Cannes International Film Festival

Subterms

    More stories

    • 113 Shares37 Views

      in Movies

      Cannes Film Festival: More From India Than Just Bollywood

      by

      This year’s edition of the annual film festival features a prominent presence of Indian stories and storytellers that celebrates the country’s independent cinema.For the first time in 30 years at the Cannes Film Festival, an Indian film will compete for the Palme d’Or in the main competition, alongside new movies from Francis Ford Coppola, Yorgos Lanthimos and Andrea Arnold.The dry spell might come as a surprise for a country with film industries in multiple regions producing hundreds of films per year, including international sensations like last year’s Oscar-nominated “RRR.”But the inclusion of “All We Imagine as Light,” directed by Payal Kapadia, reflects a growing recognition of the independent cinema made in the shadow of the country’s mainstream hits.Thierry Frémaux, the artistic director of Cannes, noted the new generations of filmmakers in India when he announced the lineup in April. These movies offer what the critic Namrata Joshi calls “a young, probing, and provoking gaze at Indian reality.” Indian publications have celebrated the country’s prominent presence at the festival, whose inaugural edition in 1946 included a film from India, Chetan Anand’s “Neecha Nagar,” in its grand prize category.“All We Imagine as Light” joins a generally notable selection of Indian stories and storytellers across this year’s edition, which begins on Tuesday. Santosh Sivan will be the first Indian filmmaker to receive the Pierre Angénieux prize for career achievement in cinematography, and in the Un Certain Regard competition, Sandhya Suri’s “Santosh” follows a widow who takes on her husband’s policeman post.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 125 Shares62 Views

      in Movies

      Laurent Cantet, Whose Films Explored France’s Undersides, Dies at 63

      by

      His acclaimed “The Class” walked a provocative line between documentary and fiction. In that film and others, he explored the inescapable traps of late-stage capitalism.Laurent Cantet, an eminent director who made penetrating films about the prickly undersides of French life and society, died on April 25 in Paris. He was 63.His screenwriter and editor, Robin Campillo, said he died of cancer in a hospital.Mr. Cantet’s best-known film was “Entre les Murs” (“The Class”), which won the Palme d’Or, the Cannes Film Festival’s top prize, in 2008 and was nominated for an Oscar as best foreign-language film. “The Class” was something new in French filmmaking: an extended snapshot of the inside of a schoolroom in a working-class district of Paris, using a real-life ex-teacher and real-life schoolchildren and treading a provocative line between documentary and fiction.That ambiguity infuses the film with a rare tension, as a hapless language teacher struggles with his largely immigrant students, trying (with difficulty) to gain their acceptance of the strict rules of the French language, and French identity. In this frank chronicle of classroom life, the students, many of them from Africa, the Caribbean and Asia — bright, sometimes provocative — have the upper hand.Along the way, Mr. Cantet surgically exposes the fault lines in France’s faltering attempts at integration, showing exactly where the country’s rigid model is often impervious to the experience of its non-native citizens. Reviewing “The Class” in The New York Times, Manohla Dargis called it “artful, intelligent” and “urgently necessary.”The film touched a nerve in France, selling more than a million tickets. Right-leaning intellectuals like Alain Finkielkraut denounced it for devaluing classical French culture — unwittingly underscoring Mr. Cantet’s point.Mr. Cantet was invited to the Élysée Palace to discuss the film with President Nicolas Sarkozy. He declined the invitation. “I’m not going to speak about diversity with someone who invented the Ministry of National Identity,” Mr. Cantet said at the time, referring to one of Mr. Sarkozy’s more ill-fated initiatives.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in Movies

      Cannes Festival Unveils 2024 Lineup, Including a Francis Ford Coppola Film

      by

      Organizers on Thursday announced a lineup that also features new films from Yorgos Lanthimos, David Cronenberg and Paul Schrader.Movies directed by Francis Ford Coppola, David Cronenberg and Yorgos Lanthimos will compete for the Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, the event’s organizers announced in a news conference on Thursday.New films by Jacques Audiard, Paul Schrader and Andrea Arnold will also appear in competition at this year’s event, the festival’s 77th edition, which opens May 14 and runs through May 25.The most eagerly anticipated film on the lineup is likely to be Coppola’s “Megalopolis” — the director’s first movie in over 10 years.During Thursday’s news conference, Thierry Frémaux, Cannes’s artistic director, revealed little about that movie’s plot, but Coppola, the director of “The Godfather” trilogy and “Apocalypse Now,” has been talking about his desire to make it for decades. In 2001, Coppola told the The New York Times that “Megalopolis” was “about the future” and “a guy who wants to build a utopian society in the middle of Manhattan.”Coppola, 85, has already won the Palme d’Or twice: in 1974 for “The Conversation,” and, in 1979, for “Apocalypse Now” (a prize that was shared with Volker Schlöndorff’s “The Tin Drum”).The Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos will present “Kinds of Kindness,” starring Emma Stone and Willem Dafoe, who also worked together on Lanthimos’s most recent release, “Poor Things.” David Cronenberg, the Canadian horror movie director, will premiere “The Shrouds,” about a widower who builds a machine to connect with the dead.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 150 Shares139 Views

      in Movies

      Paolo Taviani, Half of a Famed Italian Filmmaking Duo, Dies at 92

      by

      He and his brother Vittorio made films, including “Padre Padrone,” that mixed neorealism with a lyrical, almost magical sense of storytelling.Paolo Taviani, who with his brother Vittorio made some of Italy’s most acclaimed films of the last half century — including “Padre Padrone,” which won the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 1977 — died on Feb. 29 in Rome. He was 92.His son, Ermanno Taviani, said the cause of his death, in a hospital, was pulmonary edema.The Taviani brothers emerged in the late 1950s as part of a generation of Italian filmmakers — including Bernardo Bertolucci, Pier Paolo Pasolini and Gillo Pontecorvo — who were inspired by the country’s Neorealist movement but determined to push beyond it. (Vittorio Taviani died in 2018.)Though the brothers came from an urbane, intellectual family — their father was a lawyer, their mother a teacher — their work celebrated traditional life in the Italian countryside, where they were raised. “Padre Padrone,” for example, tells the story of a boy’s struggle between the demands of his overbearing father, who wants him to be a farmer, and his own dreams of becoming a linguist.The Taviani brothers’ “Padre Padrone” won the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 1977.Radiotelevisione Italiana, via Everett CollectionThey injected their films with a sense of spectacle that set them apart from the austerity of Neorealist predecessors like their idol, Roberto Rossellini, who in turn championed their work and, as the president of the Cannes jury in 1977, helped ensure that “Padre Padrone” won the festival’s coveted Palme D’or prize. It was a surprise victory in a field that included another Italian film, “A Special Day.”“Rossellini allowed us to understand our own experiences, to truly comprehend what we had lived,” Paolo Taviani told The International Herald Tribune in 1993. “To comprehend it in a way which would have been impossible had we not seen his films. And we felt that if film had this sort of power, we wanted to master film.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in Movies

      Greta Gerwig, ‘Barbie’ Director, to Head Cannes Film Festival Jury

      by

      The director and writer behind “Barbie,” “Little Women” and “Lady Bird” will help pick the winner of next year’s Palme d’Or, the festival’s main prize.This year’s Cannes Film Festival didn’t host the biggest movie of the year — “Barbie” — but the film’s director and co-writer, Greta Gerwig, will have a significant role at next year’s event.Cannes’s organizers announced on Thursday that Gerwig will lead the jury at the 77th edition of the glitzy festival, scheduled to run from May 14-25, a role in which she will help decide the winner of the Palme d’Or, the festival’s top prize.Gerwig will be the first-ever female American director to take the role. And at 40, she will be the second youngest person to be jury president, following Sophia Loren, the Italian actress, who was 31 when she chaired the jury in 1966.Thierry Frémaux, the festival’s artistic director, and Iris Knobloch, its president, called Gerwig the “obvious choice” for the role. The director, writer and actress, they added in a joint statement, “audaciously embodies the renewal of world cinema” and “is also the representative of an era that is breaking down barriers and mixing genres, and thereby elevating the values of intelligence and humanism.”Gerwig, who is also known for movies including “Frances Ha” (which she co-wrote and starred in), “Lady Bird” and “Little Women” (which she both wrote and directed) said in the news release announcing her appointment that she was “stunned and thrilled and humbled” to have been named the jury president.“As a cinephile, Cannes has always been the pinnacle of what the universal language of movies can be,” Gerwig added: “I cannot wait to see what journeys are in store for all of us.”The lineup for next year’s festival is scheduled to be announced in April. More

    • 113 Shares179 Views

      in Movies

      ‘The Storms of Jeremy Thomas’ Review: A Transgressive Producer

      by

      Thomas’s dedication to pushing the envelope of big-screen entertainment is the focus of Mark Cousins’s latest documentary.If you’re familiar with a certain streak of transgressive independent cinema, you’re likely familiar with the films of the producer Jeremy Thomas, even if you don’t know his name: Jonathan Glazer’s “Sexy Beast,” Bernardo Bertolucci’s “The Last Emperor,” Nagisa Oshima’s “Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence” with David Bowie, and several works byDavid Cronenberg and Nicolas Roeg, including Cronenberg’s controversial adaptation of J.G. Ballard’s 1973 novel “Crash.”Thomas is, by all accounts, a filmmaker’s producer, and his dedication to pushing the envelope of big-screen entertainment is the focus of Mark Cousins’s latest documentary, “The Storms of Jeremy Thomas.”Cousins, the man behind the behemoth documentary series on the history of cinema, “The Story of Film,: An Odyssey,” seems more than determined to make Thomas into a household name.Presented as a road movie, “The Storms of Jeremy Thomas” follows the two men as they wind their way through France toward the Cannes Film Festival, where Thomas is promoting his latest project, Takashi Miike’s 2019 crime thriller “First Love.” Cousins presents the audio of his interviews with Thomas over footage of their travels — in subject-focused chapters titled “Sex,” “Politics,” and the like — edited together with clips from the films Thomas has produced and a plethora of other cinematic references and influences.The whole effort comes across more as an advertisement for Thomas’s genius — and Cousins’s obsession with him — than a true portrait of a discerning producer of outsider cinema. Even Tilda Swinton, a star of the Thomas-produced Jim Jarmusch film “Only Lovers Left Alive,” can only offer platitudes, characterizing Thomas as a “storm” within the industry.You may come away from “The Storms of Jeremy Thomas” thinking of him as a fascinating man, but perhaps not as the cinematic prince that Cousins insists on crowning him.The Storms of Jeremy ThomasNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 34 minutes. In theaters. More

    • 138 Shares129 Views

      in Movies

      Best Cannes Red Carpet Looks: Scarlett Johansson, Lily-Rose Depp and More

      by

      The film festival, which took place over almost two weeks, brought lots of fashion to the French Riviera.There has been a lot of head-turning fashion on the French Riviera lately. Though some of it was spotted on guests at the Monaco Grand Prix (hello Bad Bunny in torso-hugging Jean Paul Gaultier), much of it came from the Cannes Film Festival, which ended on Saturday.As one might expect from a pack of A-list celebrities attending a star-studded festival in a particularly glamorous location, there were lots of gowns and tuxedos. But in contrast to the Oscars or other awards ceremonies, there were many daytime events at Cannes, which gave many festival attendees repeated chances to dress up and take style risks — some of which were more successful than others.There were a lot of outfits that caught our attention during the almost two-week festival, including Jennifer Lawrence’s red Dior gown and flip-flops (most comfortable!); Naomi Campbell’s Valentino dress and flowing pink feathered cape (most ethereal!); and the nearly identical tan linen blazers that David Zaslav, a media executive, and Graydon Carter, an editor, wore as co-hosts of a party for the Warner Bros. movie studio (most coordinated!).But the 20 looks on this list stood out more than most. Some were unexpected, while others were flawless. All, importantly, drew strong opinions.Cool blue.Mohammed Badra/EPA, via ShutterstockHelen Mirren: Most Blue Crush!To match her cornflower-blue Del Core gown (and her nails), the actress wore blue streaks in her wavy silver hair, the colors of which recalled a frothing ocean.This skirt seemed made for shimmying. via Paco RabanneElle Fanning: Most Antique Silverware!The actress’s metallic Paco Rabanne dress was suspended by what looked suspiciously like a piece of cutlery and had a skirt that looked as though it could cut someone who came too close.You can practically hear the tiger’s roar.Vittorio Zunino Celotto/Getty ImagesFan Bingbing: Most Scenic!Printed on the actress’s Christopher Bu gown was a design featuring a roaring tiger in a bamboo forest that extended onto the dress’s train.A commanding presence.Andreas Rentz/Getty ImagesViola Davis: Most Volume!A towering Afro and a colossal ostrich-feather stole punched up the actress’s otherwise simple Valentino dress.Free the shoulder! Joel C Ryan/Invision, via Associated PressTroye Sivan: Most Negative Space!The singer’s ensemble of Valentino shorts, shoulder-baring shirt and tie advanced a new definition of business casual.Ramata-Toulaye Sy, center, at a screening of her film “Banel and Adama.”Guillaume Horcajuelo/EPA, via ShutterstockRamata-Toulaye Sy: Most Power-Glam!Amid the many penguin suits at Cannes, the director’s wide-leg multicolor Chanel pantsuit was a sartorial unicorn.A look that could be described as (first) lady in red.Joel C Ryan/Invision, via Associated PressNatalie Portman: Most Jackie O.!In oversized cat-eye sunglasses and a belted Dior mini dress (and matching jacket), the actress brought a dose of the former first lady’s style to La Croisette.From left, the spicy boys José Condessa, Jason Fernández and Manu Ríos.Patricia De Melo Moreira/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesJosé Condessa, Jason Fernández and Manu Ríos: Most Triple Threat!It seemed impossible that the trio of actors in “Strange Way of Life,” a queer Western directed by Pedro Almodóvar, did not plan their three peek-a-boo Saint Laurent looks in advance.Yellow and green colors helped make the flowers pop.Pascal Le Segretain/Getty ImagesLily Gladstone: Most in Bloom!An understated hairstyle toned down the drama of the actress’s floral Valentino cape dress and three-tiered earrings by Jamie Okuma, a Native American designer.Is that the look of love in their eyes?Mike Coppola/Getty ImagesDua Lipa: Most Accesorized!The singer paired her sleek, one-shoulder Celine dress with accessories that included jewelry, tattoos and her reported boyfriend, the filmmaker Romain Gavras.The flash bulbs surely lit up at this look.Valery Hache/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesRawdah Mohamed: Most Smoldering!The model set the carpet ablaze in a Robert Wun gown covered in what appeared to be burn marks. Over her head was a tattered veil that matched the distressed dress.This dress will turn 30 before Lily-Rose Depp, center, does. Kristy Sparow/Getty ImagesLily-Rose Depp: Most Dressing-Her-Age!Or almost her age: The 24-year-old actress’s sequined Chanel mini dress is from 1994, making it a few years older than she.Not your father’s double-breasted suit.Vittorio Zunino Celotto/Getty ImagesAlton Mason: Most Snatched!Look behind the model’s gloved hands, and you will notice the hourglass silhouette of his double-breasted Balenciaga suit jacket, which was tapered sharply at the waist.Think of this dress as an upside-down exclamation point.Yara Nardi/ReutersScarlett Johansson: Most Trompe l’Oeil!With a contrasting white top and straps, the actress’s pink Prada sheath dress gave the illusion of an exposed bra.It was a nice day for a white wedding dress.Mike Coppola/Getty ImagesJennie Kim: Most ‘I Do!’The Blackpink member was a vision in white — specifically, a Chanel bridal gown made (slightly) less sweet by black tulle poking out from the bodice.A paint job would be one way to freshen up old clothes.Scott Garfitt/Invision, via Associated PressOrlando Bloom: Most Painterly!The green and blue streaks down the actor’s pale Paul Smith suit were a risk — as were the chunky soles on his matching shoes.Ilona Chernobai, left, poured a red liquid over her blue-and-yellow gown on the red carpet.Christophe Simon/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIlona Chernobai: Most On Message!As the Ukrainian influencer ascended the festival’s red-carpeted stairs wearing a blue-and-yellow gown, the colors of the Ukrainian flag, she popped balloons filled with a red liquid on her head. Those who witnessed her fashion statement included security personnel, who escorted her off the carpet soon after.She was definitely dressed for a festival. The question is: Which one?Gareth Cattermole/Getty ImagesMarion Cotillard: Most Coachella!Her twee sweater set and pink bleached jorts were textbook festival style — music festival style, that is.Stella Bugbee More

    • 113 Shares129 Views

      in Movies

      Is ‘May December’ the Most Fun Film at Cannes?

      by

      The movie stars Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore as cravenly self-interested women. Its director, Todd Haynes, is relieved that festival audiences are laughing.At the Cannes Film Festival premiere of “May December” this week, something happened in the first few minutes that put director Todd Haynes at ease. It took place at the end of the movie’s second scene, as Gracie (Julianne Moore) gets ready for a family barbecue that will be attended by Elizabeth (Natalie Portman), a famous actress who is preparing to play Gracie in a film.As Gracie crosses her kitchen and opens her fridge, Haynes zooms in on Moore and plays a dramatic music cue. The viewer is on high alert: Something significant is about to happen! Instead, Moore announces mildly, to no one in particular, “I don’t think we have enough hot dogs.” And the Cannes audience burst out laughing.That’s exactly the reaction Haynes was hoping for. Though plenty of viewers will read “May December” in a straightforward way, the subject matter is so juicy that Haynes more than welcomes a playful interpretation.“I was encouraged that the audience felt permission to enjoy the film,” he told me over coffee, “and appreciate it at the same time.”Haynes may be understating things: “May December” is the most fun movie that’s played at Cannes this year, a well-reviewed entertainment that fest-goers have been quoting nonstop since its premiere. There is a whiff of tabloid scandal at its core, since Gracie is loosely based on Mary Kay Letourneau, the teacher convicted in 1997 of raping her sixth-grade student Vili Fualaau, whose baby she gave birth to in jail and whom she later married. Gracie and her husband, Joe (Charles Melton), have a similar back story, but when Elizabeth travels to their Savannah, Ga., home to shadow them for a week, they present her with a picture-perfect image of long-married domestic bliss.Still, the strength of their union is predicated on never truly revisiting its origin, and as Elizabeth pokes, prods and asks invasive questions, theirs is a marriage under siege. Gracie will do whatever she has to in order to keep her family together, but Elizabeth is just as determined to crack her facade, and as both women face off in a series of electric encounters, the self-interest that motivates them is often so craven that you can’t help but laugh.“As we were cutting it, it felt funnier than I really knew even reading or shooting the movie,” Haynes said. “We didn’t play it for laughs — it just has a sardonic wit about it.”“I was encouraged that the audience felt permission to enjoy the film,” Todd Haynes said of “May December.”Gonzalo Fuentes/ReutersDoes Haynes agree with the critics who’ve called the film campy? “That was never, ever a term I applied to the script or style of shooting,” he said, though he understood why writers might be tempted to use the word: “‘Camp’ is maybe a too catchall term these days for an excited state of reading things, where you’re encouraged to read something against itself at times. And that’s exactly what I hoped would happen, especially with a sense of pleasure involved, and amusement.”In the festival’s biggest bidding war, Netflix prevailed with an $11 million price that should presage a major awards campaign for Portman, who makes Elizabeth’s fully committed insincerity so compelling.“She was so invigorated and excited — like mischievously so — to play with the expectations that people would bring to the movie,” Haynes said. “At first you think Elizabeth will be our comfortable way in to this sordid back story, and then you start to really re-examine who she is and feel that she is not a reliable narrator.”The film could also be an awards breakout moment for Melton, whose Joe comes to the fore in the final act as he movingly scrutinizes the life path he was locked into as the boy at the center of a tabloid scandal. “We were so lucky to find him for this,” Haynes said of the actor, previously best known for “Riverdale.” (Between Melton and the “Elvis” star Austin Butler — last year’s Croisette breakout — the CW-to-Cannes pipeline has become a real thing.)Haynes has been juggling his duties on “May December” with a career retrospective in Paris that has highlighted films like “Carol,” “Far From Heaven” and “Safe” (the latter two also starring Moore), and he has welcomed each as a distraction from the other. “One has to filter it a bit just to survive it all, and it’s heady looking back at my whole creative life and history,” he said. “I would be in pools of tears otherwise.”The retrospective will soon end with a screening of “May December,” and that feels fitting: This is the most mainstream film Haynes has yet made, but it’s still packed with thematic layers, and Haynes welcomes any interpretation you’ve got, be it serious or funny.“If there’s a thinking process that runs parallel to watching the movie, that’s superb,” he said. More