Corneliu Porumboiu returned to Cannes ten years after 2009's Police, Adjective with The Whistlers, one of the freshest genre hybrids in a festival full of them. Set in Porumboiu's native Romania, it concerns a corrupt cop who is in league with gangsters based on Gomera in the Canary Islands. But what makes this film…
Since his 2005 Sundance winner 40 Shades of Blue, Ira Sachs has been synonymous with the U.S. indie sector, so it was a huge leap for the director to make the leap into this year's Cannes competition. With a strong international cast headed by Isabelle Huppert and including Marisa Tomei, Brendan Gleeson, and Jérémie…
Although Pedro Almodóvar is considered a fixture in the Cannes competition, he's only ever won the main prize once, with 2006's Volver. Indeed, after 1999's Cannes hit All About My Mother was pipped at the very last minute by the Dardenne brothers' Rosetta, the director briefly followed Woody Allen's example by…
Legendary trio Claude Lelouch, Anouk Aimée and Jean-Louis Trintignant reunited for The Best Years Of A Life (Les Plus Belles Années D'Une Vie) some 53 years after the classic French love story A Man And A Woman won the Palme d'Or and went on to take two Oscars. The new film, a continuation of the story, screened out…
One of the breakout filmmakers of this year’s Cannes, Les Misérables writer/director Ladj Ly’s star is on the rise. His feature debut premiered to much fanfare in Competition, just after he signed with CAA and had already been named a Deadline One to Watch. And then, the film sold to Amazon Studios in one of the…
Oscar-winning No Man’s Land filmmaker Danis Tanovic is taking a break from telling stories that reflect his experiences having lived through a devastating war in his native Bosnia, turning to the adaptation of the James Patterson and Liza Marklund bestseller The Postcard Killings. In town to screen footage for buyers…
In just under 20 years, Austria's Jessica Hausner has made a name for herself as a director of beguiling and provocative films that explore the mysteries of modern life. With her sixth film, the Cannes Competition entry Little Joe, she takes on the concept of happiness, casting Emily Beecham as a woman who thinks she…
It's hard to believe but Midge Costin—who worked on bombastic '90s action classics such as Con Air, The Rock and Armageddon—used to be intimidated by the field she now specializes in: sound on film. "It always seemed so technical," she laughs. But after embracing her fears, Costin has become an expert in the history…
Returning Russian director Kantemir Balagov, who won a FIPRESCI Prize with 2017's Closeness, and served on Cannes’ Un Certain Regard jury last year, is back in that section with Beanpole. The film follows two young women as they search for meaning and hope in the struggle to rebuild their lives among the post-siege…
A coming-of-age story that focuses on a young girl’s grief process, first-time feature director Sofia Quiros’ Land Of Ashes (Ceniza Negra) debuted as part of the Critics’ Week program here. It’s a personal drama from the Costa Rican filmmaker who explained at Deadline’s Cannes Studio, “I was trying to tell the story…
Levan Akin, a Swedish-born filmmaker of Georgian descent, is in Cannes with his third film, And Then We Danced, about a young man’s sexual awakening. The Directors' Fortnight title’s subject matter required the team to be scrappy while shooting in Tbilisi, he explained during a visit to Deadline’s Cannes Studio.
The…
First-time feature director Danielle Lessovitz’s Un Certain Regard entry Port Authority premiered to strong notices here in Cannes. A love story set in New York City’s kiki ballroom scene, it stars Dunkirk‘s Fionn Whitehead, newcomer Leyna Bloom and American Honey‘s McCaul Lombardi. They along with associate producer…
