Cannes wrapped another edition last weekend, and a new batch of prize winners have been announced. I’ve typically used this final wrap-up to offer brief comments on many of said winners, namely those Vadim and I didn’t already address in prior dispatches. Ruben Östlund and co. did well, though, because the only victor currently unremarked upon is Wim Wenders’s Perfect Days, a poetic drama about a Japanese toilet cleaner for which its lead, Koji Yakusho, was awarded Best Actor. We already published my discussion with Wenders about his new 3D film, Anselm, which premiered as a Special Screening earlier in […]

Faith, divinity, transcendence and/or what one might otherwise call “magical” interventions remain thematic staples of arthouse filmmaking, not least in Cannes films that carve out a space for poetic languors and modest effects work which elevate non-commercial films’ often make-do or naturalistic mises-en-scène. Austere Austrian auteur Jessica Hausner is not necessarily in need of stylistic elevation—her ongoing collaboration with DP Martin Gschlacht produces immaculately, almost imposingly detailed front-to-back compositions—yet her work remains devoted to characters navigating the world’s capacity for miracles, spirituality or some great beyond. Despite an opening on-screen trigger warning preparing the audience for upsettingly frank depictions of eating […]

America’s fraught political present meets the less savory corners of cinema’s past in The Sweet East, the first feature directed by celebrated cinematographer Sean Price Williams. Penned with typically acerbic wit by film critic Nick Pinkerton, The Sweet East stars Talia Ryder in a should-be-star-making performance as Lilian, a high school senior who impulsively runs off while on a class trip to Washington, D.C. Joyfully taking up with a group of anarcho-punks, Lilian quickly assumes a new name, only to ditch her new friends and begin a roundabout journey along the Eastern seaboard, encountering a radicalized America of neo-Nazis, leftist […]

Sandra Hüller enters Justine Triet’s Sybil midway, as the hilariously frazzled director of a European co-production who keeps barking in English while trying to keep the set moving. Hüller’s appearance is unexpected in several ways: a film about a therapist-client relationship suddenly shifts focus to The Shoot From Hell, and while the expected reference point for a European movie shot on an island would be Contempt, Triet instead pays homage to Roberto Rossellini’s Stromboli. Nor is this the film’s final narrative slight-of-hand, as Sibyl‘s final act is a drama about alcoholism—throughout, the thematic emphases are always slightly off from where you’d […]

The American Pavilion announces today the six winners of the 2023 Emerging Filmmaker Showcase at Cannes. Selected from 38 short films in competition, winners were chosen by a jury that includes agents, managers, producers, and industry members in the following categories: Student Short Films, Student Documentaries, Emerging Filmmaker Short Films, Emerging Filmmaker Documentaries, Emerging Filmmaker LGBTQ Showcase Films and an Alumni Showcase.  Now in its 26th edition, the Emerging Filmmaker Showcase serves as an opportunity for young filmmakers to have their work seen by Cannes Festival and Film Market attendees. Prize packs this year were sponsored by Final Draft, Write […]

Tourists in Amsterdam typically stop at the Anne Frank House, but the ever-moving conga line of visitors tends to work against reflecting on the reality of its rooms. Steve McQueen’s Occupied City opens up a space for contemplation of a hundred-plus houses, buildings, and other sites across Amsterdam that are marked by World War II and the Holocaust in some way, tracing scars and trauma that may no longer be visible, much less widely known.  Informed by an illustrated book by McQueen’s partner, Bianca Stigter (who directed Three Minutes: A Lengthening), it’s a living atlas: scenes of pandemic-era Amsterdam, overlaid […]