"Wild Goose Lake" is Chinese director, screenwriter, actor Diao Yinan's third directorial effort behind "Uniform" (2003), "Night Train" (which premiered in Un Certain Regard at Cannes in 2007), and "Black Coal, Thin Ice" (Winner of the Golden Bear for Best Film at the Berlin International Film Festival. 2014). Continue reading

British actor Matt Smith plays Charles Manson in director Mary Harron's biographical drama. Harron credits Quentin Tarantino's Cannes premiere-screening "Once Upon a Time In Hollywood" for getting her film made. "Charlie Says" opens in limited engagements this week (May 16). Check it out and pretend that it's opening in Cannes. This movie fits the bill. Continue reading

"Colombian director, screenwriter and producer, Franco Lolli graduated from the prestigious cinema school of La Fémis in France, before making short films like Como todo el mundo (Grand Jury Prize, Clermont-Ferrand 2007) and Rodri(selected at Directors' Fortnight, Cannes 2012). His first feature, Gente de bien, was presented at La Semaine de la Critique in 2014, before being selected in more than seventy international festivals. His second feature film Litigante will open the 58th Semaine de la Critique." Continue reading

Journalism is in trouble. Writers of articles pointing this out typically argue that this is really bad for democracy or America or whatever. Anyone who disagrees is too stupid to read this so I won’t bother to repeat this obviousness. Such writers also point out contemporaneous evidence of the media apocalypse; here are the three I came across this week. Continue reading

Kleber Mendonça Filho returns to Cannes since screening his well-received film "Aquarius" in 2016. The Brazilian filmmaker teams up with Juliano Dornelles to co-direct "Bacurau." This one looks to be a crowd-pleaser right out the gate. Continue reading

A look at the friendship between two guys that spans over many years. Continue reading

Unable to manifest love towards her child, she has replaced tenderness with pragmatism. When Samia, a young woman who is heavily pregnant knocks on her door, seeking shelter and overwhelmed by the weight of her burden of giving birth to a child without a father, Alba is unaware that this chance encounter will change her forever. Continue reading

Cannes regulars Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne bring their eighth film to the Competition for the Palme d'Or, for which the brothers have won twice — in 1999 ("Rosetta") and in 2005 for L'Enfant." Known for their sensitivity to the complexities of social issues, "Young Ahmed" will be under a microscope in Cannes. The Dardennes will surely be up for the discussion that follows. Continue reading

French-Senegalese actress/writer/director Mati Diop screens her debut premiere feature in Competition with "Antlantics." Continue reading

"Nedjma, an 18 year-old student passionate about fashion design refuses to let the tragic events of the Algerian Civil War to keep her from experiencing a normal life and going out at night with her friend Wassila. As the social climate becomes more conservative, she rejects the new bans set by the radicals and decides to fight for her freedom and independence by putting up a fashion show." Continue reading

"After discovering a disturbing video from a night she doesn’t remember, sixteen-year-old Mandy must try to figure out what happened and how to navigate the escalating fallout."Writer/director Pippa Bianco's short film "Share," upon which her debut feature film is based, won Cinéfondation’s First Prize at Cannes in 2015."Share" will appear at this year's festival in Cannes Special Screenings. Continue reading

Writer/director Annie Silverstein is an award winning filmmaker and youth worker based in Austin, Texas. Continue reading

"On the steps outside New York City’s dizzying central bus station, Port Authority, a girl named Wye vogues with her siblings. Paul, a young drifter, watches her — transfixed by her beauty. After he seeks her out, an intense love soon blossoms. Wye introduces him to the ballroom community, an underground LGBTQ subculture, and to her house, a self-selected chosen family. But when Paul discovers Wye is trans, he is forced to confront his feelings for her and the social forces that seek to rupture their bond." Continue reading

Americans vote their pocketbooks. It’s the economy, stupid. Absent a war or recent terrorist attack, conventional wisdom believes that voters prioritize domestic issues. Right now, conventional wisdom is correct. According to the latest Pew Research poll, the five most important issues for Democrats are healthcare, education, Medicare, poverty and the environment. Continue reading

French New Wave heir apparent Christophe Honoré was nominated for Cannes’s Prix Un Certain Regard for his feature film debut “Seventeen Times Cecile Cassard” in 2002. His 2007 film “Love Songs” was nominated for the Palme d’Or, as was his last film “Sorry Angel” (in 2018). “Chambre 212” will screen in the festival’s Un Certain Regard section. Continue reading

Man alive! Brunot Dumont is one of Cinema's most inventive, and innovative, auteurs. Dumont's films transport the viewer to unknown yet familiar dramatic realms where magical realism thrives. "Jeanne" sees Dumont stepping into a musical dialectic that is certain to vibrate with universal energies. As thematically oblique as Dumont's films ("Camille Claudel 1915" or "Slack Bay") might seem on the surface, you can savor filmic satire as theatrically fresh and politically relevant as anything the Group Theater did in American in the '30s. Continue reading

"Victor (Daniel Auteuil), a jaded sixty-something, has his life turned upside down the day that Antoine (Guillaume Canet), a flourishing entrepreneur, offers him a unique new brand of entertainment. Using a combination of theatrical artifice and historical re-enactment, his company gives its clients the opportunity to delve back into the period of their choice. Victor decides to relive the most memorable week of his existence, 40 years earlier, when he met the love of his life." Continue reading

"Having never won a major tournament, ailing football giant SSC Napoli had criminally underachieved. Their fanatical support was unequalled in both passion and size. None was more feared. But how they ached for success. On 5th July 1984, Diego Maradona arrived in Naples for a world-record fee and for seven years all hell broke loose. The world’s most celebrated football genius and the most dysfunctional city in Europe were a perfect match for each other. Maradona was blessed on the field but cursed off it; the charismatic Argentine, quickly led Naples to their first-ever title. It was the stuff of dreams. But there was a price; Diego could do as he pleased whilst performing miracles on the pitch, but when the magic faded he became almost a prisoner of the city." Continue reading

“The Best Years of a Life” is being shown outside of the Competition in Cannes. Anouk Aimée and Jean-Louis Trintignant are still running circles around every superhero actor on the planet. Aimée and Trintignant are real-life superheroes of Cinema. Continue reading

French auteur Justine Triet shifted from documentaries to features in 2013 with “Age of Panic,” a politically charged drama with comic underpinnings. Triet’s 2016 romantic comedy “In Bed With Victoria” became her second César Award nomination for Best Film.Justine Triet’s latest film “Sibyl,” is a psychological drama in the running for the Palme d’Or that stars the incomparable Adèle Exarchopoulos. Continue reading

Palestinian auteur/actor Elia Suleiman returns to Cannes since winning the Jury Prize for his 2002 film “Divine Intervention.” Suleiman takes inspiration from Jacques Tati and Buster Keaton to inform his deft ability to use deadpan humor to address harsh political and social conditions. Screening in Competition, “It Must Be Heaven” places Elia Suleiman in the best international spotlight. Continue reading

“Frankie” is Sachs’s first film to compete for a Palme d’Or. With a cast that includes the inestimable Isabelle Huppert, Brendan Gleeson, Greg Kinnear, and Marisa Tomei, “Frankie” is poised to make a splash on the Riviera. Continue reading

Romanian auteur Cornelieu Porumboiu has become a regular fixture at Cannes, as well as a critical darling. Porumboiu's 2015 film "The Treasure" won the Prix Un Certain Talent prize screening un the festival's Un Certain Regard section. His 2006 debut feature "12:08 East of Bucharest" won the festival's Caméra d'Or prize. Cornelieu Porumboiu is a deft satirist with a dry sense of humor that bristles with trenchant social commentary. Screening in Competition, "The Whistlers" is an absolute must-see at this year's festival. Continue reading

"Kantemir Balagov was born in 1991 in Nalchik, capital of the autonomous Russian Republic of Kabardino-Balkaria. He undertook studies in Economy then Law and directed several web mini-series shot on a still camera before discovering that Alexandre Sokurov had opened a film school in his home town. At the end of their interview, Sokurov placed him directly in the third year study group. Balagov directed several short films, then armed with his first feature script was able to raise the money with Sokurov’s help, to make "Closeness," which premiered in Un Certain Regard 2017, where he won a FIPRESCI prize. "Dylda," Balagov's film about women who fought as soldiers trying to rejoin civil society after the Second World War, is being screened in the festival's Un Certain Regard section. Continue reading

Cinema's most revered and prolific leftist filmmaker Ken Loach ("Kes," "The Wind That Shakes The Barley," "I, Daniel Blake") returns once more to Cannes with yet another social-activist film to touch the hearts and minds of audiences. Loach works with his longtime screenwriting partner Paul Laverty to dramatize the toll being exacting on working British families by a government system designed to humiliate and punish average citizens attempting to live productive lives. Loach's filmic efforts may not always strike with the intended affect, but his films are never less than rigorous and convincing. Continue reading