Cannes International Film Festival

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      George Miller and Anya Taylor-Joy on ‘Furiosa’

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      For George Miller, Anya Taylor-Joy and their crew, a series of natural disasters made for an arduous production.In the hardscrabble, postapocalyptic world of “Mad Max,” nothing is more precious than water and gasoline. But to actually make “Mad Max” movies requires an even rarer commodity: faith.Charlize Theron and Tom Hardy, who fought during the difficult and chaotic making of the 2015 “Mad Max: Fury Road,” later said they wished they had placed more faith in the vision of George Miller, the director. The people who greenlit “Fury Road” didn’t fully understand it, either: Warner Bros. executives flew to Namibia, the site of the filming, and demanded that Miller cease production before the movie was complete, then crafted an alternative edit in an effort to undermine Miller’s final cut.Against all odds, Miller was able to release a one-of-a-kind, Oscar-winning masterwork. Now, he has returned with “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga,” a prequel to “Fury Road,” which premiered Wednesday night at the Cannes Film Festival and will be released in theaters next Wednesday.Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron in “Mad Max: Fury Road” (2015), a hit despite the chaotic production.Jasin Boland/Warner Bros.Did Miller feel the wind at his back while making “Furiosa,” since the reception to “Fury Road” vindicated his vision?“It definitely made it easier,” he said. “It didn’t make it effortless.”That last point may be understating things just a bit: A bevy of natural disasters, including floods and the coronavirus, pushed the production’s budget to $233 million, making it the most expensive movie ever shot in Australia. At every point in its making, Miller was faced with challenges as outsized as the fantasy world he labored to create.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

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      Francis Ford Coppola Accused of Misconduct on ‘Megalopolis’ Set

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      An executive producer said he wasn’t aware of complaints and called the contact “kind hugs and kisses on the cheek.”As anticipation for the premiere of “Megalopolis,” Francis Ford Coppola’s first film in more than a decade, built to a fever pitch at Cannes, the director faced accusations Tuesday that he tried to kiss extras during a nightclub sequence.A report in The Guardian detailing the film’s chaotic production said that according to anonymous sources, Coppola pulled women to sit on his lap, and tried to kiss scantily clad extras.In response, a representative for Coppola referred to a statement from the executive producer Darren Demetre, published by The Hollywood Reporter, in which he said, “I was never aware of any complaints of harassment or ill behavior during the course of the project.” Demetre also noted in the statement that during two days of shooting a “celebratory Studio 54-esque club scene,” the director “walked around the set to establish the spirit of the scene by giving kind hugs and kisses on the cheek to the cast and background players. It was his way to help inspire and establish the club atmosphere, which was so important to the film.”The article focused largely on the movie’s unusual production conditions and, citing an unnamed crew member, said that Coppola stayed in his trailer for hours at a time, delaying filming.Mariela Comitini, a first assistant director on “Megalopolis,” told The Times through a representative, “I can say working alongside Francis Ford Coppola was an honor. I watched as Francis created a vibrant, professional and positive environment on set, and I wish I could be part of the celebration in Cannes. As one of the industry’s most well-respected master filmmakers, Francis was undaunted by the enormity of this undertaking, and he finished the film on time and on budget.”The report was published in advance of the film’s Thursday premiere in the Cannes competition, where the stakes are high since the movie has yet to find U.S. distribution. (After an early screening for buyers, one source told Puck that it had zero commercial prospects but that that wasn’t a bad thing.) On Tuesday, Coppola, best known as the director of the “Godfather” trilogy, posted a teaser for the dystopian “Megalopolis” that reflected ancient Roman influences and featured hallucinatory special effects.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

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      Cannes Film Festival: Red Carpet Roundup

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      Jane Birkin pairing her beaded dress with a basket. Madonna in a Jean-Paul Gaultier cone bra and a garter set. Kristen Stewart barefoot in Chanel chain mail. Spike Lee in a sunset-inspired suit.The Cannes Film Festival, with its sheer preponderance of red carpets and boardwalk photo ops, its blockbusters and art house flicks, has given the world more indelible fashion moments than any other festival. In 2002, Sharon Stone made so many dramatic red carpet entrances as a member of the Cannes jury that she managed to revive her flagging career through the power of clothes alone.Even before the start of this year’s festival, which officially takes place from May 14 through May 25 on the French Riviera, attendees began throwing down the fashion gauntlet.The actress Anya Taylor-Joy, who is in Cannes to promote “Furiosa,” the latest “Mad Max” movie, made waves by stepping out in a Jacquemus straw hat so large it doubled as a portable sunshade. The filmmaker Greta Gerwig, whose job as president of the festival’s competition jury means packing 10 days’ worth of outfits, stopped by a photo call wearing an hourglass-effect, blue-and-white-striped milkmaid dress straight from the latest Maison Margiela couture collection.Also hopping on the seaside stripes trend were the actor Chris Hemsworth, fresh off co-hosting the Met Gala, who stepped out in a blue-and-white-striped Etro suit, and Meryl Streep, who posed in a white Michael Kors pantsuit and a navy-and-white-striped shirt.Indeed, what makes the festival such irresistible eye candy is that it’s not only a parade of grand gowns and tuxedos, but also a panoply of accessible sunshine style.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

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      Cannes: Greta Gerwig, Lily Gladstone and the Weight of Politics at the Fest

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      The festival opened with questions for the jury about Indigenous representation, #MeToo rumors and other timely topics.Early on in the meta French comedy “The Second Act,” which was opening the 77th edition of the Cannes Film Festival on Tuesday night, a father (Vincent Lindon) and daughter (Léa Seydoux) are sitting in his car and chatting about her boyfriend. But just a few lines into the scene, Lindon cracks and refuses to perform it.As he leaves the car to stalk across a field, Seydoux pursues him and tries to continue running their lines. But he is undeterred, claiming the current state of the world is too dire for light comedy.“You’ll carry on as if nothing was wrong, as if everything was fine and dandy?” Lindon says to her. “Mankind is nearly done, and you want to play my daughter in an indie movie?”Though the festival has only just begun, the question of how much the outside world should intrude on cinema has become a pertinent one. At a meeting with the news media on Monday, the Cannes artistic director, Thierry Frémaux, was peppered with so many queries about real-world issues — from the war in Gaza to the #MeToo controversies currently swirling in the French film industry — that he snapped, insisting that he would prefer Cannes to stand apart from such things.“We’re trying to have a festival without this polemical aspect,” Frémaux said. “We’re very careful to maintain that the reason people come here is because of the cinema.”That may be, but the real world can still be felt here: For two weeks, Cannes is a bubble, but a bubble can be popped.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

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      Iranian Film Director Mohammad Rasoulof Flees Country After Jail Sentence

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      Mohammad Rasoulof, known for the award-winning “There Is No Evil,” had been barred from leaving Iran after his work criticized the country’s clerical leadership.The celebrated Iranian film director Mohammad Rasoulof said he had fled the country, after a court sentenced him to eight years in prison for his movies.Mr. Rasoulof — known for his award-winning film “There Is No Evil” — had been barred from leaving Iran after his work criticized life under authoritarian rule in the country. His lawyer, Babak Paknia, wrote last week on social media that a court had sentenced Mr. Rasoulof to imprisonment, whipping and a fine for movies that it called “examples of collusion with the intention of committing a crime against the country’s security.”On Monday, Mr. Rasoulof announced his escape from Iran in an Instagram post that featured a video of snow-capped mountains and said he had reached a “safe place” after a “difficult and long journey.”Addressing Iran’s clerical rulers, Mr. Rasoulof said he had been forced to leave “because of your oppression and barbarity,” and that he had now joined Iranians in exile who were “impatiently waiting to bury you and your machine of oppression in the depths of history.”He did not provide details on his location or respond to a message from The New York Times.“There Is No Evil” — which focused on executioners in Iran — won the top prize in the Berlin International Film Festival in 2020. Mr. Rasoulof, who had directed the film in secret, was not allowed to leave the country to attend that award ceremony.A scene from Mr. Rasoulof’s “There Is No Evil,” which won the top prize at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2020.Kino LorberIran’s film industry is acclaimed internationally and heavily policed at home, where the authorities can ban screening and filming.Mr. Rasoulof’s new movie, “The Seed of the Sacred Fig,” is set to premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in France this month.Some of the film’s producers were interrogated by the authorities and some of its actors were barred from leaving the country, Mr. Paknia said in social media posts last month.Mr. Rasoulof told The New York Times in 2020 that early on in his career he had used allegorical stories to avoid confronting power directly, but eventually felt that was “a form of accepting the tyrannical regime.”He went on to offer sharp critiques of Iran’s clerical rulers with his films, including “Manuscripts Don’t Burn” and “A Man of Integrity” — which won an award at Cannes in 2017.Over the years, the Iranian authorities had charged him with propaganda against the state, confiscated his passport, arrested and prosecuted him.In a statement released on Monday, Mr. Rasoulof said “the scope and intensity of repression has reached a point of brutality where people expect news of another heinous government crime every day.”Leily Nikounazar More

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      Cannes Film Festival: 5 Things to Look For

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      With the most prestigious festival in the world starting Tuesday, here are the movies, artists and events we’ll be keeping an eye on.On Tuesday, the 77th edition of the Cannes Film Festival will begin in the south of France. You can expect glamorous gowns and awfully prolonged standing ovations — at Cannes, such things are de rigueur — but what distinguishes this year’s lineup? Here are five things we’ll be watching out for.A new Coppola on the Croisette.Some 45 years after Francis Ford Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now” won the Palme d’Or at Cannes, he will return to the Croisette, the festival promenade, with “Megalopolis,” starring Adam Driver as a visionary architect determined to rebuild a city after it’s beset by disaster. Coppola self-financed the longtime passion project to the tune of $120 million, a steep price tag that has so far deterred potential distributors. Puck’s Matthew Belloni reported that at a March screening meant to entice buyers, many came away confounded by Coppola’s vision: “There are zero commercial prospects and good for him,” said one source. But if it’s true that the film is a big, wild swing, it’s hard to imagine a friendlier place for its public debut than Cannes, where the filmmaker is revered.‘Furiosa’ starts its engines.The biggest movie to debut at Cannes this year will be “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga,” the latest film in director George Miller’s postapocalyptic action franchise. This one serves as a prequel to the Oscar-winning “Mad Max: Fury Road,” which premiered at Cannes to great acclaim in 2015 and produced an unexpected moment at the film’s news conference when star Tom Hardy apologized to Miller for his bad behavior during the shoot. Expect a big bash for the new movie and a major red-carpet moment from its fashionable star Anya Taylor-Joy, who takes over the titular character originated by Charlize Theron.A cinematic Trump card.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

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      Cannes: Coralie Fargeat Doesn’t Shy Away From Gore in Her Films

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      The director Coralie Fargeat’s films don’t shy away from violence and gore, including her latest which is vying for the top prize at Cannes.The movies of Coralie Fargeat are not for the fainthearted: Blood and gore play an absolutely central role.There was so much of it in her body-horror movie “Revenge” (2017) — her first full-length feature — that, on set in Morocco, extra quantities of fake blood had to be constantly prepared using ingredients shipped over from France.Fargeat’s new title “The Substance” — starring Margaret Qualley, Demi Moore and Dennis Quaid — promises to be no less violent and is one of 22 contenders for the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, which begins on Tuesday.Fargeat, who was born in Paris, took up filmmaking from a very young age, making little movies of her toys, and developed a passion for genre movies thanks to her grandfather, who let the 12- or 13-year-old Coralie watch films her parents considered too violent: the “Rambo” series, “RoboCop” and “The Fly.”Later, while finishing her university studies at Sciences Po in Paris, she noticed a film shoot in the university courtyard one day and asked the assistant director for an internship. She interned on the set of his next movie, and spent the next two years doing other internships to learn the ropes.Releasing a number of critically acclaimed shorts, she presented “Revenge” at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2017 and got plenty of attention.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

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      At Cannes, Un Certain Regard Offers a Different Perspective

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      While not receiving the same attention as the main competition, the sidebar is where you often glimpse the future of cinema.The British filmmaker Molly Manning Walker was on vacation in Rome on May 26, 2023, when her phone rang. A week earlier, her feature debut “How to Have Sex” had premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. Now, festival organizers were calling because her movie, about a group of 16-year-old girls who spend a debauched booze and sex-soaked summer vacation on the Greek island of Crete, had won a prize that would be announced at that evening’s closing ceremony back on the Côte d’Azur.“I had to drive to the nearest airport really quickly and get on the next plane and I ran in three minutes after the film had been announced,” Manning Walker, 30, recalled in a recent phone interview.She wasn’t exaggerating. She did, in fact, bolt into the cinema wearing a lime green T-shirt and black tennis shorts. “What the hell is going on?” she asked the audience in disbelief. The answer was that “How to Have Sex” had won the top award in Un Certain Regard, the sidebar section at the festival that is known for recognizing films by new and emerging directors.While the starry main competition at Cannes — which begins on Tuesday, and this year features new work by David Cronenberg, Francis Ford Coppola, Yorgos Lanthimos and other established filmmakers — attracts most of the media’s attention, Un Certain Regard, which translates to “a certain look,” is where one can most reliably glimpse where world cinema is headed. In the words of Thierry Frémaux, Cannes’s artistic director, “U.C.R. discovers and celebrates the new generation and expands the frontiers of cinema.”Last year, Molly Manning Walker rushed back from Rome to Cannes to accept the prize for her feature debut, “How to Have Sex.”Ammar Abd Rabbo/Abaca/Sipa, via Associated PressIn an email interview, Frémaux, who heads the viewing committee that selects the films that screen at the festival, said that Un Certain Regard’s purpose was “to bring out new trends, new paths, new countries of cinema. It’s a selection that favors young filmmakers, especially female directors, and prepares the emergence of future generations.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