Cannes 2025
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“‘History’ with a Capital ‘H'”: Mascha Schilinski on Cannes 2025 Award-Winner Sound of Falling
Mascha Schilinski’s Sound of Falling was so rapturously acclaimed upon its premiere on the first full day of Cannes 2025 that some thought they’d already seen a possible Palme d’Or winner. In the end, her film shared the Jury Prize with another adored Competition title, Sirât, whose end-times death-trip might seem to overshadow the ordinary-sounding logline for Sound of Falling: four generations of girls on a farm in Germany. But this film swiftly establishes itself as an equally virtuosic secret history and sustained experiment in female subjectivity in kaleidoscopic form, drawing on scenes and notes from journals and voices from […]
by Nicolas Rapold on Jun 2, 2025 -
“There Was No Going Around Gaza”: Raoul Peck on Cannes 2025 Premiere Orwell: 2+2=5
Raoul Peck’s new documentary Orwell: 2+2=5 opens with a credit sequence featuring images of what appear to be microscopic larvae wriggling across the screen. The message seems clear: something nefarious is afoot on this globe, but still in its incipient stages. If we fail to act, it’s going to get much worse. In recent years, the filmmaker has made direct, no-nonsense use of the nonfiction form to address, from various angles, the rot of white supremacy, its historical roots and its unchecked future. Building on I Am Not Your Negro, Silver Dollar Road, the miniseries Exterminate All the Brutes and […]
by Inney Prakash on May 29, 2025 -
Cannes 2025: Entroncamento, The Mastermind
In a piece about the documentaries at this year’s Cannes, Slate’s Sam Adams noted the existence of Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk but declined to name the section it was in, referring to it only as “a low-profile sidebar devoted to independent productions.” That would be ACID, which—with the possible exception of the CINEF section that shows film school shorts—is, yes, probably the lowest-profile of the Cannes premieres sections. To decide ACID isn’t worth naming is a reminder of the infinite proliferation of hierarchies at Cannes; there are dark rumors that even though the press badges are […]
by Vadim Rizov on May 25, 2025 -
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 […]
by Blake Williams on May 23, 2025 -
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 […]
by Vadim Rizov on May 23, 2025 -
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 […]
by Vadim Rizov on May 18, 2025 -
“Working with Non-Actors, Children, Animals, Crowds and on Water”: Hasan Hadi on Cannes 2025 Premiere 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 […]
by Ritesh Mehta on May 18, 2025 -
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 […]
by Vadim Rizov on May 16, 2025 -
Poster Premiere: ACID 2025 Selection A Light That Never Goes Out
We’re pleased to premiere the poster for ACID 2025 selection A Light That Never Goes Out. From the Cannes section’s website: Lauri-Matti Parppei, who has recorded several albums in a parallel life, takes us to their hometown in Northern Finland, a place where people speak little and depression is a taboo – this is Pauli’s illness, as he returns home to heal his wounds. With a melancholic tone, the film, through its precise, no-frills directing style, weaves its story like a musical score. Pauli rejects success and returns to life thanks to a chaotic lineup of outcasts. Friendship, stronger than anything, […]
by Filmmaker Staff on May 13, 2025
