Panahi, after his Palme d’Or win for It Was Just an Accident
Jafar Panahi & 'The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo' take Cannes top prizes -- in Competition and Un Certain Regard
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.
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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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A still from Iran’s submission to the Oscars, ‘Sun Children’ by Majid Majidi
Doha's Ajyal Film Festival: Erasing some of the common borders of the Middle East, for a youth centric audience
I’ve long been a fan of everything that the Doha Film Institute has to offer. Their Qumra event is a phenomenal way to witness how filmmakers go about constructing their films, from pre-production to grants and securing funding to finish their projects. For a culture journalist, it’s a valuable way to experience, quite literally, how cinema is made.
But personally, the event that remains near and dear to my heart is always the Ajyal Film Festival.
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Actress Behnaz Jafari with filmmaker Jafar Panahi in a still from '3 Faces'
The last of the Cannes Diaries 2018: When all else fails, you can find me at the movies
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Actually, this edition of the Festival de Cannes turned out to be a missed opportunity, for media and juries alike to truly take charge of the #TimesUp movement and make of it a lasting course instead of a passing trend. Yes, there were stairs filled with women in pretty dresses, there were hotlines that we could call if we felt threatened or harassed, but ultimately the big prizes went to the big boys. As they have for every edition of the festival, except once, in 1993 when Jane Campion made history as the first and only woman to win the Palme d’Or.
Yet personally, I loved Cannes more than ever this year. I had a soft place to fall, in the form of a wonderful group of friends I spent my free time with, eating dinners we cooked together and drinking our morning coffee back at our cozy apartment with one breathtaking view. I mean, just look at the Disney fireworks for 'SOLO: A Star Wars Story' display from our terrace!
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