One wonders what it was about The House That Jack Built that persuaded Cannes director Thierry Fremaux to offer devious provocateur Lars von Trier a reprieve from his enforced exile. Presumably it wasn’t the scenes of duckling mutilation and toddler taxidermy that convinced him to change his mind, more likely...
“Dis joint is based upon some fo’ real, fo’ real sh*t.” The story of Colorado detective Ron Stallworth is one of those true-life tall tales that’s just so strange it couldn’t be fiction, and in the hands of Spike Lee it proves to be pure dynamite – the director returning...
It would be so easy to become swept up in the obvious, outward significance of Eva Husson’s Girls of the Sun. The first of only three films to play in this year’s Official Competition to be directed by a woman, the Saturday night premiere screening was preceded by a silent...
The need for there to be a greater diversity in the stories we see told through cinema is once again a hot-button topic of conversation at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. And the importance of such range is perfectly underscored here by Flemish filmmaker Lukas Dhont, who earnestly seeks to...
“Time doesn’t matter when you’re in love.” In Pawel Pawlikowski’s skilfully assured Cannes Competition feature Cold War, however, the passing of time matters greatly. We can see the initial yearnings of an attraction from the moment Wiktor (Tomasz Kot) and Zula (Joanna Kulig) first meet. He’s a composer, travelling around...
Never one to be bound by convention, Jean-Luc Godard decided to shun the customary post-premiere press conference for his new film, Image Book – playing in Cannes as part of the Official Competition – and instead opted to answer the questions due to be posed to him via a FaceTime...
Not all heroes wear capes. Take Anna (Zsófia Szamosi), for example. From the outside looking in, she lives a simple and secure existence. Mother of three adorable children, living together in a spacious apartment with her husband, and working a job that’s both stable & rewarding. On the page, it...
There’s a particularly telling scene early on in Ciro Guerra & Cristina Gallego’s riveting Columbian crime saga, Birds of Passage. Two friends are celebrating in a local shanty bar, reaping the rewards of their latest “business deal” – selling dope to members of the American Peace Corps. They raise their...
Though unlikely to be particularly indicative of a wider critical response, it’s impossible to ignore the snorts of incredulity that echoed throughout the Debussy theatre in the Cannes Palais, following a key narrative revelation halfway through Asghar Farhadi’s occasionally compelling but frustratingly contrived festival opener, Everybody Knows. Up until that...