I am a New Orleans based writer-director who is putting together a follow-up feature to my film Laundry Day. In 2021 I attached executive producer Corky Kessler and raised money to attend Sundance for the first time (I know, I know… overdue) with him as my defacto host. Of course, Sundance was canceled at the last minute, and I lost a big chunk of the money and what I thought was any hope of rubbing elbows with people who can help my new project, Drinking Music, get made at a substantial budget (my first seven-figure film). A few months later […]

For two weeks I lived within a Cannes-imposed schedule, with every day structured by the bookending options of a new Directors Fortnight title each morning and a new Competition film at night. More importantly, there was the 7 am roll call, when tickets were unlocked online for screenings four days out. This became a relatively smooth process once the functionally unusable press URL initially given for this purpose was changed, but those tickets still went fast. Every day (before the last four days of the festival, when this unloved ritual ceased), my roommates and I would wake up at 6:59, log […]

In France, I mostly don’t get immediately ID’d as American, which I assume is partially because I don’t conform to braying jackass US tourist type and partially because, the older I get, the more I look indeterminately “other.” Generally I first get spoken to in French and play along if I can, then when I can’t keep up I get “Do you speak English?” This is pretty flattering and will obviously only be an increasing asset as the American Experiment continues to go up in flames. A friend noted that, with its virulent displays of racism, Cristian Mungiu’s R.M.N. could just as […]

Day 10 is winding down, and it’s become quite clear that, as was the case for the Berlinale last February, this year’s Cannes is a significant regression after a 2021 edition that overflowed with a pre-pandemic backlog. So many of the films I’ve seen, produced and completed (if not completely developed) in the midst of COVID-era constraints, have felt smaller, cheaper, cruder than what I’ve encountered here in editions past—not a judgment per se, of course, but a new, ill-fitted look from a festival that so pointedly touts its eventitude: the spectacle, the glamor, the scope of its pet auteur’s […]

The man sitting two seats over had averted his eyes from the screen a few times before he finally hit his breaking point. I saw a penis and a drill of some kind coming right for the urethra and heard a doctor saying that he was going to put the device on the “Kalashnikov setting.” What, I wondered, might that mean? When the drill started pumping away and blood spurted, the poor guy had had enough and exited swiftly, and I absolutely couldn’t blame him. This was the second screening of the instantly infamous De Humani Corporis Fabrica that day; after the […]

Triangle of Sadness stands as the conclusion of what Ruben Östlund has recently deemed a trilogy about “being male in our times.” (It will not be a quartet.) As with the middle entry of said triptych (his 2017 Palme d’Or-winner The Square), Triangle is a movie of set pieces blanketed by a shapeshifting social critique obsessed with the myriad ways in which civilization and morality distort human life. Its initial target is the modeling industry, a chapter (the first of three, Östlund’s new favorite number) dominated by cheap shots at the scene’s stereotypical superficiality and cattiness, especially its particular gender […]

Arnaud Desplechin’s Brother and Sister ended to the audible reception of somewhere around seven boos, two derisive whistles and nothing else; if you’re someone who believes indifference is a worse reaction than active hostility, this somehow seemed to split the worst possible difference. Consensus holds, not inaccurately, that Desplechin’s peak work is, at least for now, behind him, with the arguable exception of My Golden Days—non-coincidentally, a prequel to 1996’s My Sex Life. His experiments outside of erratic interpersonal dramas, like 2011’s self-explanatorily titled Jimmy P.: Psychotherapy of a Plains Indian and 2019’s crime drama Oh Mercy!, have been received with tepid bewilderment. I have more sympathy for these […]

Ticketing catastrophes, internet outages at the badge claim station, and complimentary gold buttons featuring lame movie-related quotes from uncited sources in either French or broken English—“I swear to you: I had an eye contact with Timothée,” reads mine—in sans-serif font atop the number 75. A quick Google search tells me that the traditional gift to celebrate a 75th anniversary is diamonds, but two days into Cannes’ three-quarter century extravaganza I might’ve guessed it was lead.  The inauspicious Opening Night Film selection, Michel Hazanivicius’s Final Cut, was in lockstep with the festival’s other launch fumbles. Scooped up by Thierry after the […]

As, just before heading to the airport, I post this brief list of films we at Filmmaker are especially excited to see at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival, cinema’s most prestigious annual event is already having something of a bumpy opening, with a new (for those who didn’t experience its debut in last year’s low-key mid-pandemic edition) ticketing system returning all manner of “504 Gateway” errors and obscure messages, some of which contain their own brutal poetry: “Validation of viewstate failed… Purpose, purpose…” (Press has seen some alleviation as those badges are now redirected to a new server, while market […]

I typically aim to use this last post as my awards clean-up, wherein I tackle the prize-winning films I didn’t address in my previous dispatches. This year will have to be different, since Spike Lee’s jury trophied many of the films I already found generative enough to have given them space here. Not atypically, though, the panel failed to hand any accolades to the two films that in my opinion were the most laudable among the competition slate—namely, Bruno Dumont’s rapturously off-kilter France, which could have justifiably taken any prize on the menu except Best Actor (although Macron’s unknowing cameo […]