Young Ben is in want of a father he’s never known, and Rose (young Millicent Simmonds), a deaf child who lives a hundred years earlier than him, is fascinated by a mysterious New York actress (played by Julianne Moore). After Ben discovers something in his mother’s (Michelle Williams) things he takes off for New York City to try and find his father. Rose comes into a hint, found in a newspaper clipping, and takes a boat ride to Manhattan in search of the actress.

Disappointment, “Ismael’s Ghosts” is not the near-perfect film that “My Golden Days,” which screened at Cannes last year, was. Desplechin’s new film, which launched this year's Cannes Film Festival this morning (Cannes is celebrating seventy this year) is sketchy and brutal and impertinent and camp. It has some grand, theatrical dialogue (and it works well), like its predecessor from last year, memorable lines, like, "I will rip your mask off and make a prince out of you.”

Is social media a waste of time, as David Remnick said? Maybe so. But Twitter, Instagram and the rest make keeping up with other people's lives easy and free. Where the Cannes festivalgoer is concerned, a spur-of-the-moment video on Instagram by a filmmaker can potentially add insight into what they're experiencing. At the same time, it's important not to lose touch of the fact that social media is often as vapid as it is useless

Will Smith, Jessica Chastain, Maren Ade, Fan Binbing, Park Chan-Wook, Paolo Sorrentino and Gabriel Yared (a French-Lebanese composer known for writing the score for "The English Patient") have just been announced as this year’s jurors at the 2017 Cannes Festival, celebrating seventy years this year. These brave men and women will help jury president Pedro Almodóvar in choosing a winner among this year's

“Flower," Max Winkler’s directorial debut, looks and feels like any other coming-of-age teen dramedy to come out in recent memory. And yet, looking at how great the films in this new wave of teen films have been, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Zoey Deutch stars as Erica, a girl who gets joy in life from hanging out with friends and blackmailing unsuspecting men with the power of oral pleasure. All is fine in Erica’s life, but things begin to take a

This afternoon the Cannes Festival, still ensconced in their rue Amélie offices in central Paris, announced that Uma Thurman will preside over this year's Un Certain Regard jury. The Un Certain Regard ("a certain perspective") program offers a mishmash of diverse films by known and unknown filmmakers. Past jury presidents have included Isabella Rossellini and Pablo Trapero.

Gentlemen, start your engines!

The filmmakers, their movies, all of these, and more, were announced during a well-attended press conference at a grand movie theater on the Champs Elysées this morning.

Two notable comebacks this year are Fatih Akin, with “Aus Dem Nichts” (“In the Fade”) and John Cameron Mitchell, who was last in