Screen Talk's Winners and Losers of the 2025 Cannes Film Festival

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2 days ago

As IndieWire wraps up our Cannes Film Festival coverage — see our favorite films of the festival here and our annual critics survey here — so does the Screen Talk podcast. This week, hosts Anne Thompson and Ryan Lattanzio debate the late-breaking premieres like 'The History of Sound' and 'The Mastermind,' finally get a chance to gush over 'Sentimental Value,' and speculate on what countries might submit Cannes premieres for the International Feature Oscar.
Since Iran will never submit its dissident director Jafar Panahi, who's back in his home country post-Cannes despite legal battles and decades of censorship attempts by the Islamic Republic, for Palme d'Or winner 'It Was Just an Accident,' we're going with Luxembourg as the country to pick this film for the Oscars. Both France and Luxembourg have production stakes in the film, though France will have plenty of other contenders to work with.
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Norway, no question, will submit Grand Prix winner 'Sentimental Value' from Joachim Trier, which Anne says has one of the great onscreen sister bonding moments of all time shared by actresses Renate Reinsve and Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas. Both could be in the Oscar running with the right Neon campaign. (Check out our no-holds-barred interview with Tom Quinn on the ground here.)
Anne finally saw 'Sîrat,' the French-Spanish co-production directed by Oliver Laxe, another late-festival Neon pick-up, despite watching some of it with her hands over her eyes. She compares the film to 'The Wages of Fear' and its remake 'Sorcerer' as a road odyssey in which trucks plow across the Moroccan desert. The great Sergi López stars as a father who, traveling with his young son, searches for his missing daughter amid marauding throngs of drug-fueled ravers. Ryan rewatched the film and has a better grasp of what it's trying to say now. That morning in Cannes, he just wasn't in the mood for this particularly fatalistic, dance-until-we-die apocalyptic vision.
The hosts are split on Kelly Reichardt's anti-heist movie 'The Mastermind,' which rigorously stages with impeccable 1970 detail a story of a clumsy art thief (Josh O'Connor) falling down the hole of his own poorly hatched plan. Anne points out that Reichardt is 'slow as molasses' as ever, while Ryan lapped up the period elements and casting, even if the charismatic Alana Haim is gravely underused.
Also, we wanted more heat (i.e. sex) from Oliver Hermanus' 'The History of Sound,' which features a great O'Connor performance as well as another moving turn from Paul Mescal. Ryan likes this film more than Anne, though they both admit it's a perhaps too handsomely made period love story.
Finally, we share thoughts on the season finale of 'The Last of Us,' which ends with a soap-operatic-level cliffhanger that will keep us on edge for the show's return more than a year from now.Best of IndieWire
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