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Yahoo
13-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
As Cannes 2025 Readies for Opening Night, Political Headwinds Blow
Despite best efforts to talk about movies at Cannes, with the sprawling official selection yet to be screened, at early press conferences festival director Thierry Fremaux and his Competition jury batted back questions about the state of the world today. Queries swung from Gerard Depardieu's #MeToo conviction, to showing three films from Ukraine and banning Russia from the festival, which from its founding in 1939 was 'predicated on liberty,' said Fremaux. 'People take risks to make films,' he said. 'The most important thing is not someone's safety, but making a film. The festival is political when the artists are political. Jafar Panahi [Iranian Competition entry 'A Simple Accident'] is prepared to risk going to prison.' More from IndieWire Rooney and Kate Mara Are Codependent Twins in Werner Herzog's 'Bucking Fastard' First Look Sarah Friedland's Venice Hit 'Familiar Touch' Captures Dating with Dementia in Unprecedented Elderly Coming-of-Age Drama - Watch Trailer As to the current political winds prevailing in America and elsewhere, Fremaux said, 'The cinema requires a lot of funding. It is often the first target. Around the world we need to defend cinema.' As for President Donald Trump's threatened tariffs on films produced overseas, Fremaux feels it is too early to know what will actually happen. 'Maybe we should talk in a year,' he said. 'The cinema always finds a way of existing and reinventing itself. Here in Cannes we wouldn't like the American cinema to cease to be strong.' While Cannes jury president Juliette Binoche deflected a question about Gaza, she took on President Trump's threatened tariffs on films, and she eventually revealed her true feelings. 'We understood that from the beginning that President Trump was trying to protect his country but for us, we have a very strong community of filming on our continent,' she said. 'We can see that he's fighting, and he's trying in many, many different ways to save America and save his ass.' She continued, 'The world is going into places that are very dangerous. And so the more we're going close to those spaces of danger, we need art in order to survive and have a view that gives us gives us hope and connection between each other.' Juror Jeremy Strong addressed playing his Oscar-nominated role in 'The Apprentice,' which played Cannes last year without him, as he was on Broadway. 'Roy Cohn, I see essentially as the progenitor of fake communities and alternative facts, and we're living in the aftermath of what he created,' he said. 'This time where truth is under assault, where truth is becoming an increasingly endangered thing. The role of stories, of cinema art, but here specifically at this temple of film, the role of film is increasingly critical, because it can combat those forces and the entropy of truth, and can communicate truths, individual truths, human truths, societal truths, and affirm and celebrate our shared humanity. What I'm here doing this year is in a way, a counterbalance to what Roy Cohn was doing last year.' Fremaux's main message is how Cannes has the power to propel even small indies like 'The Apprentice' and Sean Baker's 'Anora' (Neon) into the world — and eventually even win Oscars. 'Things got going, the adventure begins in Cannes,' he said. 'It's a special festival. A film can show in Cannes in May and still be alive in March the following year. American distributors and producers who like Cannes, like Neon, know how to make the best of it.' Last year, Oscar winners 'Emilia Pérez' and 'Flow' also launched at Cannes. And the increasingly international cast of the Academy voters has elevated foreign-language films that gain a profile at Cannes. Much of that buzz is generated for the prize-winners like Palme d'Or-winning 'Parasite,' 'Anatomy of a Fall,' and 'Anora,' all from Neon. And that comes down to the Competition jury. Jury duty began Tuesday, May 13 for this year's Cannes Film Festival competition panelists, led by Binoche, who first came to the festival 14 years ago. She presides over a nine-member jury composed of actors Halle Berry, Alba Rohrwacher, and Jeremy Strong, directors Hong Sang Soo, Dieudo Hamadi, Payal Kapadia, and Carlos Reygadas, and French-Moroccan diplomat/journalist Leïla Slimani. The winners tend to be films that move the jurors emotionally, which is why the Dardennes have won twice. This year, Fremaux is proud to host the Dardennes for the ninth time in Competition, Julia Ducourneau's second ('Alpha'), as well as American auteurs Wes Anderson's fourth Cannes entry ('The Phoenician Scheme') and Richard Linklater's second ('Nouvelle Vague'). What will the prize contenders be? 'Sentimental Value' from Norway third-timer Joachim Trier could fly, along with Oliver Hermanus's gay romance 'The History of Sound' (MUBI). 'We'll watch the films together,' said Binoche. 'And after that, it's this connection that is beyond thinking that will make a special result.' Best of IndieWire Guillermo del Toro's Favorite Movies: 56 Films the Director Wants You to See 'Song of the South': 14 Things to Know About Disney's Most Controversial Movie The 55 Best LGBTQ Movies and TV Shows Streaming on Netflix Right Now
New York Times
02-04-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
At New Directors/New Films, the Faces Tell the Story
In 'Familiar Touch,' Kathleen Chalfant plays a woman whose inner life alternately burns bright and suddenly dims. Her character, Ruth, has an inviting smile and natural physical grace, though at times she falters midstep. A former cook and a cookbook author now in her 80s, she lives alone in a pleasant modern home cluttered with shelves of books and just-so personal touches that convey the passage of time in a full, well-lived life. Ruth seems thoroughly at ease in her own skin when she first appears, bustling in her kitchen. She's preparing lunch for a visitor who, you soon learn, is the son she no longer recognizes. Written and directed by Sarah Friedland, 'Familiar Touch' is the opening-night selection Wednesday in the New Directors/New Films festival and a terrific leadoff for the annual event. Ruth's openly loving and hurting son soon hurries her to his car — she thinks that they're en route to a hotel — and into an assisted living facility. There, she settles into a new reality as she struggles with her memory, connects with other residents and finds support among the staff. In Chalfant's mesmerizing, eloquently expressive face, you see both Ruth's piercing loss and a soul safely settling into the eternal now as her past, present and future fade away. Chalfant's is just one of the memorable faces in the annual New Directors/New Films series, a collaboration of Film at Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art that gathers movies from around the world. Established in 1972, the event was designed to draw attention to the kind of nonmainstream work that didn't always make it into commercial theaters. That's one reason that I always look forward to it; the other is that its programmers take film seriously. That's clear throughout the lineup, which could use more genre variety, yet, at its finest, offers you personal, thoughtful, imaginative, adult work of the kind that plays in art houses and on more adventurous streamers. These are movies made and chosen by people who love the art. That love is also evident in the great diversity of men, women and children in the program, a variety that underscores the centrality of the human face as the great cinematic landscape. This year, partly because of the dystopian chatter about A.I., I was struck anew by the deep, signifying power of smiles, frowns and sneers, and how watching movies usually means watching other people. No matter if their directors tug at your heart (as in the documentary 'Timestamp') or keep you at an intellectual distance (the drama 'Drowning Dry'), these movies present an astonishment of humanity. In selection after selection, old and young visages, some untroubled and others wrenched in pain, bring you face-to-face with the world. That world is rarely more anguished than it is in 'Timestamp.' Directed by Kateryna Gornostai, this Ukrainian heartbreaker offers a nonfiction portrait of the nation through its children. Violence is ever-present — in safety precautions, ruined buildings, worried adults — but mercifully there are no hospital scenes or screaming kids, just sorrow. In the northeast city of Kharkiv near the Russian border, cherubs attend a school in an underground subway station while in the central city of Cherkasy, high schoolers prepare for graduation, a rite of passage that becomes progressively melancholic. Not all these children will reach adulthood. We are so habituated to watching large, looming faces — thanks in part to TVs love of yammering bobbleheads and now smartphones — that their onscreen absence can be striking and even disorienting. That wasn't always the case: In early cinema, such close-ups didn't necessarily function the way we're accustomed to now. The historian Eileen Bowser, for instance, points out that the 1907 comedy 'Laughing Gas,' about a woman who goes to the dentist, opens with a close-up of her wincing with a bandage around her head and ends with another of her laughing and bandage free. The close-ups amplify the story, yet in contrast to the way filmmakers soon began to employ them, they're not part of the actual narrative. The faces that beguiled early-cinema audiences begot the old star system and its striking, primped and retouched glamour pusses. Independent film tends to foreground more ostensibly authentic faces, but even these need to signify. A pretty face can by turns seduce, distract or terrify, one reason that the lovely, fiercely eyebrowed actress Dolores Oliverio makes such a formidable central attraction in Laura Casabé's sly, delectably creepy Argentine freakout, 'The Virgin of the Quarry Lake.' Oliverio's brooding looks speak volumes as does the lightly rubbery visage of the gay dad in Fabian Stumm's German comedy 'Sad Jokes' and the vulnerably open one of a bullied Hungarian boy in Balint Szimler's 'Lesson Learned.' In Rohan Parashuram Kanawade's gentle, low-key charmer 'Cactus Pears,' a gay Indian man (a quietly sympathetic Bhushaan Manoj) travels back to his childhood home and reconnects with an old lover who's had a life our hero didn't have, made choices he didn't know he could make. You watch the protagonist watch others and, as you do, discover how he sees himself. You don't learn nearly as much, by contrast, about the characters who drift in and out of Alexandra Simpson's 'No Sleep Till,' an engrossing, teasingly fragmented portrait of different Floridians readying themselves (or not!) for a coming hurricane. As palm trees shudder against the ominous sky, these weather-watchers seem like emissaries from the apocalypse. The Lithuanian director Laurynas Bareisa doesn't explain much in his intriguing puzzler 'Drowning Dry.' Instead, he builds the story's tension steadily with unsettling surveillance-like shots (who's watching whom?) and by keeping you at a remove from the characters. Although he sprinkles in a few close-ups of faces early on, most offer just partial views or are almost too teasingly brief for you to get a bead on the different personalities. Deep in the story, though, amid unfolding tragedies, he cuts to a woman (Gelmine Glemzaite) while she's setting a table. She seems happily preoccupied with her task, yet as Bareisa holds on her face and she turns her profile to the camera, the pieces of this fractured story begin sliding more clearly into place and you see what happiness looks like before it disappears. There are notably few early close-ups of faces in the exuberant, formally assured 'Mad Bills to Pay (Or Destiny, dile que no soy malo),' a festival standout. Fast-paced and crackling with energy, it tracks the adventures of Rico (Juan Collado, wonderful), a 19-year-old Bronx charisma bomb trying to figure out life. So it's telling that he looks asleep in the first shot, a nice setup for his coming of age. Amid the loving, at times combative clamor of his home life, Rico tries to do the right thing (Spike Lee's influence is conspicuous), makes bad and funny choices, and wins your heart. It isn't until the end, when reality and adulthood hit, that the director Joel Alfonso Vargas — remember this New York kid's name — truly narrows in on Rico's soft, tender face and you see what it looks like when a child needs to become a man.
Yahoo
06-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Amanda Seyfried Hints ‘Jennifer's Body 2' Is in the Works: ‘I Think We're Making Another One'
Amanda Seyfried is on board for any 'Jennifer's Body' sequel, which could come sooner than later. The actress, though not confirming the film, told Bloody Disgusting that a 'Jennifer's Body 2' could be in the works soon. 'I think we're making another one,' Seyfried said while on the red carpet for 'Seven Veils.' 'I didn't confirm it! I said, 'I think.'' IndieWire has reached out to representatives for Seyfried, screenwriter Diablo Cody, and director Karyn Kusama for further comment. More from IndieWire New Directors/New Films 2025 to Spotlight 'Familiar Touch' and 'Lurker' - See the Full Lineup The 17 Best Thrillers Streaming on Netflix in March, from 'Fair Play' to 'Emily the Criminal' 'Jennifer's Body' was released in 2009. While the feature barely broke even at the box office, the now-iconic film is considered to be a feminist horror classic. Seyfried stars as Needy, whose best friend Jennifer (Megan Fox) is the high school queen bee. However, after Jennifer is sacrificed by the lead singer (Adam Brody) of a band touring through town, she is left as a half-girl, half-demon who feasts on unsuspecting boys to survive. Academy Award-winning screenwriter Diablo Cody told Bloody Disgusting in 2024 that she is 'not done' with the world of 'Jennifer's Body' during its 15-year anniversary. 'I want to do a sequel. I am not done with 'Jennifer's Body,'' Cody said. 'I need to partner with people who believe it in [sic] as much as I do and that hasn't really happened yet. I need someone to believe in it who has a billion dollars.' In 2024 while talking about her 'Lisa Frankenstein' script, Cody told IndieWire about renewed interest in a potential 'Jennifer Body's' sequel. 'I had no idea people would get so excited about that,' Cody said. 'I was delighted to see the response, I'm going to clip those articles and show them to all the people who are like, 'We don't think this is such a good idea.' Bring it into the people that I need to green light it.' She told IndieWire that the renewed chatter around a potential sequel really excited her. 'It's the best thing that's ever happened to me in my career, it's like total validation,' she said of the continued fandom around the film. 'It came late, I'm OK with that, I've made my peace with that. I went through a lot when that movie came out, just personal attacks. It was about more than just the movie. … I always believed in it, but I did lose my confidence. If people hadn't rediscovered 'Jennifer's Body,' I would not have written 'Lisa Frankenstein.' With that whole area, that genre, I kind of felt unwelcome in it, because I had flopped so hard on my last attempt.' Meanwhile, Seyfried next stars in Mona Fastvold's upcoming 'Ann Lee' musical, which centers on the founder of the Shaker Movement in the late 1770s. The musical biopic is co-written by Fastvold and her 'The Brutalist' collaborator and real-life partner Brady Corbet. Seyfried told Vanity Fair that shooting Fastvold and Corbet's secret indie film after wrapping the upcoming Peacock limited series 'Long Bright River,' was tough. 'I went to hell and back,' Seyfried said of the demanding back-to-back projects. 'Oh, my God. What the fuck? Even my assistant's like, 'You need to take a break,'' Seyfried said. 'We could only do ['Ann Lee'] in the summer. … We moved everybody to Budapest, including my dog. Then we did a crazy thing. We did a crazy thing.' She added of the musical, 'I don't know how it's going to turn out.' Best of IndieWire Guillermo del Toro's Favorite Movies: 56 Films the Director Wants You to See 'Song of the South': 14 Things to Know About Disney's Most Controversial Movie The 55 Best LGBTQ Movies and TV Shows Streaming on Netflix Right Now
