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The Age
25-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Age
Arson, dissidents and jabs at Trump: The biggest moments from the 78th Cannes Film Festival
Overall, it was a good festival for young women. The Dardenne brothers' Young Mothers, about a group of girls in a Belgian shelter for single mothers, won best script. The Little Sister star Nadia Melliti won best actress for her portrayal of a teenage girl in a traditional Moroccan family living in France who realises she is attracted to women. And the superb German film Sound of Falling by Mascha Schilinski, about four women living in different eras on a remote farm, shared the jury prize with Sirat, by French director Oliver Laxe, which kicks off at a rave in the Moroccan desert, where the drugged-up dancers have little idea that war is on the doorstep. And so much more that was worth seeing, even if it didn't win anything. Keep eyes peeled for Julie Ducournau's Alpha, her follow-up to Titane and just as confrontingly weird; Romería, Carla Simon's semi-autobiographical search for the story of her parents, who died of AIDS in '80s Spain; and the glorious Nouvelle Vague, Richard Linklater's French-language imagining of the making of Jean-Luc Godard's pivotal film Breathless. Watching young French actor Guillaume Marbeck as Godard, permanently behind sunglasses and smoking like a tramp steamer, was one of Cannes' greatest pleasures. Trading places Three debut films by big-name actors screened in various sections of the festival: enough to constitute a trend. Scarlett Johansson's Eleanor the Great, starring 95-year-old June Squibb as an American-born Jew who passes herself off as a Holocaust survivor to make new friends, was not a hit: critics found itsentimental, offensively cloth-eared about the significance of survivor status or, in the worst reviews, both. Kristen Stewart's The Chronology of Water, a young woman's tortured story of survival, was emotionally raw but formally complex – all rapid cuts, odd angles and muddled timescales – in a way that puts it out of the running for multiplex play. The most warmly received was Urchin by Harris Dickinson – the beefcake boy from Triangle of Sadness – whose film featured a bravura performance by Frank Dillane as a London street-dweller. Definitely watch out for that one. Political realities Robert De Niro set the tone for this year's festival on opening night, where he used his acceptance speech for an honorary Palme d'Or to have a dig at the ' philistine president ' of the United States where people 'are fighting like hell for the democracy we once took for granted'. President Donald Trump's mooted 100 per cent tariffs on films 'made in foreign lands' didn't seem to dampen the market, which exists to sell films internationally and enable co-production deals. But it drew scorn from director Wes Anderson in a press conference for his typically whimsical film The Phoenician Scheme. 'The tariff is fascinating because of the 100 per cent. I feel this means Trump is saying he's going to take all the money,' he mused acidly. He also wondered whether a movie could be held up in customs. 'I feel it doesn't ship that way.' Cannes continued to declare its support for Ukraine, including an entire day of documentaries about its continuing resistance to the Russian invasion, while more than 900 actors and filmmakers signed an open letter condemning the continuing Israeli onslaught on Gaza, declaring themselves 'ashamed' of their industry's 'passivity' in the face of the siege. On the opening night, Jury president Juliette Binoche paid tribute to photojournalist Fatima Hassouna, who was killed in an Israeli air strike the day after learning that a documentary about her work, Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk, had been chosen to screen in Cannes. Hassouna's portrait hung in the press room for the festival's duration. But perhaps the most vivid political presence was Julian Assange, who posed for the cameras wearing a white T-shirt inscribed 'Stop Israel' and bearing the names of 4986 Palestinian children killed in Gaza. He was in Cannes to support Eugene Jarecki's documentary about his work, The Six Billion Dollar Man. Cannes craziness Loading Before the power failure, the biggest disaster on the Croisette came right at the beginning, when tumultuous winds blew down one of the Riviera beach's famous palm trees, injuring a passing Japanese producer. The natural world isn't usually much of a felt presence in Cannes, but there was a more cheerful story about one of the biggest luxury hotels, the Majestic, employing a falconer and team of hawks to chase away seagulls that dive-bomb celebrity plates and have been known to make off with entire lobsters. Shark attack Australia didn't have a film in competition, but Sean Byrne's bloody genre romp Dangerous Animals had a triumphant showing in the parallel program of the Directors' Fortnight before its release in Australia next month. Women screamed as Jai Courtney, playing an ocker villain obsessed with shark behaviour, dangled his kidnapped shark bait over the side of his tour boat.
Sydney Morning Herald
25-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
Arson, dissidents and jabs at Trump: The biggest moments from the 78th Cannes Film Festival
Overall, it was a good festival for young women. The Dardenne brothers' Young Mothers, about a group of girls in a Belgian shelter for single mothers, won best script. The Little Sister star Nadia Melliti won best actress for her portrayal of a teenage girl in a traditional Moroccan family living in France who realises she is attracted to women. And the superb German film Sound of Falling by Mascha Schilinski, about four women living in different eras on a remote farm, shared the jury prize with Sirat, by French director Oliver Laxe, which kicks off at a rave in the Moroccan desert, where the drugged-up dancers have little idea that war is on the doorstep. And so much more that was worth seeing, even if it didn't win anything. Keep eyes peeled for Julie Ducournau's Alpha, her follow-up to Titane and just as confrontingly weird; Romería, Carla Simon's semi-autobiographical search for the story of her parents, who died of AIDS in '80s Spain; and the glorious Nouvelle Vague, Richard Linklater's French-language imagining of the making of Jean-Luc Godard's pivotal film Breathless. Watching young French actor Guillaume Marbeck as Godard, permanently behind sunglasses and smoking like a tramp steamer, was one of Cannes' greatest pleasures. Trading places Three debut films by big-name actors screened in various sections of the festival: enough to constitute a trend. Scarlett Johansson's Eleanor the Great, starring 95-year-old June Squibb as an American-born Jew who passes herself off as a Holocaust survivor to make new friends, was not a hit: critics found itsentimental, offensively cloth-eared about the significance of survivor status or, in the worst reviews, both. Kristen Stewart's The Chronology of Water, a young woman's tortured story of survival, was emotionally raw but formally complex – all rapid cuts, odd angles and muddled timescales – in a way that puts it out of the running for multiplex play. The most warmly received was Urchin by Harris Dickinson – the beefcake boy from Triangle of Sadness – whose film featured a bravura performance by Frank Dillane as a London street-dweller. Definitely watch out for that one. Political realities Robert De Niro set the tone for this year's festival on opening night, where he used his acceptance speech for an honorary Palme d'Or to have a dig at the ' philistine president ' of the United States where people 'are fighting like hell for the democracy we once took for granted'. President Donald Trump's mooted 100 per cent tariffs on films 'made in foreign lands' didn't seem to dampen the market, which exists to sell films internationally and enable co-production deals. But it drew scorn from director Wes Anderson in a press conference for his typically whimsical film The Phoenician Scheme. 'The tariff is fascinating because of the 100 per cent. I feel this means Trump is saying he's going to take all the money,' he mused acidly. He also wondered whether a movie could be held up in customs. 'I feel it doesn't ship that way.' Cannes continued to declare its support for Ukraine, including an entire day of documentaries about its continuing resistance to the Russian invasion, while more than 900 actors and filmmakers signed an open letter condemning the continuing Israeli onslaught on Gaza, declaring themselves 'ashamed' of their industry's 'passivity' in the face of the siege. On the opening night, Jury president Juliette Binoche paid tribute to photojournalist Fatima Hassouna, who was killed in an Israeli air strike the day after learning that a documentary about her work, Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk, had been chosen to screen in Cannes. Hassouna's portrait hung in the press room for the festival's duration. But perhaps the most vivid political presence was Julian Assange, who posed for the cameras wearing a white T-shirt inscribed 'Stop Israel' and bearing the names of 4986 Palestinian children killed in Gaza. He was in Cannes to support Eugene Jarecki's documentary about his work, The Six Billion Dollar Man. Cannes craziness Loading Before the power failure, the biggest disaster on the Croisette came right at the beginning, when tumultuous winds blew down one of the Riviera beach's famous palm trees, injuring a passing Japanese producer. The natural world isn't usually much of a felt presence in Cannes, but there was a more cheerful story about one of the biggest luxury hotels, the Majestic, employing a falconer and team of hawks to chase away seagulls that dive-bomb celebrity plates and have been known to make off with entire lobsters. Shark attack Australia didn't have a film in competition, but Sean Byrne's bloody genre romp Dangerous Animals had a triumphant showing in the parallel program of the Directors' Fortnight before its release in Australia next month. Women screamed as Jai Courtney, playing an ocker villain obsessed with shark behaviour, dangled his kidnapped shark bait over the side of his tour boat.
Morocco World
24-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Morocco World
Blackout Disrupts Southern France Ahead of Cannes Festival's Closing Ceremony
Rabat – A major electricity outage struck France's Alpes-Maritimes region on Saturday morning, cutting power to 160,000 homes and affecting the city of Cannes as it hosts the final day of its internationally renowned film festival. Local authorities confirmed that the outage, which began shortly after 10:00 a.m. (08:00 GMT), was caused by a fire at a power substation in the nearby village of Tanneron. Police sources, speaking anonymously to AFP, said the blaze was likely the result of arson. Despite the disruption, the Cannes Film Festival announced that the official closing ceremony would proceed as scheduled at 6:40 p.m. local time (1640 GMT), thanks to backup power systems. 'The Palais des Festivals has switched to an independent power supply, allowing all scheduled events and screenings, including the Closing Ceremony, to proceed as planned and under normal conditions,' festival organizers said in a statement. Read also: French Culture Minister Visits Moroccan Pavilion at Cannes Film Festival However, screenings at the Cineum cinema were temporarily suspended and will resume once the main grid supply is restored. Morning sessions at other festival venues were also briefly interrupted during the switch to generator power. The outage has caused widespread issues across the glamorous Mediterranean city, knocking out traffic lights and forcing the closure of several shops along the city's main commercial avenues. Nevertheless, the festival continues undeterred. Press events for films such as the Dardenne brothers' Young Mothers and Martin Bourboulon's 13 Days, 13 Nights are still going ahead. The final ceremony, where French actress Juliette Binoche and her jury are expected to announce this year's Palme d'Or winner and other top prizes, is set to close out nearly two weeks of red-carpet premieres, international film showcases, and political discourse. This comes weeks after France was impacted by a large-scale power outage on April 28 that struck the Iberian Peninsula. System operators reported that three significant incidents together caused a loss exceeding 2.2 gigawatts of electricity, which led to the automatic separation of the Iberian Peninsula from the rest of Europe's power grid. Tags: CannesFrancePower outage
Irish Times
24-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
April review: This five-star film is difficult and abrasive, but it's also cinematic poetry
April Director : Dea Kulumbegashvili Cert : None Starring : Ia Sukhitashvili, Kakha Kintsurashvili, Merab Ninidze, Roza Kancheishvili, Ana Nikolava, David Beradze, Sandro Kalandadze Running Time : 2 hrs 14 mins Dea Kulumbegashvili 's sprawling meditation on gynaecological morality, which literal-minded distributors really have held back until TS Eliot 's 'cruellest month', is quite unlike anything else currently in cinemas. The Georgian film combines a ruthless naturalism with deliberately puzzling fantastic asides. It bolts you to your seat with an early real-life childbirth scene that spares the squeamish no amount of bodily fluids. But there are certain familiarities here. Winner of the special jury prize at Venice, April swells with the sort of grand visual gestures that have long characterised European art-house cinema. A cut to poppies in rural spring. Images of a golem ploughing through the foliage. Most strikingly, a huge shot of clouds building and then emptying rain on the Caucasian wilderness. It is comforting to know someone still believes in the audience's patience. All this surrounds the sort of story that, in the hands of a Dardenne or a Loach, could have developed in small-scale and close-focused fashion. Before we get there we experience a perplexing image of a hulking beast, nobbled in its vague humanity, existing to the sounds of playful children and babbling water. The wheezy breathing suggests vulnerability rather than threat – the sense of a troubled soul in an unfriendly world. Perhaps a troubled soul about to enter that world. Speaking of arrival, we are then flung into that graphic birth scene. No doubt the director, who spent a year researching in maternity hospitals, expects us to be grown up about the ripping flesh and unhappy yells. But she will also accept that some recoil is natural. Here is a slice of the human journey too many of us know little about. READ MORE Nina (Ia Sukhitashvili), a skilled obstetrician, is juggling intersecting crises in her native Georgia. That baby is born dead. The bereaved father, apparently unhappy that a woman was in charge, is intent on putting the blame on our protagonist. [ April director Dea Kulumbegashvili: 'The woman was still alive, but they already knew they would not be able to save her' Opens in new window ] It does not help that she is known for performing abortions on what seems a semi-legal basis. The procedure is permitted in Georgia, but women can find it enormously difficult to access services. There is a sense of a professional driven to renegade status just for attempting a humane approach to women's healthcare. Kulumbegashvili, whose first feature, Beginning, was a hit at Cannes, is not the sort of film-maker to turn her heroine (if that's what she is) into a bland secular saint. Nina is not above picking up strangers in the wilderness for anonymous sex. She has a severe manner that allows few clues as to her motivations. There is something of Cristian Mungiu's Romanian social naturalism about the film's investigation of bureaucratic misogyny up and down the hierarchies. As the film progresses we get the sense, familiar in this country and others, that the authorities favour a strategy of pretending more awkward problems don't exist. If we just shuffle by, close to the wall, the direst consequences may be avoided. Nina greets this with something between ennui and weary fury, Yet the lasting impressions from April are not the intricacies of these arguments. What stick in the brain are the impressionistic flourishes and the moments of austere bravado. Sometimes those serve the theme. A lengthy abortion sequence, in which only middle sections of the patient's body are seen, presses home the fleshy, uncomfortable realities of the argument (and offers a complement to the earlier birth, of course). The mysterious supernatural humanoid asks weirder questions. And that brooding storm is among the most impressive sequences in any film this year. We have a new cinematic poet in Kulumbegashvili, and she doesn't care if the stanzas rhyme. Difficult. Abrasive. Worth persevering with. In cinemas from Friday, April 25th
Khaleej Times
17-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Khaleej Times
Belgian actress Emilie Dequenne dead at 43: Reports
Belgian actress Emilie Dequenne died of a rare cancer on Sunday in a hospital just outside Paris, her family and her agent told AFP. She was 43 years old. She revealed in October 2023 that she was suffering from adrenocortical carcinoma, a cancer of the adrenal gland. Her first role in the Rosetta, by the Dardenne brothers, launched her career after she won best actress at the Cannes film festival for her performance in the film, which also won the Golden Palm. She picked up a string of other awards in appearances in mainly French-language films, including the 2009 movie The Girl on the Train and the 2012 drama Our Children. She returned to the Cannes film festival in 2024 to mark the 25th anniversary of her triumph there with the Dardenne brothers, and to promote the English-language disaster movie, Survive, released the same year. It was the last film she appeared in before illness forced her to stop working.
