Latest news with #SeedoftheSacredFig
Yahoo
26-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Inside TikTok's Cannes Film Festival Takeover, From One-on-One Time With Tom Cruise to Reece Feldman's Short Film Premiere
TikTok creators got the surprise of their lives during the first week of Cannes Film Festival, when Tom Cruise showed up to give a talk on his new film 'Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning' ahead of its premiere. The 34 film-centric creators, who TikTok invited to the festival from across the globe, thought they were just coming to the platform's festival hub at the J.W. Marriott for a content creation workshop — until Cruise came out of nowhere. In partnership with Paramount, Cruise gave a 20-minute fireside chat with creator Reece Feldman (@guywithamoviecamera on the platform) and then hung around for about an hour after to have one-on-one conversations with as many of the TikTokers as possible. More from Variety Jafar Panahi's Cannes Palme d'Or Is a 'Powerful Blow to the Machinery of Repression in the Islamic Republic,' Says 'Seed of the Sacred Fig' Director Mohammad Rasoulov (EXCLUSIVE) 'Militantropos' Review: Austere Anti-War Doc Employs Formal Control in an Impassioned Defense of Ukraine 'The Last One for the Road' Review: A Pleasant Italian Gem on Drinking Buddies, Aging and Wistful Flavors of Life 'I've never asked permission to create,' Cruise told the room. 'Actors and filmmakers and businessmen say, 'What should I do?' Do it. Learn it, apply it and don't wait to know everything. The only way to learn is to go jump in, and don't worry about making mistakes.' For TikTok's EMEA head of content operations Marlène Masure, the time with Cruise underlines just how valuable TikTok has become not just as an official partner of the festival, but within the film industry as a whole. 'Having two hours in Tom Cruise's agenda is a testament to the power of our movie community and how important they are,' she told Variety during the festival, adding: 'I hope that this will inspire other studios to give bigger access to creators to top talents.' Indeed, TikTok's presence at the festival this year felt larger than ever, with several events and activations taking place. The platform had its own party, an industry brunch where Feldman interviewed Daniel Kaluuya about redefining fandom, and hosted a premiere for Feldman's first short film, 'Wait, Your Car?.' For Feldman, who started posting videos on the platform in 2020 of his experience working on the set of 'The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel' and now has 2.4 million followers, it was a pinch-me moment. 'That was always the dream,' he said of premiering his first project at Cannes. 'If I won the lottery at any point in my life, the first thing I was going to do was be like, 'Alright, let's sit down, let's choose one of the scripts I've written and let's get really practical about making this.'' Having been told about the opportunity in February, Feldman had roughly three months to write, cast, shoot, edit and deliver the short. 'Wait, Your Car?,' starring Whitney Peak, Ruby Cruz, Minnie Mills and Noa Fisher, follows four girls whose friendship is put to the test after one of them becomes convinced that her car is trying to kill her. The reception to the short in the Palais was glowing, with the screening room filled to standing-room only. Feldman plans to continue taking the short around the festival circuit in hopes that studios and production companies will take it as 'proof of style.' 'It's showing you how I like to shoot things, the tone, the timing, the tempo, the writing style, the humor,' he said. 'So that's the thing that I'm most excited for people to take away, like, 'That's the distinct voice of Reece.'' Masure sees the Cannes partnership, which started four years ago, as a way to give back to TikTok's thriving #FilmTok community and provide an inside look at the festival to those on the platform who may be discovering it for the first time. By the second week of the festival, 27,000 videos had been created on TikTok with the hashtag #Cannes2025, up from 22,000 last year, and posts from creators at the festival garnered over 26 million combined views. 'Cannes used to be a bit more restricted to a certain community of moviemakers in the movie industry,' Masure said. 'That's the whole purpose of what we do — provide more visibility to these talents. Everyone creating content on the platform can have a chance to become a great moviemaker.' Creator and presenter Zainab Jiwa (@zeewhatidid) has seen firsthand the growth in interest regarding the festival with her majority Gen-Z audience. 'It's been a great way to give them access into a space that seems exclusive in a way,' she said. 'What I've tried to do in every step of my journey is to take the audience with me, because I never had that growing up.' Jiwa, who went viral last fall for her playful junket interview with Denzel Washington in which he gave life advice, was on hand in the second week of the festival to be the platform's red carpet host for the premieres of Wes Anderson's 'The Phoenician Scheme,' Spike Lee's 'Highest 2 Lowest' and more. Though Jiwa may be holding a mic and talking to some of Hollywood's biggest stars, she acknowledges that her purpose is different than that of a journalist — many of whom have become frustrated in recent years with lack of access to talent at Cannes and other festivals. 'My aim in an interview in general isn't to get something out of them,' she said. 'I'm not here to find the scoop — my aim is to make them feel comfortable and to just have a chat because that's what my audience wants.' Both Jiwa and Feldman are also open about the fact that they partner with studios on many of their conversations. 'At the end of the day, I'm biased,' Feldman said. 'I'm being hired by these studios, so my opinion is, from the get-go, moot.' But that doesn't mean that they're only asking throwaway questions. In fact, Masure considers conversations between stars like Cruise and creators like Feldman to be more like peer discussions. 'He was very technical,' she said of Feldman's questions to Cruise, many of which centered around how he pulled off 'Mission: Impossible 8's' crazy stunt work. 'I mean, the guy has been working in movie production so he knows a great deal about this. It felt almost like a movie professional to another movie professional.' Overall, TikTok having a large presence at Cannes just makes practical sense to Feldman, as he sees the film industry and social media as now being 'intrinsically tied.' 'I think it's good to lean into the TikTok of it all,' he said. 'It doesn't mean having to ask talent to do dances — it could really just be hey, here's how you sign up for the festival.' He continued: 'Social doesn't have to be used in the most extreme of ways, and TikTok is a place where it's approachable. I do believe that it acts almost as a public sphere, and I think it's good that we're forced to confront voices outside of the ones that we just choose to hear.' Best of Variety New Movies Out Now in Theaters: What to See This Week Emmy Predictions: Talk/Scripted Variety Series - The Variety Categories Are Still a Mess; Netflix, Dropout, and 'Hot Ones' Stir Up Buzz Oscars Predictions 2026: 'Sinners' Becomes Early Contender Ahead of Cannes Film Festival
The Guardian
09-02-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
The Seed of the Sacred Fig review – Mohammad Rasoulof's fearless drama is a damning indictment of the Iranian regime
It takes an inordinate amount of courage to be a film-maker in Iran, and Mohammad Rasoulof, now exiled director of this Cannes special jury prize-winning, Oscar-nominated political drama, ranks among the very bravest of the brave. Rasoulof, 52, has repeatedly been targeted by Iran's Islamic revolutionary courts in the past. He received a one-year prison sentence for his 2017 picture, A Man of Integrity, about a goldfish farmer struggling to survive in the face of widespread corruption. In 2020 he was convicted of spreading anti-government propaganda for his scalding, Berlin Golden Bear-winning indictment of the death penalty, There Is No Evil, and sentenced to another year in jail. But for his latest film, which tackles the protests that erupted across Iran in 2022 after the death in police custody of Mahsa Amini – arrested for failure to wear a hijab – the charge brought against Rasoulof was the more serious 'collusion against national security', the sentence eight years in jail, flogging, a fine and the confiscation of property. Rasoulof escaped Iran shortly before the film's premiere in Cannes and is now living in Germany. The Seed of the Sacred Fig may not be his most elegant picture – it has pacing issues and a laboured final act – but it is without doubt Rasoulof's most important film to date. To tell stories through the medium of cinema in Iran, directors must navigate a complex system of stifling censorship laws, enforced by the ministry of culture and Islamic guidance. Not surprisingly, many creative people choose to sidestep the official channels altogether and opt for an underground approach, but that comes with its own considerable risks once the films are screened, usually outside Iran at international film festivals. Criticism of the state or of Islam is forbidden, but so are a host of other seemingly minor transgressions: characters drinking alcohol is a no-no; women can't be seen to sing or dance; and for a female character to be shown on screen with hair uncovered is beyond the pale. It was mainly this last, plus a bit of boozing, dancing and mild flirtation, that caused a problem for film-makers Maryam Moghaddam and Behtash Sanaeeha, who were placed under house arrest last year and prevented from travelling to Berlin for the world premiere of their gentle, relatively benign comedy My Favourite Cake. Veteran director Jafar Panahi, who made his most recent film, No Bears, while under house arrest, has had numerous run-ins with the Iranian authorities, most recently in 2022 when he petitioned the prosecutor's office on Rasoulof's behalf and was imprisoned as a result. But of the many Iranian film-makers whose work has been scrutinised by the regime, it is arguably Rasoulof who has taken the most overtly confrontational approach. The Seed of the Sacred Fig makes its points emphatically. It uses the microcosm of a Tehrani family to explore the wider tensions in Iranian society. The father, Iman (Missagh Zareh), is a government employee who has recently been promoted to the role of 'investigator', a step towards his ultimate aim of being a judge in the Islamic court. Since his promotion coincides with a groundswell of protest, predominantly but not exclusively among young women, and a draconian police crackdown, Iman finds himself dealing with the cases of hundreds of arrested protesters each day. Some are sentenced to long prison terms; some receive the death penalty. It troubles him, but he comforts himself with the knowledge that he is upholding 'God's law'. Meanwhile, his two teenage daughters, college student Rezvan (Mahsa Rostami) and schoolgirl Sana (Setareh Maleki), instinctively side with the protesters and spend hours glued to their phones watching, aghast, the unfolding scenes of violence and brutality (one of the film's most potent and distressing devices is the use of actual phone-cam footage showing the horrendous beatings meted out to protesters). Torn between her duty to and love for her husband and her instinct to protect her girls is wife and mother Najmeh (Soheila Golestani, delivering satisfyingly textured work in the film's most complex role). Just as abuses of power lead to a breakdown of trust between the state and the people in the streets of Iran, so the same dynamic plays out within the family. When Iman's government-issue gun goes missing, his list of suspects starts and ends with his immediate kin. And his techniques for extracting a confession are drawn from the state interrogation playbook. The mournful, melodic score by Karzan Mahmood takes on a harder, more metallic edge, evoking the sound of fists on prison bars. And while the overlong running time drags a little in the second half of the picture, the film's final message – that tyranny and oppression should be buried and consigned to the past in order for the people to move forward – is an unequivocal challenge to the censors. In UK and Irish cinemas
