The manifold themes of “Northern Skies over Empty Space”—there’s revenge, the upending of gender roles, heroism, searching for water in a barren land, a patriarchy on the wane, a natural habitat that is threatening—are something to behold, yet filmmaker Alejandra Márquez Abella has directed an evocative and everchanging film, which opened at Berlinale over the weekend, that draws on multiple ... more >
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BERLINALE : “El Norte Sobre el Vacío” | REVIEW
Which is the more threatening, a Remington rifle or a frog?
Gerardo Trejoluna, Paloma Petra and Juan Daniel García Treviño
Directed by Alejandra Márquez Abella
LE DIVORCE: The Cannes Festival and its main sponsor Canal Plus part ways
After 28 years one of the festival world's glossiest collabs is splitville
PARIS - On Thursday it was announced that Canal Plus, a France-based media conglomerate that began in 1984 as this country’s first privately-owned television, would be definitively pulling out of the Cannes Festival as its main sponsors. Cannes, and Canal as it’s known more simply, have been in a collab for the last 28 years, the latter beaming the opening and closing ceremonies into hundreds of ... more >
FRANCE | Leïla Bekhti in the Joachim Lafosse-directed LES INTRANQUILLES (“The Restless”)
A painter, Damien (Damien Bonnard, who appeared in “Les Misérables”), leads a comfortable existence with his wife, Leïla (Leïla Bekhti), who restores antiques, and their young boy. While on vacation, Damien acts oddly, he’s spastic, hungry, sleepless, ready for anything and everything without seeming completely delusional. "LES MISERABLES" (review) Leïla's fallen asleep on the beach. Damien ... more >
CANNES FESTIVAL : Cinefondation filmmaker AUDEN LINCOLN-VOGEL | INTERVIEW
Filmmaker Auden Lincoln-Vogel was in Cannes this year in support of “Bill and Joe go Duck Hunting,” which he's written and directed. In “Bill and Joe Go Duck Hunting,” a slow and contemplative film that was a part of the Cinefondation program, two friends go on a duck hunting expedition and much vexation ensues, the great outdoors the setting for an oppressive “huit-clos” film that's punctuated ... more >
CANNES FESTIVAL – “Titane,” machine-friendly gender-bending allegory, wins the Palme D’Or
Cinema is now synonymous with these two words: Julia Ducournau. She is the director of "Titane," a film, all savagery and tenderness, that won the Palme D'Or last night at the Cannes Festival here in France. Why these two words? Because contemporary cinema takes risks and it's prothean and it's in step with the times and it pays tribute to its past and I can't think of a better incarnation for it ... more >
CANNES FESTIVAL – and now to one of my favorites, “Red Rocket” by Sean Baker (review)
After twenty years of working in the adult film industry in Los Angeles, Mikey Saber (Simon Rex), returns with his tail between his legs to Texas City, Texas, a small oil town south of Houston with twenty-two dollars in his pocket. He manages to convince his wife Lexi (Brie Elrod), with whom he’s separated, and his mother-in-law, to let him crash for a few days. Promises are made. Mikey will ... more >
CANNES FESTIVAL – Asghar Farhadi’s “A HERO”
This film is competing for the Palme D'Or
CANNES, France - Ethics and civility are not synonymous with honor but it’s generally understood, by most, that if you adhere to an ethical and civil conduct in life, honor will naturally flow from it. The idea of honor endures more or less overtly in Iranian society, and Asghar Farhadi’s new film “A Hero” thrives on it as leitmotif. The honor of one man, a painter calligrapher, crushed by debt ... more >