Ostlund, Ruben

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    Meet the 2023 Cannes Jury: Brie Larson, Ruben Ostlund and More

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    The Swedish director Ruben Ostlund has won the Palme d’Or twice — first for “The Square” in 2017, then last year for “Triangle of Sadness.” This year, he’s the president of the jury that decides who gets that top prize.Ostlund told The New York Times that he planned to have “a very Swedish approach when it comes to running the jury,” adding, “It will be a democracy.”At a news conference on Tuesday, he said that the jury didn’t have many rules. “One thing is that this will be the first year in the history of the Cannes Film Festival when the publicists will have no rumors to tell to each other,” Ostlund said.In Ostlund’s films, which skewer class and social hypocrisies, any character who made a vow like that would wind up doing the opposite. But don’t expect the top prizewinner or any of the other awards to be his choices alone.He has eight fellow jurors. They include the French director Julia Ducournau, who has just one Palme to Ostlund’s two, having won in 2021 for her genre-bending “Titane.” It was, as that year’s jury president Spike Lee remarked at the time, likely the first film in history in which a Cadillac impregnated the heroine.Several other jury members are directors with Cannes pedigrees. Damián Szifron, from Argentina, is best known for his comic anthology feature “Wild Tales,” which showed in competition in 2014. The Zambian-born Rungano Nyoni made “I am Not a Witch,” an absurdist story of an orphan accused of witchcraft; it was a favorite of critics when it played in the parallel festival Directors’ Fortnight in 2017. And the Moroccan filmmaker Maryam Touzani was here last year with “The Blue Caftan,” which showed in the festival’s Un Certain Regard section.Another jury member, Atiq Rahimi, is both a filmmaker and an author. Born in Afghanistan, Rahimi directed film adaptations of his own novels “Earth and Ashes” and “The Patience Stone.” As a book, the latter won the Goncourt Prize, France’s most prestigious literary award.Cannes always likes to have a bit of Hollywood star wattage on its juries, and this year, the American actors Brie Larson and Paul Dano supply it. There was a tense moment during Tuesday’s news conference, when a Variety reporter asked Larson if she would watch the festival’s opening film, “Jeanne du Barry,” which stars Johnny Depp, since she has historically been a supporter of #TimesUp. “You’re asking me that?” Larson said, bristling. Pressed on the issue, she replied, “You’ll see, I guess, if I see it. And I don’t know how I’ll feel about it if I do.”Rounding out the jury’s thespian contingent is the French actor Denis Ménochet, recently seen as a loopy veteran in “Beau Is Afraid.”At the news conference Ostlund said: “If I could choose between an Oscar and Palme d’Or, it’s an easy choice. I’d rather have one more than have an Oscar.”Kyle Buchanan More

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      Ruben Ostlund Doesn’t Want You to Get Too Comfortable

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      The Swedish director, this year’s jury president for the Cannes Film Festival, talks about his approach to making films.For a filmmaker whose most recent movie was nominated for three Academy Awards and who has twice won the Palme d’Or, the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival, it might sound strange to hear Ruben Ostlund say he doesn’t focus on success.“I’m much more interested in when we fail as human beings than when we succeed,” said the Swedish director, who will lead the jury at this year’s festival, which runs from Tuesday to May 27.Mr. Ostlund, 49, won the Palme d’Or, last year for “Triangle of Sadness,” a class satire set aboard a doomed luxury yacht, and for his previous feature, “The Square,” an unsparing sendup of the art world, in 2017. Mr. Ostlund is one of only nine filmmakers who have multiple Palmes d’Or to his credit — and one of three to win the award for consecutive films.After its success at Cannes, “Triangle of Sadness,” which was Mr. Ostlund’s first film entirely in English, went on to become an art-house hit in both Europe and America, and was nominated for three Oscars — for best picture, best director and best original screenplay — but didn’t win any.In his three most recent features, starting with 2014’s “Force Majeure,” Mr. Ostlund has consciously tried to get away from a certain type of European art-house film that is often cerebral, challenging and severe.“I wanted to create a wild, entertaining ride at the same time that I was trying to talk about the content that I thought was important or that I was curious about, and not making a contradiction between those things,” he said in late April during a video interview, speaking from his house in Campos, Majorca.He pointed to the political comedies of Lina Wertmüller, the Italian director whose 1974 film “Swept Away” was a clear touchstone for “Triangle of Sadness,” and the surreal provocations of the Spanish filmmaker Luis Buñuel as examples of serious-minded films that are also great fun to watch.Arvin Kananian, left, and Woody Harrelson in a scene from “Triangle of Sadness,” which Mr. Ostlund won the Palme d’Or for last year.Neon, via Associated PressIn a statement announcing Mr. Ostlund as jury president in February, festival organizers called the decision a “tribute to films that are uncompromising and forthright and which constantly demand that viewers challenge themselves and that art continue to invent itself.”“Contrary to popular belief, thought-provoking cinema can also be popular,” Philippe Bober, one of the producers on “Triangle of Sadness,” wrote in an email.“We want to make uncompromising auteur films but also to embrace the audience,” Mr. Bober continued. He has worked with Mr. Ostlund since 2005.“The bad news for producers,” Mr. Bober added, referring to himself and the film’s other Oscar-nominated producer, Erik Hemmendorff, “is that if you want to make good films, you have to support your directors’ radicalism when they are experimenting with form and content for a long period of time before you make money.”The critical and popular acclaim for “Triangle of Sadness” seems a vindication of Mr. Bober’s faith in Mr. Ostlund.The humor, often acid-laced, that makes the Swedish director’s films so entertaining is often deeply discomfiting — and sometimes downright squirmworthy. This has proved divisive, with some viewers regarding his work as manipulative or downright cruel (“Triangle of Sadness” includes an audaciously long vomiting scene), and others hailing him as an uncommonly perceptive social commentator.“I think all my approaches in my films are looking at human behavior, creating dilemmas,” Mr. Ostlund said, “in order to try to tell something about us human beings.” He added that he tried to create “scenes where I believe that, yeah, this is an accurate and a true picture of our behavior” without pointing fingers.“I’m happy,” he added, “if I can reach the level of a really good sociological experiment.”According to Owen Gleiberman, chief film critic for Variety magazine, “Triangle of Sadness” is “very much a movie of its moment.”“It’s about the 1 percent, and it’s about the 1 percent getting their comeuppance. And that’s a good theme and it’s a gratifying theme,” said Mr. Gleiberman, who attended his first Cannes Film Festival in 1996. At the same time, he said he felt that the film was “too in love with its own satirical excess.” While he was delighted by the unexpected Palme d’Or win for “The Square,” he felt “Triangle of Sadness” was less deserving of the prize.“There’s no rule that says that a director shouldn’t take the Palme d’Or twice in five years,” Mr. Gleiberman said. “But when that happens, it’s usually an indication not that he has made two masterpieces, but that he’s become a Cannes darling.” As such, the fact that Mr. Ostlund was tapped to head the Cannes jury, Mr. Gleiberman added, “makes perfect sense.”“I think all my approaches in my films are looking at human behavior, creating dilemmas,” Mr. Ostlund said, “in order to try to tell something about us human beings.”Ana Cuba for The New York Times“I hesitated a little bit because of the burden of the position actually,” Mr. Ostlund said about being asked to chair the jury. His eight co-jurors include the American actors Paul Dano and Brie Larson, the Argentine director Damián Szifron, and the French filmmaker Julia Ducournau, who won the Palme d’Or in 2021 for “Titane,” a controversial body-horror film.Even though no one person gets to decide the winners, the awards at Cannes often become identified with that year’s jury president. Historically speaking, the films that have taken the Palme d’Or, Mr. Gleiberman suggested, are “not some list of masterpieces.”“It’s more like the good, the bad and the ugly,” he said.Mr. Ostlund seemed all too aware of this when he suggested that the Palme d’Or awarded by a jury president is “something that can follow you then through your career,” for good or for ill.But Mr. Ostlund said it was important, above all, for him to endorse what Cannes stands for. “For me, it is the festival in the world that is on the barricades fighting for cinema” and a “provocative approach to cinema as an art form,” he said.“The last year when I had been traveling around with ‘Triangle of Sadness,’ I have tried to really promote cinema, talked about the advantage of cinema, talked about what are the qualities of watching things together instead of sitting in front of an individual screen,” he added.The Hungarian filmmaker Kornel Mundruczo, another Cannes favorite, said that the festival connected him to an “ethical, fundamental state of what does that mean to be a filmmaker and a true believer in film as the seventh art.”Films by Mr. Mundruczo, 48, and Mr. Ostlund have shared lineups at Cannes several times. In 2014, they both headlined the festival’s Un Certain Regard sidebar: Mr. Mundruczo’s “White God” won top prize and Mr. Ostlund’s “Force Majeure” took the jury prize. Three of Mr. Mundruczo’s other films have screened in the main competition at Cannes; he was invited to be a juror at Cannes twice but declined because of prior commitments.While expressing reservations about running films like horses in a race, Mr. Mundruczo, who has chaired juries at other festivals, said he enjoyed the experience — and not only because it forced him to take in multiple films a day.“As a jury member, you feel like you can give your taste, your honesty and your vision of the future of cinema and all your love of cinema,” Mr. Mundruczo said in an interview in Berlin, where he lives.Mr. Ostlund, who has also served on film festival juries before, said it was important to take care of the group dynamics and make sure everyone “feels that they are seen.”“I think I will have a very Swedish approach when it comes to running the jury,” he said.“It will be a democracy.” More

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      Cannes Film Festival 2023 Lineup Includes Wes Anderson and Todd Haynes Movies

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      Over 50 movies will be screened at the event, including Johnny Depp’s first major film since a defamation trial and Martin Scorsese’s latest epic.Movies by Wes Anderson, Todd Haynes and Ken Loach will compete for the Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, the event’s organizers announced during a news conference on Thursday.Also in the running for the festival’s top prize will be films by the returning winners Wim Wenders, Hirokazu Kore-eda, Nuri Bilge Ceylan and Nanni Moretti.But Martin Scorsese will not compete at the festival, which opens May 16 and runs through May 27. Instead, his eagerly anticipated movie “Killers of the Flower Moon,” which stars Leonardo DiCaprio and is about the murder of Osage Indians in 1920s Oklahoma, will appear out of competition. Thierry Frémaux, Cannes’s artistic director, said during Thursday’s news conference that the festival wanted “Killers of the Flower Moon” to play in competition, but Scorsese had turned him down.The Wes Anderson picture in competition is “Asteroid City,” about a space cadet convention that is interrupted by aliens; Todd Haynes will show “May December” a love story about a young man and his older employer, starring Julianne Moore.Ken Loach, whose movies focused on working-class life in Britain have twice won the Palme d’Or, will present “The Old Oak,” about Syrian refugees arriving in an economically depressed English mining town.A jury led by the Swedish director Ruben Ostlund will choose the winner. Ostlund won last year’s Palme d’Or for “Triangle of Sadness,” a satire of the international superrich; he also took the 2017 award for “The Square,” a sendup of the art world.Of the 19 titles in competition, five are directed by women, including the Cannes veterans Jessica Hausner and Alice Rohrwacher, and Ramata-Toulaye Sy, a French-Senegalese newcomer.Many of the highest profile titles at this year’s event will be shown out of competition. The festival will open with “Jeanne du Barry,” a period drama about a poor woman who becomes a lover of King Louis XV of France. It stars Johnny Depp in his first major role since he won a defamation trial against his ex-wife Amber Heard.Other high-profile movies scheduled to premiere at Cannes’s 76th edition include “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” directed by James Mangold — the final movie in the Harrison Ford adventure series about a globe-trotting archaeology professor — and Pedro Almodóvar’s “Strange Way of Life,” the Spanish director’s second movie in English. Starring Ethan Hawke and Pedro Pascal, that movie is a short western about a reunion between two hit men.Wim Wenders, the German director who won the 1984 Palme d’Or for “Paris, Texas,” has two films in the official selection. In the main competition, he will show “Perfect Days,” which Frémaux said was about a janitor in Japan who drives between jobs listening to rock music. Out of competition, Wenders will show a 3-D documentary about Anselm Kiefer, one of Germany’s most revered artists.Frémaux said that over 2,000 movies were submitted for the festival, although only 52 made Thursday’s selection. Of those, one other notable title is Steve McQueen’s “Occupied City,” about Amsterdam under the Nazis. Frémaux said that McQueen, the director of “12 Years a Slave” and “Widows,” had made a “very radical” film that was several hours long. But, Frémaux added, watching it, “you won’t fall asleep.” More

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      ‘Triangle of Sadness’ | Anatomy of a Scene

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      Film directors walk viewers through one scene of their movies, showing the magic, motives and the mistakes from behind the camera.Film directors walk viewers through one scene of their movies, showing the magic, motives and the mistakes from behind the camera. More

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      The Power Player of ‘Triangle of Sadness’: Dolly de Leon

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      The Palme d’Or-winning class satire hinges on her surprising character, but the veteran Filipina actress never thought she had a chance to land the role.This interview includes spoilers about the plot of “Triangle of Sadness.”LOS ANGELES — Humble though not self-deprecating, the actress Dolly de Leon speaks of the shortcomings in her process with a casual matter-of-factness that makes her sincerity clear. “I really do poorly at auditions,” she confessed.Despite her assessment, she clearly did well enough at one of them: At 53, the Filipina veteran of theater, television and film in her home country is enjoying international attention for her trope-defying role in the class satire “Triangle of Sadness,” in theaters Friday.De Leon plays Abigail, a crew member on a luxury cruise ship carrying entitled oligarchs and fashion models. After things go awry, her practical skills are much more valuable than wealth or beauty on a seemingly deserted island.The multinational ensemble piece, which features Woody Harrelson, Harris Dickinson and the late Charlbi Dean, earned the top prize, the Palme d’Or, at the Cannes Film Festival in June. There, Indiewire described de Leon’s performance as “bold and heartsick,” while Screen Daily praised her for “playing it canny and ruthless.”But when the film’s writer-director, Ruben Ostlund, traveled to the Philippines in 2019 to cast the pivotal role, de Leon couldn’t fathom that she would get the job — in part because of her troubled relationship with auditions. Yet Ostlund recalled being impressed with her playfulness in a romantic scene they tried. Her lack of expectations probably played to her advantage.“Dolly has a fox behind her ear, as we say in Sweden,” the director Ruben Ostlund said. “That is to say that she is not who you expect.”Rosie Marks for The New York Times“I’m just an actor who needs the work,” de Leon said. “Whatever the role was, it was just another job for me. But, of course, I knew there was prestige attached to it because it was Ruben,” and she had seen his art-world satire, “The Square,” which won the Palme d’Or in 2017.Interested in inverting the power dynamics between the superrich and those underpaid to serve them, Ostlund found de Leon’s transformation from shipboard housekeeping staffer to authoritative captain ashore to be searingly convincing. “In very few scenes you have to buy that she is taking control of this group,” he said via video call.De Leon explained: “I admire Abigail because she just took it upon herself to be in charge without asking for approval from anyone. If I were in her situation, I’d probably still be following people around.”Sitting in a hotel meeting room in West Hollywood during a recent interview, de Leon, in a white top and tennis shoes and light bluejeans, exuded a relaxed energy while occasionally inhaling from a minuscule vape.A native of Manila, she traced her acting epiphany to a grade-school skit. A teacher asked students to pretend their mother had died. In that tragic scenario, she found a therapeutic outlet for her real, long-suppressed emotions.“It felt so good because at home we weren’t allowed to cry,” she explained. “It was liberating. And after that, I was hooked.”As a theater arts student at the University of the Philippines Diliman, de Leon played extras on TV until parts with dramatic substance gradually came her way. “I wasn’t choosy. I would take any role that was offered to me,” she said. Meanwhile, the stage — her first love — provided greater artistic challenges.De Leon with Charlbi Dean, left, and Vicki Berlin in a scene from “Triangle of Sadness.”Plattform ProduktionWith time, cinema also became an option as she developed a following as a character actor in projects involving top local talent. One director, the celebrated Filipino auteur Lav Diaz, cast her in his 2019 film, “The Halt,” based solely on her reputation. Back then, he had not seen any of her performances.“Here in the Philippines, she’s earned that imprimatur, that status, that level of respect already,” Diaz said via email of his blind trust in de Leon. The two would collaborate again on “History of Ha” (2021), a period drama about a famed puppeteer.Unlike Ostlund, who requests anywhere from 30 to 70 takes per shot, Diaz does only one take per setup, tacitly asking his cast for hyper focus.“When I say I trust an actor, the fundamental transcriptions of that act are responsibility and commitment,” Diaz explained. “An affirmation of that would be an actor’s eventual portrayal. All I can say is that Dolly is amazing in ‘Ha’ and great in ‘Triangle of Sadness.’”In Ostlund’s biting comedy, de Leon embraced the task of dignifying a character who essentially represents the millions of Filipinos working abroad to support their families back home.“To a lot of Filipinos, they’re heroes because they bring dollars into our country and boost the economy,” she added.For de Leon, “Triangle of Sadness” isn’t only about financial inequality but also about physical attractiveness as currency, illustrated by Abigail’s transactional affair with a model (Dickinson). Their encounters were de Leon’s first-ever onscreen love scenes.That Abigail’s abilities to fish and make fire turn her into a leader in this microcosm demonstrates, de Leon said, that authority can take many forms.“We often feel so powerless in this world because we’re surrounded by beauty, fame and money,” she explained. “We forget that no matter how less privileged you are, you still hold a certain power in the world that we can harness to our advantage.”By putting someone unexpected in a position of power, however, Ostlund wanted to examine whether abuses would occur. “There’s a possibility that it really corrupts her,” he said of Abigail.De Leon said she admired the way her character took charge: “If I were in her situation, I’d probably still be following people around.”Rosie Marks for The New York TimesIn the film’s open-ended conclusion, Abigail faces a dilemma about whether to protect her status. Ostlund zeroed in on de Leon’s face for dozens of takes.“I could feel this was the scene that Dolly had been charging for during the whole production,” Ostlund said. “Dolly has a fox behind her ear, as we say in Sweden. That is to say that she is not who you expect.”Initially, de Leon tackled that moment with a version of Abigail determined to use force. But ambiguity and doubt ultimately rendered the scene psychologically richer.“We tried a different approach where she’s at a crossroads and is torn,” she said, adding, “It was ultimately a better choice in that it highlighted Abigail’s humanity.”As de Leon looks ahead at the possibility of collaborating with American and European storytellers, she remembered Dean, who died in August. It was her friend Dean who encouraged her to get a manager to expand her professional horizons.“I really feel the loss of her while I’m in L.A. because she used to live here,” de Leon said. “I imagine that if she were still with us, she would be sitting next to me doing this interview.”The Cannes reception to her performance still astounds de Leon. But even if her children playfully mock her newfound profile in the West, she maintains a modest outlook.“What an incredible feeling to experience something like this, however late in life,” she said. “I’m not in my 20s anymore, so this happened at the perfect time because my head is not up in the clouds. I’m more grounded as a person and as an actor. If I were younger, I’d be acting like I’m better than everyone,” she said with an unassuming laugh. More

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      ‘The Triangle of Sadness’ Wins Palme d’Or at Cannes

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      CANNES, France — The satire “Triangle of Sadness,” from the Swedish director Ruben Ostlund, won the Palme d’Or at the 75th Cannes Film Festival at a ceremony here on Saturday. A blunt, ugly sendup of class politics, the movie had sharply divided critics.The awards ceremony ran a relatively painless 90 or so minutes, another reminder that the emphasis at Cannes remains on the movies themselves, not the accompanying circus. Held inside the magnificent Grand Lumière Theater inside the festival’s headquarters — with the nine-person jury watching from the stage — the awards confer critical legitimation and generate much-needed public relations for movies that, years into the pandemic, are headed into a still-difficult world for art cinema.The Grand Prix — the festival’s second prize — was split between “Close,” from the Belgian director Lukas Dhont, and “Stars at Noon,” from the French auteur Claire Denis. “Stars at Noon” was brutalized by critics, but it wasn’t wholly a shock that it won an award: Vincent Lindon, the president of this year’s jury, has appeared in several of Denis’s movies. “Close,” a critical and audience favorite about two 13-year-old boys whose friendship is tragically tested, drew warm applause from the Lumière audience.The Jury Prize, the third prize, was split between two very different dramas: “EO,” a heartbreaker about a donkey from the Polish auteur Jerzy Skolimowski, and “The Eight Mountains,” a coming-of-age story from the Belgian filmmakers Felix Van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch. Skolimowski, 84, began his acceptance speech by thanking (and naming) all six of his donkeys — including a little beauty called Taco. For her part, Vandermeersch seemed to surprise her co-director and partner by repeatedly kissing him right before he started his acceptance speech.The South Korean director Park Chan-wook won the director prize for “Decision to Leave,” an entertainingly twisty thriller (which riffs on Hitchcock’s “Vertigo”), which was a critical favorite. “This is so cool,” Park said in English on taking the stage, though he also added an expletive.The screenplay award was given to the engrossing (and chatty) drama “Boy from Heaven,” from the Swedish director Tarik Saleh. The film traces the political intrigues swirling around a young Egyptian student, a Sunni Muslim, soon after he begins studying at a powerful religious university. After accepting his award, Saleh dedicated his prize to young Egyptian filmmakers: “Raise your voices, and tell your stories.”In one of the bigger surprises of the evening, the best actress went to Zar Amir Ebrahimi, the star of the widely disliked true-crime drama “Holy Spider,” from the Iranian-born director Ali Abbasi. She plays a journalist who faces the indifference and misogyny of the police as she tracks down a serial killer. The best actor prize was given to Song Kang-ho, the brilliant South Korean actor (“Parasite”), for his sensitive, soulful performance as a baby trafficker in “Broker,” the latest from the Japanese auteur Hirokazu Kore-eda.A special prize to commemorate the festival’s 75th anniversary was given to Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, who were in competition again with “Tori and Lokita,” about two undocumented African immigrants in a cruel, profoundly inhospitable Belgium. The Dardennes are among the most justly honored filmmakers in the history of Cannes, having won the Palme twice (for “Rosetta” in 1999 and “The Child” in 2005). This award was richly deserved. More