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Yahoo
25-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Gay Kink, Godard (Via Linklater) and German Girlhood: THR's Critics Pick the 20 Best Films of Cannes 2025
COMPETITION Tarik Saleh follows The Nile Hilton Incident and Cairo Conspiracy with a darkly funny thriller about a famous actor forced to play Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in a biopic. Reteaming with star Fares Fares, who headlined the first two movies, Saleh tackles the dirty dealings between the regime and the film industry, showing how artists are co-opted — or rather coerced — into making propaganda in a country leaving them few other options. — JORDAN MINTZER More from The Hollywood Reporter 'Young Mothers' Review: The Dardenne Brothers Bring Clear-Sighted Observation and Empathy to a Tender Snapshot of Women at a Crossroads Cannes Power Outage Disrupts City, Festival Continues Inside IMG's Huge Sports Production Weekend: From English, U.S., Saudi Soccer to Basketball and F1 OUT OF COMPETITION Spike Lee reunites with Denzel Washington in this dazzlingly entertaining spin on Akira Kurosawa's 1963 kidnapping procedural, High and Low. The plot has been transposed to an environment Lee knows well — New York City, lushly captured — allowing the director to make the film his own, with wit, high style and kinetic energy to burn. The cast is top-to-toe excellent, with special honors to Washington and, in key roles, Jeffrey Wright and A$AP Rocky. — DAVID ROONEY COMPETITION Paul Mescal and Josh O'Connor offer more proof that they are among our best contemporary actors in Oliver Hermanus' tender account of a too-fleeting gay love affair interrupted by World War I. Adapted by Ben Shattuck from his short story, the film's romance blossoms from the intimate experience the two main characters share of traveling the backwoods of Maine in 1919, collecting traditional folk tunes from rural people. The director and his leads find quiet power in understatement. — D.R. COMPETITION Revolving around a group of ex-prisoners and the man they suspect of being their former torturer, Iranian auteur Jafar Panahi's intricately crafted drama examines the traumas suffered by political dissidents. The filmmaker puts aside the self-reflexive storytelling that has marked much of his work since he was first arrested in 2010, delivering a straightforward narrative that's plotted like a good thriller but builds into a stark condemnation of abusive power. — J.M. COMPETITION French cinema is littered with sexual coming-of-age films, but occasionally one comes along that cuts through the crowd with its confidence and texture, its erotic charge and lingering nostalgic ache. Hafsia Herzi's study of a Paris-area Muslim teen's lesbian awakening is such a film. Vibrantly felt yet impressively controlled — and blessed with a stone-cold stunner of a lead turn from newcomer Nadia Melliti — it's an instant queer classic, as moving in its humanism as it is sexy. — JON FROSCH COMPETITION Leave it to Kelly Reichardt to make a '70s movie that looks and feels like a lost '70s movie, from its scruffy visual aesthetic to its muted colors, its unhurried pacing to its unstinting investment in an underdog protagonist. Josh O'Connor is ideally cast as the out-of-work carpenter who pulls off a major art theft in a heist caper that spends as much time on the aftermath of the crime, when it morphs gracefully into another of the director's singular character studies of struggling Americans. — D.R. UN CERTAIN REGARD Akinola Davies Jr.'s feature debut — the first Nigerian film to premiere at Cannes — is a poignant meditation on the relationship between a man and his estranged sons, set over the course of a single day of Nigeria's 1993 presidential election. Considering how political unrest threatens not just the fragile optimism of a nation but also this family, the filmmaker employs a poetic visual grammar to envelop viewers in the memories of kids trying to understand their dad. — LOVIA GYARKYE COMPETITION Richard Linklater's charming homage, a behind-the-scenes peek at the making of Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless, is a far cry from Godard, stylistically. Yet it does an impressive job capturing the spirit of the man at work, showing what it took to put his groundbreaking movie together. With French newcomer Guillaume Marbeck as the iconoclastic auteur and Zoey Deutch as American leading lady Jean Seberg, the breezy film never takes itself too seriously while highlighting a very serious moment in film history. — J.M. COMPETITION Wes Anderson's latest won't have haters reconsidering, but it will entice those who've been feeling alienated to rejoin the ranks. The enchanting espionage comedy flaunts an excellent Benicio del Toro as a 1950s industrialist, who, after surviving an attempt on his life, names his estranged daughter Liesl (Mia Threapleton) as heir to his empire. With Michael Cera and Scarlett Johansson among the sprawling cast, the movie bears the auteur's trademark aesthetics but also a tenderness that sneaks up on you. — L.G. UN CERTAIN REGARD Abuse, cringe humor and unexpectedly sweet queer romance somehow coexist in Brit writer-director Harry Lighton's audacious and disarming first feature about the relationship between a stern biker (Alexander Skarsgard) and a shy suburban London traffic warden (Harry Melling). The film is less about the shock factor of some very graphic gay kink than the nuances of love, desire and mutual needs within a sub/dom relationship. Both actors are fearless. — D.R. UN CERTAIN REGARD Charlie Polinger's thrilling directorial debut observes boys at a summer water polo camp, with terrific newcomers Everett Blunck and Kayo Martin portraying opposite ends of the power spectrum and Joel Edgerton in a brief but effective turn as their coach. Working from his own screenplay, Polinger uses horror conventions to tease out the psychic terror and intimidation of preteen social codes. In the age of renewed questions about the manosphere, the movie feels sharply relevant. — L.G. DIRECTORS' FORTNIGHT Set in 1990s Iraq, Hasan Hadi's exceptional debut feature revolves around a third grader on a mission to complete a dreaded school assignment: baking a birthday cake for Saddam Hussein. With well-known American filmmakers among its producers (Eric Roth, Chris Columbus, Marielle Heller) and a cast of mostly untrained actors, the stirring, humor-laced drama is as perceptive as it is kinetic and, with one eye on the U.S. bombers overhead, brimming with life. — SHERI LINDEN COMPETITION Chie Hayakawa's delicately moving drama depicts a crucial summer in the life of 11-year-old Fuki (lovely newcomer Yui Suzuki) as she navigates her father's battle with cancer, her mother's stress and her own persistent loneliness. Set in suburban Tokyo in 1987, the film follows Fuki as she wanders the city and retreats into her imagination. Hayakawa calibrates her story to the volume of a whisper, as if in a conspiratorial conversation with her own memories. — L.G. COMPETITION Wagner Moura makes a stellar return to Brazilian cinema after several years away, playing a technology expert fleeing the country in 1977 while hitmen hired by a federal official pursue him in Kleber Mendonça Filho's masterful political thriller. Despite some brilliant comic flourishes, this is a deeply serious movie about a painful time in Brazil's past, when people disappeared and even far-flung cities where the dictatorship was invisible felt its long reach. It's a major achievement, sure to be one of the year's best films. — D.R. COMPETITION Renate Reinsve, Stellan Skarsgard, Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas and Elle Fanning illuminate Joachim Trier's piercing reflection on family and memory, centered around a house in Oslo that has absorbed generations of experience. The director's observation of the mutable contracts between sisters, and even more so, fathers and daughters, is intensely affecting in a movie freighted with melancholy but also leavened by notes of surprising humor. With traces of Bergman but also Chekhov and Ibsen, the film explores the volatile power of art and the cost of making highly personal work. — D.R. COMPETITION French-born Spanish director Oliver Laxe's beguiling and beautiful fourth feature follows a father and son searching for a missing family member who join a group of itinerant ravers in the deserts of Morocco. The result is a techno-infused meditation on death, grief and possibility in a world edging toward collapse. The stunningly conjured location functions as both a repository for overwhelming feelings and a reminder of our own smallness in the grand scheme of things. — L.G. COMPETITION It's not every day you see a movie that resembles nothing you've seen before. German director Mascha Schilinski's bold second feature is just that: a transfixing chronicle in which the lives of four girls are fused into one long cinematic tone poem, hopping between different epochs without warning, painting a portrait of budding womanhood and rural strife through the ages. It's a work that reminds us how cinema can still reinvent itself, as long as there are directors audacious enough to try. — J.M. COMPETITION This impeccably directed, impressively acted Stalin-era drama from Ukrainian director Sergei Loznitsa follows a law school graduate who attempts to take on corruption in the Soviet system and winds up facing the consequences. It's a slow-burn story of political injustice filled to the brim with atmosphere — specifically the claustrophobia of the U.S.S.R. at the height of the Great Purge. Loznitsa is reflecting on the past here, but for anyone who cares to look, he's also holding a mirror up to the present. — J.M. UN CERTAIN REGARD Harris Dickinson's impressive first foray behind the camera follows an unhoused Londoner trying to get clean while stuck on a treadmill of addiction. Neither the writer-director — whose influences here include Mike Leigh, Ken Loach and Gus Van Sant — nor lead Frank Dillane, who acts with a nervy volatility offset by insouciant charm and humor, courts our sympathies, even as the film shows unquestionable compassion. — D.R. COMPETITION The latest from the two-time Palme d'Or-winning Dardenne brothers is their most surprising work in years. A tender and clearsighted ensemble piece, it provides unfiltered emotional access to the anxieties and hopes of five vulnerable working-class teenage women and the babies requiring their love and care, often when they can barely care for themselves. There's never a false note from the young actors, all of whom have deeply moving scenes. — D.R. A version of this story appeared in the May 21 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe. Best of The Hollywood Reporter Hollywood Stars Who Are One Award Away From an EGOT 'The Goonies' Cast, Then and Now "A Nutless Monkey Could Do Your Job": From Abusive to Angst-Ridden, 16 Memorable Studio Exec Portrayals in Film and TV
Yahoo
21-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘Eagles of the Republic' Review: An Egyptian Movie Star Is Forced to Make a Propaganda Film in Tarik Saleh's Catchy but Muddled Age of Autocracy Thriller
'Eagles of the Republic' is a Cairo-set political thriller one can slot into the following category: movies about life under autocracy that feel different to watch — at least to Americans — than they would have six months ago. That's because they hit so much closer to home now. It might sound off-the-wall to describe 'Eagles of the Republic' as an 'entertaining' saga of repression, but the central character is a fictional Egyptian movie star, and for its first hour or so the film is vivid and funny as it invites us to revel in the perks and gossipy vanity of his charmed but flawed existence. George Fahmy (Fares Fares) is a veteran actor, known as the 'Pharoah of the Screen,' who carries himself like the legend he is. He's tall, with glittering dark eyes and a hawkish profile; he looks like Liam Neeson, with a hint of Harry Dean Stanton's hangdog melancholy. He's the number-one box-office star in Egypt, who acts in everything from prestige dramas to films with titles like 'The First Egyptian in Space.' He'll throw his weight around arguing with the country's Muslim censor board (who never met a movie they couldn't try to neuter), and his private life is a litany of scandalous privilege. He occupies a lavish apartment and has a mistress, Donya (Lyne Khoudri), who's half his age and looks like a fashion model. (She's an aspiring actor.) More from Variety 'The Disappearance of Josef Mengele' Review: A Post-War Study of the Nazis' 'Angel of Death' Lacks Dimension 'Fuori' Review: Jailtime Revives a Middle-Aged Writer's Mojo in Mario Martone's Uninvolving Literary Biopic Kevin Spacey Tears Up, Quotes 'Friend' Elton John in Fiery Speech at Cannes: 'I'm Still Standing' George takes what he wants, but there's a saddened undertow to him that's not hard to see. Hidden beneath baseball cap and sunglasses, he takes clandestine trips to the pharmacy to purchase Viagra. He is separated from his wife (Donia Massoud) and has a loving but increasingly awkward relationship with his son, Ramy (Suhaib Nashwan), who attends the American University in Cairo. (When the two have drinks and Ramy brings along the girl he's dating, he has to make sure his father doesn't hit on her.) Fares Fares is a forceful actor who dramatizes George's movie-star vanity from the inside out. And then, as he's gliding through life on his cloud of entitlement, he gets a call asking him to star in a movie commissioned by the Egyptian government. It will be a biopic about the country's president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who came to power in 2014 after having staged a military coup. That's when he toppled Mohamed Morsi, who in 2012 had become Egypt's first democratically elected leader. (Morsi's rise was propelled by the protest movements of the Arab Spring.) Sisi, who is still in power, became a textbook autocrat, presiding over a military dictatorship. 'Eagles of the Republic' is a saga of life under that regime. We see innocent people arrested for posting a 'treasonous' thought on Facebook, and characters perpetually refer to the 'they' who are hovering over everything — they meaning the regime. They are not to be messed with. Tarik Saleh, the film's writer-director, is of Swedish-Egyptian descent and is based in Sweden, which is why he was able to make 'Eagles of the Republic' as an open indictment of life under Sisi. This is the final film in Saleh's 'Cairo trilogy,' after the drug thriller 'The Nile Hilton Incident' (2017) and the Muslim clerical-school corruption drama 'Cairo Conspiracy' (2022), and for a while it's an absorbing tale. When George learns that he's being asked to star in a piece of state-actioned propaganda, a movie that will be entitled 'Will of the People,' he balks. He's no fan of Egypt's dictatorship — and besides, he says, how could a star of his look and stature be asked to play Sisi, who is short and bald? But the very fact that he'd raise these objections, in his usual high-maintenance way, indicates that he's a bit naïve. The Sisi regime isn't asking George to star in this movie; it's telling him. As he grudgingly submits to the assignment, getting into his khaki military costume bedecked with medals, we're pretty certain that we're going to see a parable of what happens when movie-star hubris runs into the buzzsaw of authoritarian mercilessness. For a while, that's just what it is. There's a man on the set named Dr. Mansour, played by Amr Waked (who's like a quieter Dennis Farina), and he's the official who's there to make sure everything comes out in a way that will be Sisi-approved. Early on he tells George, 'You're giving a bad performance,' and it's not because he's suddenly turned drama critic. George's enactment of Sisi's rise to power is too exaggerated, too cartoonish — and that's because it's George's way of not giving himself over fully to the role. It's his way of resisting. Then George gets invited to a formal dinner at the home of the minister of defense (Tamim Heikal). There's a group of government higher-ups there, who refer to themselves as 'eagles of the republic' — that is, they're there to survey and protect the nation. But they're really protecting Sisi and his corrupt rule. By this point George has figured out that he needs to play the game, and he knows how to do it. But when he meets the minister's imperious wife, the Sorbonne-educated, Western-oriented Suzanne (Zineb Triki), a danger bell goes off. He is soon having an affair with her, which seems a seriously dumb thing to do. We think we know, in our gut, where the movie is headed. But we don't. George gets asked to give a speech as a further demonstration of his loyalty, and he agrees. The speech happens right in front of Sisi, at a sunlit military parade to commemorate the soldiers who died fighting Israel in the Yom Kippur (a.k.a. Ramadan) War. George gives the speech. And that's when something happens. A spasm of violence. There has been a plot against Sisi, in the form of a half-baked military coup, and George is right in the thick of it. He has been used…somehow. The 'somehow' is what we want to know. But that's where the movie, to our surprise, falls completely apart. Just about everything that happens after the coup attempt is oblique, confusing, garbled, head-scratching. What happened to Saleh's filmmaking? Leading up to this moment, it was meticulous. Did he leave a bunch of scenes on the cutting-room floor? During the film's second half, we can piece together what happens (kind of), but not in a way that makes total sense, or that's at all dramatically satisfying. And yet the movie had been working out such a vital and relevant theme: the stakes of trying to placate a regime of ruthless power. 'Eagles of the Republic' loses the thread of its story, but even more disappointingly it leaves those stakes hanging. Best of Variety The Best Albums of the Decade
Arab News
20-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Arab News
Lyna Khoudri-starring film ‘Eagles of the Republic' premieres at Cannes
DUBAI: French Algerian actress Lyna Khoudri's film 'Eagles of the Republic' premiered this week at the 78th Cannes Film Festival, and it received a coveted standing ovation following the screening. For the latest updates, follow us on Instagram @ Directed by Swedish Egyptian filmmaker Tarik Saleh, the film is the final chapter in his acclaimed 'Cairo Trilogy,' which includes 'The Nile Hilton Incident' (2017) and 'Boy From Heaven' (2022), the latter earning him the Best Screenplay award at Cannes. Set in Cairo, 'Eagles of the Republic' follows George El-Nabawi, a fading movie star who reluctantly agrees to play a role in a political biopic. Khoudri portrays Donya, a journalist who becomes entangled in the political intrigue surrounding the film's protagonist, Fahmy. The movie also features Swedish Lebanese actor Fares Fares — a longtime collaborator of Saleh — in the lead role, alongside French Moroccan actress Zineb Triki as Suzanne, the Western-educated wife of Egypt's defence minister, and Egyptian actor Amr Waked as presidential adviser Dr. Mansour. For the premiere, Khoudri wore a sculptural strapless Chanel dress featuring a voluminous skirt, a structured bodice, and folded detailing along the neckline. The gown was cinched at the waist and flared into pleats. She completed the look with white open-toe heels and a sleek bun. She attended the premiere alongside Saleh, Waked, French film composer and conductor Alexandre Desplat, and Kurdish Finnish actor, filmmaker and writer Sherwan Haji, who also stars in the film. Khoudri, 32, first rose to prominence in her role as Nedjma in Mounia Meddour's critically acclaimed drama 'Papicha.' For her work in the film, she won the Orizzonti Award for best actress at the 74th Venice Film Festival, and she was nominated in the Cesar Awards' most promising actress category. Khoudri also starred in the 2019 mini-series 'Les Sauvages' and in 2016's 'Blood on the Docks.' She was also cast in Wes Anderson's 2021 comedy 'The French Dispatch' alongside Timothee Chalamet, Bill Murray, Tilda Swinton and Owen Wilson. The actress also stars in Martin Bourboulon's Afghanistan evacuation drama 'In The Hell Of Kabul: 13 Days, 13 Nights,' alongside Danish Bafta-winning 'Borgen' star Sidse Babett Knudsen, Roschdy Zem ('Chocolat,' 'Oh Mercy!'), and theater actor Christophe Montenez.
Vogue Arabia
14-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Vogue Arabia
Arab Cinema at Cannes is Having a Moment — But Don't Call it One
The Cannes Film Festival isn't just the world's grandest stage for cinema — it's also its most finely tuned mirror, reflecting not only the art but the politics, posturing, and latent anxieties of the film world. And this year, between the red carpets and Bella Hadid sightings, one truth has become unmistakable: Arab cinema has arrived, unapologetically, and on its own terms. Read More 5 Films by Arab Female Directors to Watch in 2025 From All That's Left of You by Cherien Dabis to Where the Wind Comes From by Amel Guellaty This year, four Arab-directed films are featured across the Festival's official selections — a number that, while conveniently neat, misses the point. This isn't tokenism. It's a tide shift. Arab cinema, long consigned to the circuit's margins — celebrated at home, politely acknowledged abroad — has taken its place at the centre. Eagles of the Republic, Directed by Tarik Saleh In Competition, Egyptian-Swedish director Tarik Saleh returns with Eagles of the Republic, a political thriller rendered with the precision of a scalpel and the force of a backhand. If his earlier Cairo Conspiracy whispered its truths, Eagles speaks them plainly — brutal, elegant, and bristling with unease. Fares Fares leads as a disgraced soap actor turned government spokesman, his charm long curdled. It's cynical. It's seductive. It's very Cannes.
