Cannes Film Festival 2014
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2014: The Year in 11 Film Festivals
The start of the Sundance Film Festival is when film festivals traditionally reboot. A new wave of films comes in with the new year and festival films that have been trotting around the globe throughout 2014, especially the last three months of the year, will fall by the wayside. The changing modes of distribution of recent years, and the increased number of films being released, has meant that frequently the only time to catch certain films – often the best of the year – is at film festivals. A few years ago, some were questioning whether film festivals were still relevant, […]
by Kaleem Aftab on Jan 13, 2015 -
Dispatches from Cannes and LAFF
Cannes Film Festival 2014 by Aaron Hillis Ken Loach. Olivier Assayas. Atom Egoyan. The Dardenne Brothers. The world’s most prestigious film festival may have asked the first-ever female Palme d’Or winner (Jane Campion, for 1993’s The Piano) to head up the jury, but Cannes’ main competition was disappointingly chock-full of the usual suspects, i.e., older, white male auteurs on a return visit. At least this year’s top honor went to Turkish auteur Nuri Bilge Ceylan, whose three-hour-plus drama Winter Sleep will be released stateside in time for awards season. The characteristically Chekhovian, uncharacteristically talky epic stars Haluk Bilginer as a […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jul 17, 2014 -
Cannes 2014: 5 Questions for Wild Tales Director Damián Szifrón
Argentine director Damián Szifrón’s Wild Tales opens with the ultimate revenge fantasy, one that unfolds into a firestorm before the credits finish. The film’s six stories get only more wicked, quickly descending into the depths of the human psyche on the verge of imploding. There is truly never a dull moment, a rarity for the Cannes lineup. A waitress gets help paying back the loan shark who drove her father to suicide. A quick road rage incident unfolds into a searing tale that will warn anyone against yelling at another driver. An explosives engineer fires back against his city’s criminal […]
by Ariston Anderson on Jun 10, 2014 -
10 Lessons on Filmmaking from Queen and Country Director John Boorman
English filmmaker John Boorman returned to Cannes this year with Queen and Country, his autobiographical sequel to Hope and Glory. At 81 years old, Boorman claims this is his very last movie, and after such an illustrious career — with films including Point Blank, Deliverance, Excalibur, and The Emerald Forest — he ends on a very high note. In 1952, young Bill Rohan (Callum Turner) must leave his idyllic countryside home on the River Thames for two years’ Army conscription. Rather than being shipped out to fight the Chinese in the Korean War, Bill is enlisted with his friend Percy (Caleb […]
by Ariston Anderson on Jun 2, 2014 -
Cannes 2014: Diary of a Party Crasher
(Aaron Hillis’ first two festival dispatches can be read here.) The past 11 days are mighty hazy. Double that number and you’ll not only know how many features I’ve seen at Cannes, but the quantity of cocktail mixers, dance-a-thons, karaoke get-togethers, and other costly promotional soirées littering the Croisette that I came into like a wrecking ball. Only two of them actually invited me, but I don’t get shut out of parties at Cannes. Sometimes cinema can wait. “You’re burning the candle at both ends,” chided one of my Cannes flatmates just now, an industrious journalist who sees more films […]
by Aaron Hillis on May 30, 2014 -
Cannes 2014: Maps to the Stars, Clouds of Sils Maria, The Tribe, Adieu Au Langage
That’s Cannes, man. The red carpet’s rolled and stashed; you don’t have to go home but you can’t afford to stay here. Turkish auteur Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s three-hour-plus, mixed-reviewed Winter Sleep pocketed the Palme d’Or. Sorry, Naomi Kawase with your so-called “masterpiece” and Xavier Dolan, who said he “deserved” to win top honors, juries are subjective. The more burning issue is when undistributed landmarks like Adieu Au Langage and The Tribe will find their way to your eyes and ears. Until my final take on the 2014 edition of Cannes appears in the next issue of Filmmaker, here are my […]
by Aaron Hillis on May 29, 2014 -
Cannes 2014: Mr. Turner, Salt of the Earth, Force Majeure and the Art of First Impressions
“What’s your elevator pitch?” people ask — the same people who’d recoil backwards, their body language flashing danger signals, if you actually collared them in an actual elevator and launched into a pitch of your movie. Indeed, it’s a paradox of the film business that the smooth-talking hustler is held up as some kind of model when most film industry types would prefer an approach by someone genuine — personable, even — who understands both the cultural and the transactional nature of their business. I watched one exec from an established production and distribution company last week at the 2014 […]
by Scott Macaulay on May 26, 2014 -
Cannes Announces Un Certain Regard and Critics Week Awards
Ahead of Saturday’s Competition ceremony, the Cannes Film Festival sidebars Un Certain Regard and Critics Week have announced their prizewinners. Critics are often want to beat the drum for various UCR selections, decrying their supposed relegation from the main slate, and this year was no different. Hotly tipped titles such as Lisandro Alsono’s Jauja and Jessica Hausner’s Amour Fou nonetheless went home empty-handed, as Kornél Mundruzcó’s more divisive White God scooped up the Prix d’Un Certain Regard. Also the source of critical contention was the opening night selection Party Girl, whose writing-directing trio comprised of Marie Amachoukeli, Claire Burger, Samuel Theis received an ensemble prize. Over in the Critics […]
by Sarah Salovaara on May 23, 2014 -
Cannes Day 9: France Responds to Welcome To New York, Ukraine & Azerbaijan Unite
News items of interest as the Cannes Film Festival rolls through its ninth day: • At The Conversation, Sue Harris has an overview of the furious reception Abel Ferrara’s Welcome To New York has received in France. As she points out, the casting of Gérard Depardieu is far from incidental: Depardieu’s casting breaches the fictional veneer of Ferrara’s film in ways that no other actor could. No one could be more suited to play the nation’s premier “disgraced” Frenchmen than the other principle one. And so, thanks to a volatile mix of the real and the imagined – a heady […]
by Vadim Rizov on May 22, 2014 -
Godard Excuses Himself from Cannes with “Letter in Motion to Gilles Jacob and Thierry Fremaux
More than half a century since Breathless, Godard still enjoys his fair share of devotees despite a descent into overwrought provocations. Rather than field befuddled questions following the premiere of his 3-D talking dog opus Goodbye to Language after its Cannes premiere this morning, the filmmaker recused himself from promotion with the above. Opening with the official seal of “Khan Khanne,” the “Letter in Motion to Gilles Jacob and Thierry Fremaux,” fashions clips from Godard’s own work, asides from Hannah Arendt, and ruminations on these “other worlds” he now inhabits. I began trying to draw out what little French I understand before noticing that Indiewire had translated the […]
by Sarah Salovaara on May 21, 2014
