As the countdown to the seventy-first Cannes Festival begins, the official poster was released today. This year’s poster (see full image at the end of this article) was taken from 1965’s “Pierrot Le Fou.” Everyone at the Festival next month will see it, here, there, and everywhere. It’ll adorn the many sides of the Palais, the streets nearby, lampposts, ice-cream parlors and souvenir shops. A lively visual leitmotiv

Asghar Farhadi's eighth film was shot entirely on location in Spain. Laura (Penelope Cruz) lives with her husband (played by Javier Bardem) and their children in Buenos Aires. When they return together to her native village in Spain for a family event, the trip gets derailed after unexpected events bring secrets out into the open. The family, its ties and the moral choices imposed on them are all leitmotifs of Farhadi's films and figure front and center in the script.

In these ghoulish American times, it’s heartening that “The Shape of Water,” a film that unified so many of us around its themes, that of cinema, the other (and the unknown), earnest love, a fairytale world full of possibilities, should win the world’s most prestigious film award. And for British actress Sally Hawkins, she of “Happy-go-lucky” fame—in the film she plays Elisa—to be feted in Hollywood, could one possibly ask for anything more?

After nearly four hundred films screening over ten days to 21,000 accredited guests and a third of a million ticket buyers, the Berlin International Film Festival drew to a close this past Sunday. The 68th installment of Europe’s largest film festival was a robust edition, with an unusually-high number of worthy films spread over the Berlinale’s dozen sections. As he did in once already in 2014 with “The Grand Budapest,” Wes Anderson

Intimacy and sex are essential elements to finding happiness in life, a theme found in this year's winning film. "Touch Me Not,” by Adina Pintilie, has won the Golden Bear prize at this year's Berlinale. The festival opened on February 15th and closed today and included around 400 films. Of those, nineteen were competing for the top Golden Bear prize. Romanian director Adina Pintilie said she had not expected to win the award for her film

Taylor Dunne and Eric Stewart’s forthcoming documentary “Off country” examines the devastating, still-lingering effects of atomic bomb testing on the communities around the White Sands missile range in New Mexico, the Nevada Test Site and the Rocky Flats Plant in Colorado, where plutonium triggers were manufactured until its 1992 shutdown (the latter facility was studied in the galling 1982 documentary “Dark Circle"

Over the years I’ve researched and written extensively on the underrated work of silent movie actress Mabel Normand, Hollywood’s first film comedienne and female director. I’m now happy to report that she is finally being recognized for her many accomplishments. During November 11-12 the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum, located in Fremont, Calif., will be hosting a retrospective of this early film pioneer.