Someone reading the description for “Yomeddine” and believing that A.B. Shawky is trying hard at tugging at the heart’s strings could be forgiven. There’s something vaguely manipulative about a road movie in which a leper and an orphan are paired together and travel across a part of Egypt together on a donkey-pulled carriage, the world oblivious to them. Doesn't this sound like the working script for a Save The Children ad? A leper goes to visit his family with a young orphan

In the Un Certain Regard category, which was created by honorary president Gilles Jacob to allow for some generational renewal in the festival’s programming grid, “Rafiki,” directed by newcomer filmmaker Wanuri Kahiu. The Nairobi-born director (b. 1980) had just one other feature-length film under her belt, “From a whisper,” before coming to Cannes, in the spirit of what was intended with this selection: brand-new, young

Donbass is a region in Eastern Ukraine that’s occupied by various criminal gangs, the Ukrainian regular army, supported by volunteers, and separatist gangs, supported by Russian troops. In "Donbass," the film, the events that are richly-depicted by Ukraine-born Sergei Loznitsa (“Maidan,” “Austerlitz,” “My joy”) in stunningly-realistic fashion bring the point across, with great clarity, that this war didn’t just happen in the open fields. It happened in the homes, the bunkers, the government offices, the food drives of this community. In fighting this proxy war through the separatist gangs