When you have one of the most anticipated films of the year about to premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, how do you prepare? For Asif Kapadia — director of Amy, the forthcoming documentary about the British jazz singer Amy Winehouse — the answer is to direct another film. His adaptation of Kurban Said’s 1937 novel Ali and Nino is the first fictional narrative the British director has helmed since 2007’s Far North; both it and Amy are his first features since 2010’s much-admired documentary Senna. For his fictional narratives, Kapadia has made a habit of shooting in remote, unique locations. […]
by Kaleem Aftab on May 13, 2015When Adèle eats spaghetti, it’s a sensual affair. The camera studies every move of her mouth, every lick of her fingers and knife. Her eyes are saucers. Her full lips pout. Unlike the slurpy absurdity of noodle-eating in Juzo Itami’s Tampopo, in Blue is the Warmest Color, spaghetti is no laughing matter; it’s a matter of love. And, since it’s directed by Abdellatif Kechiche, it’s also a matter of class: Adèle’s comfort food indexes a working-class background that cannot be left behind. “That is a theme that one could say is central across all my films,” Kechiche said to me […]
by Livia Bloom Ingram on Oct 21, 2013In a ceremony hosted by actress Audrey Tatou and with a jury headed by director Steven Spielberg, the 2013 Cannes Film Festival awarded its top prize, the Palme d’Or, to Abdellatif Kechiche’s lesbian teen romance, Blue is the Warmest Color. In an unusual move for this auteur-centric festival, the jury gave the award to Kechiche and his two lead actresses, Adele Exarchopoulos and Lea Seydoux. The three-hour film, which also won the FIPRESCI prize, was bought for the U.S. during the festival by IFC’s Sundance Selects. The jury distributed awards evenly among the majority of films that had been buzzed […]
by Scott Macaulay on May 26, 2013Deeply shrouded in mystery, the election of the Pope is a strange amalgam of modern democracy and ancient ritual. It is also a circumstance that seems ripe for farce. At least Nanni Moretti, perhaps Italy’s most revered contemporary filmmaker, seems to think so. His newest film, We Have a Pope, which premiered last year in Cannes as Habemus Papam, is an often funny, sneakily moving investigation of the Vatican’s less-than-infallible process of choosing the divine, and one man’s rejection of his supposedly divine calling. Starring Michel Piccoli as a would-be Pope who disappears after his election and Moretti himself as […]
by Brandon Harris on Apr 4, 2012Winner of the Palme d’Or at this past year’s Cannes Film Festival, Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives is an enlightening journey graced with a fairytale feel that’s unlike anything you’ll see in theaters this year. By Howard Feinstein.
by Howard Feinstein on Jan 24, 2011