CANNES, France—Two tribes, the Didinga and the Logir, on different sides of a vast patch of fertile vegetation, which they must share in order for their cattle to graze, but each tribe cattle-raids the other and tit-for-tat reprisals are bloody because nobody wants to really share. This dispute over natural resources, which takes place in South Sudan, echoes many others before it throughout ... more >
FESTIVALS | CANNES

CANNES FESTIVAL: “For the sake of peace,” produced by Forest Whitaker

CANNES FESTIVAL – Winners announced, the Bong Joon-Ho-directed PARASITE wins top honors
(CANNES, France) - A family of grifters hustles the perfect family in Bong Joon-Ho's meticulously-directed "Parasite." And they go all the way to Cannes gold! This is the beauty of the Cannes Festival, the jury and the results can be full of surprises--even bad ones. This is a year, also, when the press and the jury are aligned--on who should win top gold. For the rest, who knows what went on in ... more >

CANNES FESTIVAL – Three members of the Cannes press corps give their forecast for the winners, MALICK and ALMODOVAR among the favorites
(CANNES, France) Laurence Salfati has been a part of the Cannes Festival press corps for nearly twenty years. She works for Lyon-based Radio Judaica and has interviewed all of France's greatest film stars. René Chiche has been coming to Cannes for about as long as his aforementioned colleague. Chiche is a writer, a TV producer and a journalist. He owns a news agency that's based in Paris and runs ... more >

CANNES FESTIVAL – “OH MERCY!” (“Roubaix, une lumière”)
The town of Roubaix in France, located near the Belgian border, is rather like the Detroit of France. Yesterday’s city of industry has become a broken shell of a town. In the film's opening as local police chief Inspector Daoud (Roschdy Zem) cruises by a burning car he calls it in, the fire foreshadowing tragedy. Daoud is a fictional character who was added in by director Arnaud Desplechin. His ... more >

CANNES FESTIVAL – Matthias and Maxime
Matthias and Maxime have been friends since childhood. Matthias (Gabriel D’Almeida Freitas, in his second role for the big screen) tries to gain a foothold in the business world while Maxime makes a living as bartender, caring for his mother, a recovering addict. The two young men give off slight reticence, an awkwardness, it becomes clear quickly that these two aren’t just involved in a ... more >

CANNES FESTIVAL – A very tarantinesque UPON UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD came and went (Best Acting Prize to Leonardo DiCaprio, please!)
This year, there was a before- and an after-Tarantino Cannes Festival. Quentin Tarantino's new film “Once upon a time in Hollywood” was the marker. And it was also the most anticipated film of the 2019 festival. What a party! There is no other American auteur who can command the kinds of huge crowds like the ones seen yesterday in Cannes, when he and the cast walked the red carpet. The Croisette ... more >

CANNES FESTIVAL – The grifter family versus the perfect family in the entertaining PARASITE
“Parasite,” directed by Bong Joon-Ho, is a comedy that glistens with irony about an elaborate con. The covetous greed of the poor is pitted against the dull indulgence of the wealthy in a manichean duel for supremacy, to realistic effect. Will the world one day see an all-out war between the classes? Occupy Wall Street, the Yellow Vest movement, are those harbingers? These movements have come and ... more >