Festivals & Events
Festivals & Events
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Cannes 2025: Highest 2 Lowest, Die My Love, The Love That Remains
Spike Lee’s maligned 2013 update of Park Chan-wook’s 2003 revenge picture, Oldboy, did little to inspire confidence in his latest reimagining of an Asian classic, this time relocating Akira Kurosawa’s High and Low (1963) to DUMBO in Brooklyn. Given a very Spike title of Highest 2 Lowest, the Denzel Washington vehicle is expectedly brimming with the director’s signature expressive filmmaking—wildly cubist jump cut coverage within establishing shots, double-take character greetings and spontaneous shifts into saturated 16mm footage of New York abound—and tends to feel more like another excuse to create a cinematic love letter to his hometown and the Black […]
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Cannes 2025: It Was Just an Accident, The Secret Agent
Sentenced by the Iranian government in 2010 on spurious grounds to six years in prison, a punishment that came with a 20-year ban on making movies, Jafar Panahi immediately set about violating the latter. Title notwithstanding, 2011’s This is Not a Film was what I’d call an “actual movie,” spry and self-reflexive like his first two features, 1995’s The White Balloon and 1997’s The Mirror. The post-Film features that followed—Closed Curtain, Taxi, 3 Faces and No Bears—merited that first post-ban title more. Leaning upon his undeniably courageous status as a (since) multiple-times-jailed dissident filmmaker, those works foregrounded the director as a benign […]
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Rosé, Learning about Co-Productions and a Charli XCX DJ Set: Ani Schroeter’s Cannes Producer Network Diary
Producer Ani Schroeter (Bunnylovr) attended the 2025 Cannes Film Festival as The Gotham Cannes Producers Network Fellow. Below find her wrap on the festival and her experiences at the Producers Network. I feel like I’m coming down from my first week as a high school freshman. The Cannes Film Festival was daunting, invigorating and I cannot wait to go back. While at most U.S. festivals, running into film friends on the street is the norm, at Cannes, they are few and far between. At least for a newbie like me. This was my first year at Cannes, and I am […]
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American Pavilion Emerging Filmmaker Showcase Announces 2025 Winners
The American Pavilion at the Cannes Film Festival has announced the winners of this year’s Emerging Filmmaker Showcase sponsored by Gold House. Gold House awarded the inaugural Cultural Impact award to Andy “Celeste” Diep for Happy New Year, Ms. Luna. This award was conceived to recognize a filmmaker across the showcase’s categories whose work exemplifies excellence in multicultural narratives or underrepresented perspectives. “Happy New Year, Ms. Luna” also won the Emerging Filmmaker LGBTQ+ Award. The film’s director, Andy “Celeste” Diep is a AmPav Student Program Alumni from 2015. “It’s been wonderful to have almost all the 25 filmmakers with their […]
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“We’re All Fighting to Tell Our Stories”: Daniel Tantalean’s Cannes Producer Diary #2
In the Summers producer Daniel Tantalean is a 2025 Gotham Cannes Producer Network Fellow and is blogging about his experience at the festival here at Filmmaker. Like his first post, this second entry takes the form of a letter written home to his fiance. My Love, I’m at the halfway point of this experience. And though I’ve started most mornings by sending you a quick text, just something sweet for you to wake up to, I still miss you terribly. Being here without you by my side feels like something is always slightly out of frame. At this point, sleep […]
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Cannes 2025: The Phoenician Scheme, Nouvelle Vague
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 […]
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Cannes 2025: Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning; Eddington; Sirât
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 […]
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Cannes 2025: Sound of Falling, Two Prosecutors
It’s always a dangerous business when entertainment journalists and film critics feel the need to wade into political commentary, but the Trumpian shadow hovering over everything makes people feel like they have to say something even if they don’t want to. At The Hollywood Reporter, a headline captures the exasperated tone: “Cannes Dealmakers Are Already Sick of Talking About Trump’s Tariffs.” Everyone would prefer to gossip and go about their usual routines even as the theoretically imminent global recession seems to already be in effect. Purely based on visual tells—crowd sizes, the increased number of party invites I’ve gotten—attendance is […]
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“Do You Want To Be a Producer Today?” Daniel Tantalean’s Cannes Producer Diary #1
Each year Filmmaker invites the The Gotham’s Cannes Producer Network Fellows to post about their experiences attending the Cannes Film Festival. This year’s entries begin with a post by Daniel Tantalean, who produced the 2024 Sundance Grand Jury Dramatic Prize Winner, In the Summers. My Love, It took 13 hours, but I finally landed in Nice and perhaps against better judgment, made the bold decision to take a bus and a train with two large suitcases in a city I don’t know, telling myself I’d be “adventurous.” I was met with confusion, crying babies, annoyed passengers and signage in a […]
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17 Films We’re Looking Forward to at Cannes 2025
With the Cannes Film Festival underway until May 24, here are 17 films our editors and writers are keenly anticipating. As always, look throughout the festival for reviews from Vadim Rizov and Blake Williams as well as interviews and festival reports. The Mastermind (Kelly Reichardt) For her return to Cannes following 2022’s Showing Up, Kelly Reichardt latches onto Josh O’Connor’s rising star; after his profile-elevating turns in La chimera and Challengers, he’s in two competition titles this year (the other is Oliver Hermanus’s The History of Sound). Here he’s opposite Alana Haim, who also has a lot to promote with […]
