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“We Do Believe the Audience is More Intelligent Than the Industry Thinks: Producer Sylvain Corbeil on the Cannes-Premiering Peak Everything
Peak Everything
Since founding Metafilms over two decades ago, Montreal-based producer Sylvain Corbeil has become a prolific and respected pillar of Quebec’s independent film scene, collaborating with filmmakers whose bold and idiosyncratic visions have served to bolster the place of modern Canadian cinema on a world stage. Alongside fellow producer Nancy Grant, who co-leads Metafilms, Corbeil has championed the work of widely acclaimed French-language filmmakers like Xavier Dolan (Mommy, It’s Only the End of the World), Maxime Giroux (Felix & Meira), Denis Côté (That Kind of Summer), Monia Chokri (A Brother’s Love), and Anne Émond (Nuit #1, Our Loved Ones). A frequent presence at the Cannes Film Festival, Corbeil has found particular success there in recent years. Last year, Matthew Rankin’s Universal Language won… Read more
Cannes 2025: The Phoenician Scheme, Nouvelle Vague
Benicio del Toro, Michael Cera and Mia Threapleton in The Phoenician Scheme
Though Wes Anderson’s last consensus-acclaimed feature was 2014’s The Grand Budapest Hotel, his subsequent, progressively more divisive films have been profitable enough to emerge at a regular clip. I’m guessing this is thanks to the purchasing power of elder millennials who had Rushmore and Royal Tenenbaums imprinted on them in their teen years and now faithfully show up for each new work. For those unshakeable fans, myself included, the question of whether Anderson’s entered an era of baroque and inadvertent self-parody is a non-issue, and The Phoenician Scheme is unlikely to change anyone’s mind in either direction. Even by his own standards, it’s a conspicuously eccentric film that once again approaches the present moment through 20th-century analogy rather than direct… Read more
“Working with Non-Actors, Children, Animals, Crowds and on Water”: Hasan Hadi on Cannes 2025 Premiere The President’s Cake
The President's Cake
An autocrat forcing the populace to celebrate his birthday—where’s the novelty in that? Little children on terrifying birthday-dessert-making duties embarking on a perilous adventure in the big war torn city? Now that’s a story! According to Iraqi director Hasan Hadi, that's a story worth salvaging from Saddam Hussein’s reign that, along with the American wars, plagued audiences’ longterm perceptions of Iraq and its cinema. So, he decided to make his feature debut with The President’s Cake, a realistic yet fable-like narrative—a project developed at the Sundance Feature Film Program, then received an SFFILM Rainin Grant and was selected for preview at the Doha Film Institute’s Qumra event, where the filmmaker received the news of its selection at the Directors’ Fortnight section… Read more
Cannes 2025: Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning; Eddington; Sirât
Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning
Eight years after Cannes dipped its toes into VR waters with their presentation of Alejandro González Iñárritu‘s ultra-haptic empathy machine Carne y Arena (2017), the festival’s general delegate Thierry Frémaux continues to promote cinema’s expanding XR toolbox. In addition to bringing back the festival's Immersive Competition for a second year—from what I saw of the press tour held a few hours before the Opening Ceremony, it would be difficult to justify a third—Frémaux also, per an interview with Screen International, trained this year’s festival staff using an AI version of his own voice when he couldn't be present to address them himself. Despite the increased productivity and efficiency this technology no doubt afforded him, he maintains his wariness: “It doesn’t just… Read more
“Anytime I Could Minimize the Use of Verbal Language and Rely on Other Means to Advance the Story, That’s What I Did”: Lloyd Lee Choi on His Cannes-Premiering Lucky Lu
Lucky Lu
There’s something about the high-pressure nature of the migrant experience that can make films about it elicit more anxiety than your average thriller. So it is with Lloyd Lee Choi’s Lucky Lu. Set in New York’s Chinatown—a backdrop captured by DOP Norm Li as a caliginous labyrinth of alleyways and sepulchral rooms—Lee Choi’s feature debut centers on the titular Lu (Chang Chen), a Chinese delivery rider who’s spent years away from his wife and daughter, and now, having drummed up enough cash to secure an apartment for three, readies to welcome them to the city. Title notwithstanding, however, Lu might as well be cursed. A few hours before his family’s arrival, his e-bike is stolen, and the building’s super evicts… Read more
“At the Same Time that We’re Fighting for our Lives, We Are Also Agents of Exploitation, of Domination, of Violence”: Pedro Pinho on his Cannes-Premiering I Only Rest In The Storm
I Only Rest in the Storm
Pedro Pinho’s Cannes-premiering I Only Rest In The Storm follows Sergio, a naive do-gooder who, as the film’s title implies, finds inner peace in places of chaos. In this case it’s the hurly-burly of Guinea-Bissau, where the Portuguese environmental engineer has been hired to produce an impact report that will pave the way for a road-building project to commence. There he meets two charismatic characters, party-loving besties Diara and Guillermhe, the former a native, the latter a Black Brazilian expat. And thus begins a bizarre triangle of love-hate attraction - fueled by a colonialist past, a capitalist present, and an uncertain future for them all. Just prior to the film’s Un Certain Regard debut, Filmmaker reached out to the Portuguese director… Read more
