Latest in Festivals

The Cannes Film Festival has a long and distinguished track record of spotlighting landmark works in the history of cinema with its highest honor, the Palme d’or. The festival first gave out its highest honor in 1939, but the award hasn’t always been called the Palme d’or, nor has it always been given to just one…

UPDATED with winners list: Swedish filmmaker Ruben Östlund led one of his now trademark primal screams inside the Palais on Saturday night as his latest film, Triangle of Sadness, was crowned with the Cannes Film Festival’s Palme d'Or. This is the second time Östlund has won the prestigious prize, following 2017's The…

A diet of rice and tofu, plenty of regular, gentle exercise and excellent hospitals: the Japanese have nailed the formula for getting old prolifically. With a little less than 30% of the population over 65, Japanese society is now officially termed as "super-aged." Meanwhile, thanks to a low birth rate and an…

The Cannes Film Festival's Un Certain Regard sidebar handed out its prizes tonight with top honors going to Lise Akoka and Romane Gueret's The Worst Ones (Les Pires). The Jury Prize was awarded to Saim Sadig's Joyland, the first Pakistani movie ever in official selection at Cannes. The Worst Ones is a drama about a…

While the evening belonged to castmembers Ahmed Sylla, Annabelle Lengronne, Stephane Bak and director Leonor Serraille, Helen Mirren and Andie MacDowell provided an entertaining diversion at the Cannes screening of Mother And Son (Un Petit Frere). The glamorous duo did an impromptu dance together as they made their…

Javier Bardem addressed a packed Salle Bunuel on Friday as part of the Cannes Film Festival's 75th birthday celebrations. Dressed down, relaxed and very, very funny, the actor addressed a wide range of topics in a Q&A that covered a lot of ground, from his marriage to Penélope Cruz to his experience on the Pirates of t…

Lucas' bishop warns him of the dangers before he sets out to minister to a remote community of Icelanders in Cannes Un Certain Regard title Godland. "It's easy to go mad there," he explains at his Copenhagen dining table, steadily chewing his way through the fabulous feast in front of him. Iceland, where the sun never…

Kelly Reichardt has been making minimal Americana since the early 1990s, mostly around the state of Oregon where she lives and mostly about her favored awkward squad: quiet square pegs who don't quite fit the round holes society provides. In this ongoing quest she has found many collaborators, but none more attuned to…

Belgium's Lukas Dhont takes a deserved step up to the Cannes Film Festival competition with Close, only his second film — a minimalist melodrama that shows a definite growth in visual style but may be confronting to some with its deliberately unhurried, Eric Rohmer-esque aesthetic. The international success of Dhont's…

Esteemed Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda walks a fine line between keen social observation and overt sentimental emotionalism in Cannes competition title Broker. Winner of the Palme d'Or in 2018 for Shoplifters and winner of the Jury Prize five years before that for Like Father Like Son, the writer-director once…

A tailor wrestles with his sexuality in The Blue Caftan, a tender Moroccan drama in Un Certain Regard from Maryam Touzani. Also a subtle portrait of a marriage, it slowly unveils the issues of its characters with an empathetic, admiring gaze: these are two people who are highly principled and strive to be thoughtful…

Arguably the most timely film in Cannes this year, Butterfly Vision will also likely remain one of the least seen, in that it exists overwhelmingly as a marker of a very specific time and place rather than as anything many people might actually choose to watch. Presented in the Un Certain Regard sidebar, this somber…