CANNES, France -- Are you familiar with the Raoul Effect? Probably not, because it's a phenomenon that's known only to those people who've been to the Cannes Festival and watched films tendered in the official selection.

Someone, it's unclear who, screams "raoul" at the beginning of the daily 7pm screening in the Debussy theater. No one knows why. It's unclear who the author of the scream is, or

CANNES, France - Like Woody Allen Ken Loach is a Cannes-minted director, a filmmaker whose films premiere in Cannes almost exclusively. Unlike Allen, however, Loach creates consequential human dramas. In a Loach film, society’s ills play a character, Loach often training his camera on society’s invisible links, the poor, the disabled, the unemployed, people who, under the pressure of necessity, may

CANNES, France – Seems like French actor and host of [...]

It would be hard to imagine the Cannes Festival without [...]

Book author Léo (Damien Bonnard), is conducting research on wolves in the Lozère region of Southern France. It’s hill country, where grassy plateaus are dotted by the occasional rock formation and sheep farms, just like the one Leo encounters on his path, complete the landscape. Leo meets a shepherd by the name of Marie (India Hair). Nine months later, their baby is born. What could possibly go wrong with such a quaint pastoral tableau?

The Cannes Festival opened today with the best possible film it could open with: the buoyant and lighthearted “Cafe Society,” directed by Woody Allen. I walked out of this morning’s screening with my spirits raised. But, then became quickly hungry for lunch. In Allen’s perfectly-told, jaunty tale a young man, played by Jesse Eisenberg, moves to L.A. from New York to find work. He meets the boss’s secretary and falls in love with her

As the first lady of cinema gets dressed and ready for her close-up, a brief look at the lineup seems appropriate just before I board my train to Cannes. The selection of the 69th Cannes Festival, which opens tomorrow, is the strongest one in years. Paul Verhoeven's "Elle," starring Isabelle Huppert, holds the promise, for better or worse, of vanquishing the extremes of sadism and survivalism. France's Bruno Dumont