During one of the tamer scenes of “Cleopatra” Elizabeth Taylor’s Queen of the Nile leads Julius Caesar to the tomb of Alexander the Great. Staring down at the (pretend) grave of Western Civilization’s greatest conqueror, what could Taylor be thinking? Is she thinking “Amateur!”? What Alexander tried and failed to take with force – the entire world – Taylor was accomplishing that moment with overwhelming fame and

A film based on Nelson Mandela's bestselling autobiography "Long Walk to Freedom" will be released in November, producers said on Monday. The biopic, entitled "Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom", is to star British actor Idris Elba as the iconic anti-apartheid hero and will trace his life from childhood to imprisonment and presidency in 1994. "We are honoured to have had Madiba license us the film rights to his fascinating life story

Abdelatif Kechiche’s "Blue Is the Warmest Colour," a graphic but incredibly haunting and beautiful lesbian love story, has won the Palme d’Or, as was just announced during today's closing ceremony. The jury, presided over by Steven Spielberg (the other members: Daniel Auteuil, Vidya Balan, Naomi Kawase, Nicole Kidman, Ang Lee, Cristian Mungiu, Lynne Ramsay, and Christoph Waltz), presented the following awards as well:

This 66th Cannes Festival was a genuinely social affair. No, I don’t mean the bacchanalian soirees and the private parties which happened relentlessly during the eleven days or so of the festival. I’m referring to social media. Cannes’ Twitter ecosystem really came into its own this year, with people (“les tweetos” as the French like to call them) taking to the bandwidths to comment on everything from the selection to the celebs (les “pipoles”)

The Cannes Festival is also at its best when it serves our interests through the rewarding of serious works that have a strong historical and social component.

During a brief ceremony in the Theatre Claude Debussy tonight Thomas Vinterberg and the rest of the Un Certain Regard jury handed out prizes to films presented in that section. Of note, Rithy Panh’s “The Missing Picture,” an

The Cinéfondation and Short Films Jury headed by Jane Campion [...]

In the sixteenth century in the Cevennes region of France, a horse dealer by the name of Michael Kohlhaas leads a decent family life. When a lord treats him unjustly, he launches war.

If the opening score of “Michael Koolhaas” makes this competition film sound like “Conan the Barbarian,” you’ve been misled. This action drama set in the Middle Ages is a demanding and intellectual work--more cerebral and poignant than entertaining--on the themes of order and morality. Michael Kohlhaas—performed by a more-iconic-than-ever Mads Mikkelsen—is not one to be done in by an operetta baron. So when he must arbitrarily leave two of his horses as a deposit only to recover them later in a sorry state and discover that his servant has been attacked by dogs, he embarks on a mad crusade against the justice (or rather injustice ) of the powers-that-be.