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Illustration by Franz Lang.We asked some of the finest critics stalking the Croisette to tell us just one moment from this year’s festival that they won’t soon forget.Vadim RizovBefore every official competition screening at Cannes since 1991, the same computer-generated bumper has been shown. As described by former festival head Gilles Jacob, this ascent over red stairs from watery depths “starts at the bottom of the ocean, rises above the waves, and ends up among the stars—where the Palme d’Or belongs.” During round-number anniversary years, directors’ names are added to the stairs, but this year they’re blank. If you’re feeling uncharitable, this can serve as a damning metaphor for the festival itself: an image created in 1991 synecdochally standing for a selection of bedrock auteurs that remain stuck in the same time period. If you’re feeling charitable, the metaphor is more positive: the future of Cannes is unwritten,...

by Jean-March Thérouanne

We have just learned of the death in Manila of Max Tessier, film critic, lecturer and former Cannes Film Festival selector.

We are deeply saddened by his death. We had a thirty-year friendship with him.

He was one of the memories of world cinema. From 1965, he contributed to Jeune Cinéma, then in 1967 to Cinéma. In 1972, he was one of the founders of Ecran. He was a columnist for Revue du Cinéma, Avant-Scène Cinéma and Positif. He is the author of numerous reference works on Japanese cinema, published by the Centre Georges Pompidou and Armand Colin, among others. Returning from Japan in 1983, he convinced Gilles Jacob to select, in extremis, Imamura Shôhei’s ‘The Ballad of Narayama‘ , which the latter had just finalized, even though Oshima Nagisa’s ‘Merry Christmas, Mister Lawrence’ had already been selected. The Ballad of Narayama won the Palme d’Or at Cannes, confirming...

Bertrand Blier, the irreverent French film director behind Oscar-winning romantic comedy Get Out Your Handkerchiefs, has died aged 85.

Blier left his mark on 1970s and 1980s French cinema with films known for their dark humour and cynicism.

He helped to launch the international career of now controversial actor Gerard Depardieu, who starred in the director’s 1974 comedy drama Going Places (Les Valseuses) with Miou-Miou and Patrick Dewaere, about two aimless thugs on a crime and sex spree across the country.

Get Out Your Handkerchiefs (Préparez Vos Mouchoirs),about a ménage-à-trois, won the best foreign-language film Oscar for France in 1979 and...

Bertrand Blier, the irreverent French film director behind Oscar-winning romantic comedy Get Out Your Handkerchiefs, has died aged 85.

Blier left his mark on 1970s and 1980s French cinema with his films known for their dark humour and cynicism. His helped to launch the international career of now controversial actor Gerard Depardieu who starred in the director’s 1974 comedy drama Going Places (Les Valseuses) with Miou-Miou and Patrick Dewaere about two aimless thugs on a crime and sex spree across the country.

Get Out Your Handkerchiefs (Préparez Vos Mouchoirs) about a ménage-à-trois won the best foreign-language Oscar for France in 1979 and...

Alain Guiraudie’s Misericordia, a rural melodrama with a sinister twist, has won France’s Louis Delluc prize for best film of the year.

The comedic crime thriller follows a man who returns to his native small town for a funeral, where his stay is greeted by unexpected twists.

Misericordia premiered in Cannes and went on to play the fall festival trifecta of Telluride, Toronto and New York. Oscar and Bafta-winning Anatomy Of A Fall notably took the same post-Cannes route in 2023.

Les Films du Losange has sold Misericordia to a slew of territories including Sideshow and Janus Films for...

Alain Guiraudie’s Misericordia, a rural melodrama with a sinister twist, has won France’s Louis Delluc prize for best film of the year.

The genre-hopping crime thriller and dark comedy follows a man who returns to his native small town for a funeral when a mysterious disappearance, a threatening neighbour, and a priest with strange intentions add an unexpected twist to his stay.

Misericordia premiered in Cannes and after that became one of few French titles to complete the fall festival trifecta of Telluride, Toronto and New York film festivals. Oscar and Bafta-winning Anatomy Of A Fall notably took...

Watching “Babygirl” at the Venice Film Festival, I thought, “Isabelle Huppert is going to like this.” Here is a provocative movie, directed by Halina Reijn, starring Nicole Kidman as a corporate CEO engaging in kink and sexually submitting herself to a younger intern (Harris Dickinson). Kidman’s Romy cuts a powerful silhouette in the office by day, but by night, she’s on all fours being dominated in increasingly adventurous sexual encounters.

With Huppert as jury president, it was no surprise when Kidman won Best Actress, as Huppert famously stars in the darkly perverse “The Piano Teacher,” a movie Reijn’s script is surely in deep conversation with. In the 2001 Michael Haneke film, Huppert played a stoic music instructor who becomes sexually overpowered by a younger pupil. I went into “Babygirl” expecting the American version of “The Piano Teacher,” though Reijn’s film is more buoyantly sex-positive than sinisterly Freudian.

Michel Blanc, a prominent French actor renowned for his versatility in both comedic and dramatic roles, died on October 4th from a heart attack following an allergic reaction. He was 72 years old. Blanc made his mark in the 1978 comedy “Les Bronzés” and its sequels, earning fame for his portrayal of an awkward bachelor. While comedy brought him widespread popularity, he worked hard to show his talents extended beyond it.

Blanc received critical acclaim for his dramatic turns, like winning Best Actor at the 1986 Cannes Film Festival for “Tenue de Soirée.” He also gained recognition for his skills as a writer, taking home a Best Screenplay award at Cannes in 1994 for his self-referential comedy “Grosse Fatigue.” Later in his career, he earned a César for Best Supporting Actor in the 2011 political drama “L’Exercice de l’État.”

Beyond acting, Blanc proved talented behind the scenes as well. He directed several successful films and wrote their scripts,...

Terry Gilliam has been to Cannes with three of his own films since 1983, but one of his favorite memories of the festival takes him back to that very first time, at the 36th edition, as the co-writer and co-star of Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life. Along with Graham Chapman and the film’s director Terry Jones, he’d emerged from the Carlton hotel’s iconic entrance, then bedecked with promotion for the upcoming Bond movie Octopussy, to encounter a camera crew. Jones started grabbing people at random, shouting, “Who Ees Monty Python???” in a ridiculous foreign accent, and got so carried away that, when they reached the hotel’s famous terrace, he accidentally did it to Gilliam too.

The crowd loved it, and the day only grew stranger. Out on the Carlton’s jetty, they gave an interview to British news channel ITN, with Jones hiding behind Graham...

Some 45 years ago, the Cannes Film Festival invited Francis Ford Coppola to bring his latest project to the French Riviera for a special “work-in-progress” screening. The movie’s production had already achieved a mythic status as an example of Murphy’s Law made manifest, from last-minute actor replacements to monsoons to storylines being added, subtracted and rewritten on the fly. Coppola had sunk a lot of his own money into the project, since the studios had been reluctant to finance what seemed like a huge folly. The director had staked...

French filmmaker Laurent Cantet, whose 2008 film The Class won the Palme d’Or in Cannes in 2008, died on April 25 at the age of 63.

The acclaimed filmmaker was planning to shoot his next film Enzo, co-written by Robin Campillo and produced by Anatomy Of A Fall producer Marie-Ange Luciani, later this year.

Cantet’s agent Isabelle de la Patellière confirmed to French media the filmmaker “died this morning in Paris from an illness.”

The Class is a Paris documentary-drama based on a semi-autobiographical book by François Bégaudeau set in a French classroom about a teacher in a tough Parisian neighbourhood that starred a mostly unprofessional cast.

Paolo Taviani, the iconic Italian director who helmed numerous films with his brother Vittorio, has died. He was 92.

Taviani died in a clinic in Rome after suffering from a short illness, according to media reports. His wife and two children were at his bedside, according to Anasa news agency.

Roberto Gualtieri, the Mayor of Rome, made the announcement on X.

“With Paolo Taviani, a great master of Italian cinema leaves us,” Gualtieri wrote in Italian. “Together with his brother Vittorio, he made unforgettable, profound, committed films, which have managed to enter the collective imagination and the history of cinema. An affectionate hug to the family.”

Born in 1931 in Tuscany, Taviani formed a formidable directing duo with his brother Vittorio, who died in 2018.

The pair made films together for more than 50 years. Their most prominent was Palme d’Or winner Padre Padrone, an adaptation of Gavino Ledda’s autobiographical novel about...

Michel Ciment, the esteemed French film critic, historian, author, radio producer and editor of the influential film magazine Positif, has died. He was 85.

His death was reported Monday by the French radio channel France Inter, the home of his culture program Le Masque et la Plume since 1970.

Ciment was “perhaps the freest and most encyclopedic mind that film criticism has ever produced,” Le Masque et la Plume producer Jérome Garcin in a statement. He made what would be his last appearance on the show in September.

The Paris native also produced Projection privée on France Culture radio from 1990-2016. He was “an immense critic and historian who devoted his entire life to passing on, in words and in writing, his erudition and his passion for the seventh art,” a statement from the channel said.

Ciment joined Positif after sending in a story about the Orson Welles film The Trial in 1963 and would become its editor,...

French critic, historian and author was loyal contributor to Screen’s Cannes jury grid.

Iconic French film critic and historian Michel Ciment has died, his entourage confirmed on Monday evening to French radio station France Inter, home to his world-renowned radio show Le Masque et la Plume since 1970. He was 85.

Born in 1938 in Paris, Ciment devoted his life to cinema and became a pillar of French film criticism and history for more than half a century.

He served as a juror at major festivals including Cannes, Venice, Berlin and Locarno and received numerous French civic honours including the Legion of Honour,...

French film critic and historian Michel Ciment, the long-time publishing director of film magazine Positif, has died Monday, French media reported. He was 85.

Ciment first started writing for the Lyon-based magazine in 1963, when he contributed a piece about the cinema of Orson Welles.

The magazine was launched in 1952 shortly after Les Cahiers du Cinéma by Bernard Chardère, who also died this year.

In a talk at Paris’s Forum Des Images in 2022, marking Positif’s 70th anniversary, Ciment recounted how he started reading the magazine in the 1950s as a teenager, while hanging around the Le Minotaure bookshop in the Paris quarter of Saint-Germain-des-Près.

“It was an amazing place where you’d bump into other cinephiles like Jean-Claude Romer, who went on to create [the cinema magazine] Midi Minuit Fantastique,” recounted Ciment.

“There were a lot of people from Les Cahiers and Positif… You couldn’t find the cinema revues in kiosks then.

“The most beautiful gestures from my film came to mind at the kitchen in the Résidence when I was pressing oranges in the juice machine,” said Nadiv Lapid.

Six first or second-time international filmmakers are taking part in the Cannes Film Festival’s annual Résidence programme that kicked off on October 1 in Paris and will run through February 2024.

Belgian director Meltse Van Coillie, Czech-Vietnamese filmmaker Diana Cam Van Nguyen, Chinese director Zhao Hao, Haitian director Gessica Généus, Croatian filmmaker Andréa Slaviček, and Moroccan director Asmae El Moudi will all work on their upcoming features with advice from industry experts in writing and producing their films.

The Cannes Film Festival has admitted six filmmakers, five women and one man, to its 2024 residency program.

The list of filmmakers includes Morrocan director Asmae El Moudir, best known for her feature The Mother of All Lies, which shared last year’s the L’Oeil d’or (Golden Eye) prize for the best documentary with Four Daughters (Kaouther Ben Hania) at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.

The other participants are Meltse Van Coillie, Diana Cam Van Nguyen, Zhao Hao, Gessica Généus, and Andréa Slaviček. The residency program runs over four and a half months, during which all participants will live in Paris and receive personalized support to aid the writing of their first or second feature film screenplay.

The Cannes residency program was created in 2000 by Pierre Viot and Gilles Jacob and was first headed by Sylvie Perras. It is now helmed by Stéphanie Lamome.

“This year, five female...

Deauville American Film Festival will forge ahead with its honorary tributes to stars such as Natalie Portman, Jude Law, Peter Dinklage and Joseph Gordon-Levitt despite the fact that they won’t be in attendance due to the SAG-AFTRA strike.

The festival’s artistic director, Bruno Barde, told Variety ahead of the event’s press conference on Thursday that he empathized with actors and writers who are on strike to “protect themselves against the dangers of artificial intelligence.”

“AI has always existed in cinema and it’s now posing a threat to screenwriters, set designers, dubbers and, of course, to actors whom we’re using the image of. Cinema is an art that elevates humankind, and artificial intelligence does the exact opposite. It’s a danger,” Barde said.

And while he stands in solidarity with the strike, he has opted “to maintain all the tributes which will pay homage to careers...

UK director Molly Manning Walker’s first film How To Have Sex won the top prize in Cannes Un Certain Regard on Friday evening.

The tale of a group of teenagers on a rite of passage clubbing holiday was described by Deadline reviewer Damon Wise as “a visceral and sensory experience” and an “exceptional debut”. Read the review here and a Deadline interview with the director here.

The Jury Prize went to Moroccan filmmaker Kamal Lazraq’s Hounds about a father and son who find themselves caught up in a kidnapping plot that goes wrong.

Best Director went to Moroccan director Asmae El Moudir’s documentary The Mother Of All Lies about the bread riots that shook a working-class Casablanca neighborhood in 1981.

She follows in the footsteps of Alain Guiraudie, Kiyoshi Kurosawa and Sergei Loznitsa who also won the prize early in their careers.

In other awards, the Ensemble Prize...

No book could ever fully capture the beautiful, ugly, inexplicable madness that is the Cannes Film Festival — but that hasn’t stopped a handful from trying. Here are THR’s executive editor (awards) and resident film-book bibliophile’s picks for the five best.

1. Two Weeks in the Midday Sun: A Cannes Notebook, by Roger Ebert (1987)

This thin travelogue by the Chicago Sun-Times’ longtime film critic, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1975 and died in 2013, chronicles his experience covering the fest’s 1987 edition, having previously attended many times before. It breezily profiles true festival characters like the publicist Renee Furst, the schlock showman Menahem Golan and the gambler Billy “Silver Dollar” Baxter — all now gone — and charmingly illustrates how much some things have changed (journalists no longer file reports by telex when they can get around to it, but rather post multiple online dispatches daily) and others have not (the jetlag and lack of sleep,...

Nanni Moretti always dresses impeccably — whether tuxed-up for the Cannes red carpet for his eight competition appearances since 1978 (his ninth, for A Brighter Tomorrow, will come May 24) or walking the Croisette in the casual chic (cashmere sweaters and chinos with open-collar shirts in dark gray or plum) that appears to come naturally to Italian men of Moretti’s generation. But the mantle of elder statesman of Italian cinema seems to hang on the 69-year-old director more like an ill-fitting suit.

It’s hard to deny Moretti’s position as a successor to the great neorealists — Vittorio De Sica, Federico Fellini, Roberto Rossellini — and the generation of New Wave heroes of the 1960s like Michelangelo Antonioni, Bernardo Bertolucci and Lina Wertmüller who reclaimed and restored Italian cinema after the ravages of fascism. His list of awards and acclaims alone — the Palme d’Or for The Son’s Room in 2001, Cannes best director in 1994 for Dear Diary,...

Largest and biggest dedicated short film festival and market in the world faces “dangerous situation”.

The future of the Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival hangs in the balance following a budget cut from its biggest funder.

The Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes regional council has reduced the festival’s annual funding from €210,000 to €100,000 for the 2023 financial year.

The decision comes amidst other significant cuts to the cultural sector across the region, with festivals such as Plein La Bobine, a popular local event dedicated to young film audiences, also receiving reduced subsidies.

According to Clermont-Ferrand, the €110,000 budget cut puts it in a “dangerous situation which could,...

France’s Oscar submission nominated in best feature and birst first film categories.

French Oscar submission Saint Omer by Alice Diop has earned a double nomination for France’s prestigious Louis Delluc prize in both the best feature and best first film categories.

The film will vie against an eclectic blend of titles spanning political thriller, comedy and drama, many from female directors and mostly titles that have bowed at major festivals.

In the best French feature category, Saint Omer will compete against fellow Venice title Rebecca Zlotowski’s Other People’s Children, Cannes premieres Albert Serra’s Pacifiction, Louis Garrel’s The Innocent,...

Tributes to Jean-Luc Godard, a pioneering and iconic leader of French cinema, began to flood in immediately after it was reported that the director died today, aged 91, with figures from the world of cinema, politics and beyond remembering the filmmaker for his powerful, singular work.

French President Emmanuel Macron was among the first to pay tribute to Godard with a short message on social media, saying France has lost a “national treasure” and calling the director the most “iconoclastic of New Wave filmmakers.”

Best known for his radical and politically driven work, Godard was among the most acclaimed directors of his generation with classic films such as Breathless (A bout de souffle), which catapulted him onto the world scene in 1960.

Speaking on France Info radio shortly after the news broke, Jack Lang, former Culture Minister of France, said Godard was “Unique, absolutely unique… He wasn’t just cinema, he was philosophy,...

Not long after attending my first Cannes Film Festival almost 35 years ago, I was still green and naïve enough to ask long-time Cannes attendees why the famed French fest held such a powerful place in the pecking order of international film gatherings. The late Richard Corliss, Time magazine’s peerless and beloved film critic, answered warmly and succinctly, with his own more worldly query: “Would you rather be in Germany in the winter or the South of France in the spring?”

Corliss had a point, but in the decades since I’ve tucked my own couple of dozen Cannes fests under my belt, I’ve compiled my own list of reasons why Cannes remains the one film festival that people who’ve never been to a film festival have heard about and wish they could go to, and know that if a film has scored there, it must be worth their time.

French actor, director and producer Jacques Perrin, a fixture for decades in both French and Italian cinema — where he was best known for his role in Giuseppe Tornatore’s Oscar-winning “Cinema Paradiso” — has died. He was 80.

“The family has the immense sadness of informing you of the death of filmmaker Jacques Perrin, who died on Thursday, April 21 in Paris. He passed away peacefully,” Perrin’s family announced in a statement sent to news agency Agence France Press by his son, Mathieu Simonet. The cause of death was not specified.

Born in Paris on July 13, 1941, Perrin, starting in the 1950s, starred in more than 70 films and co-directed others, including the Oscar-nominated “Winged Migration” (2001), in tandem with Philippe Labro, about the voyage of migratory birds which used in-flight cameras and was a box office hit.

The soft-spoken thesp had landed his first leading role starring opposite Italy’s Claudia Cardinale in Valerio Zurlini...

Former WarnerMedia executive will take up the role at the beginning of 2023.

Former WarnerMedia top executive Iris Knobloch has been elected as Cannes Film Festival’s first-ever female president and will take up the role on July 1.

She will succeed Pierre Lescure, who was first elected to the role of festival president in 2014, replacing Gilles Jacob, and is now partway through a third three-year mandate running through to 2023.

Lescure has said previously he was open to stepping down early to accompany a transition period while a new president takes up the reins. He is not due to step down on June 30 of this year.

After several hours of heated debates, Iris Knobloch, the former boss of WarnerMedia France and Germany, has been chosen by the board of the Cannes Film Festival to become its first female president, as Variety has learned . Taking over on June 30, Knobloch will succeed Pierre Lescure, who was re-elected for a third term in June 2020 and is planning to step down after the upcoming edition.

The German-born, Paris-based executive was elected by the board of directors of the Association Française du Festival International du Film, which brings together public authorities and film industry professionals, amid much controversy in France.

Knobloch stepped down from WarnerMedia in June 2021 after a 25-year tenure in various leadership roles. Before leaving the company, she oversaw the strategy as well marketing activities for WarnerMedia France, Benelux, Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Shortly after, she launched a $300-million European special purpose acquisition company with powerful backers, including the French billionaire businessman Francois-Henri Pinault,...

The movie calendar can’t seem to find its old rhythm: Oscar season intersects with SXSW and “The Batman” is soaring in a period that was once a box-office dumping ground. But one element is returning to the scene right on schedule and it’s more than welcome in this column: Cannes hype!

While Covid case counts in Europe may be cause for concern, the world’s most glamorous celebration of the art form remains on track for its 75th edition as it returns to its usual May slot. Although the festival won’t announce its selections until April 14, the buzz machine has already begun with Tom Cruise expected to grace the Croisette with his pandemic-delayed “Tom Gun: Maverick” (a full two years after it was originally expected to land there), Baz Luhrmann’s “Elvis,” and George Miller’s “Three Thousand Years of Longing.” Meanwhile, festival programmers have been combing...

Set to celebrate its 75th anniversary this year, the Cannes Film Festival will likely be presided over by a female executive for the first time ever. Variety has confirmed that Iris Knobloch, the former boss of WarnerMedia France, Germany, Benelux, Austria and Switzerland, is well-positioned to succeed Pierre Lescure who was re-elected for a third term in June 2020 and is planning to step down after the upcoming edition.

Knobloch has yet to be elected by the board of directors of the Association Française du Festival International du Film, which brings together public authorities and film industry professionals, but the German-born, Paris-based executive is being pushed forward by high-profile figures within the French government. Those include culture minister Roselyne Bachelot and Dominique Boutonnat, the president of the National Film Board who is still under a formal investigation for an alleged sexual assault, according to the French news website Satellifacts. The vote...

Incumbent Cannes Film Festival president Pierre Lescure has said he could step down early from his current mandate running until 2023.

Former WarnerMedia top executive Iris Knobloch has been tipped as a potential candidate to succeed Pierre Lescure as Cannes Film Festival president, in a report by French satirical and political insider weekly Le Canard Enchainé on Wednesday (March 2).

Veteran journalist and television executive Lescure was first elected to the role of festival president in 2014, replacing Gilles Jacob, and is now partway through a third three-year mandate running through to 2023.

Lescure has said publicly that he could step down early to...

Cannes delegate general touches on Netflix, diverse jury, Covid tests and succession.

“It’s a collective sigh of relief,” said Cannes Film Festival delegate general Thierry Frémaux as he met with the media on Monday on the eve of the opening of the festival’s first edition in two years, after it was cancelled in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

“We’re not organising this festival for ourselves but rather for cinema, the artists, professionals, press, and the city,” he said. “It’s the first event to take place in the Palais des Festivals since March 2020. It’s a joyful,...

For a certain generation of women, director Susan Seidelman’s second feature, “Desperately Seeking Susan,” is a formative text, an indelible record of New York in the ‘80s, from Madonna’s iconic hair bow to Rosanna Arquette’s spirited performance as the lead. With its cast of New York underground habitués, and fizzy pace set to the tune of Madonna’s “Into the Groove,” “Desperately Seeking Susan” was a fashion-forward change of pace from the teen comedies and slick action fare of the time.

Seidelman’s first feature, the scrappy microbudget “Smithereens,” shocked everyone when it was selected as one of the first American independent films to be accepted into official competition at the Cannes Film Festival. With a cast that included proto-punk rocker Richard Hell, the 1982 “Smithereens” captured the East Village in all its grungy, pre-gentrification glory, and has become a cult classic.

A die-hard New Yorker, Seidelman never felt comfortable in Hollywood.

Sébastien Lifshitz’s documentary is named Best French Film 2020 while Josep by Aurel is crowned the winner in the first films category. Awarded by a jury composed of critics and key figures from the world of the 7th art and presided over by Gilles Jacob, the prestigious 2020 Louis-Delluc Award for the French film of the year has gone to Sébastien Lifshitz’s Adolescentes, which is the first documentary to have scooped this prize since 2008 (Modern Life by Raymond Depardon) and only the fourth in the award’s history (following the Louis-Dellucs won by Nicole Védrès in 1947 and Jean Rouch in 1958). Unveiled in Critics’ Week during the Locarno Film Festival of 2019, Adolescentes is the 4th documentary feature film by Sébastien Lifshitz after Les Invisibles, Bambi and Les vies de Thérèse. The director has...

Controversial director has “never intervened” in decisions of the academy.

Roman Polanski announced Friday that he would not participate in an upcoming general assembly for France’s Academy of Cinema Arts and Techniques following controversy over moves to invite him back as an unelected member.

“Despite holding a deep respect for the work of the Cesar Academy, Roman Polanski has never participated in the general assembly meetings and has no intention of doing so in the future,” read a statement sent to French news agency Afp by Polanski’s representatives.

It added that Polanski had “never intervened in any manner...

Anger over return of old guard to revamped general assembly.

A promised reform drive by France’s troubled Academy of Cinema Arts and Techniques has gotten off to a rocky start after the body moved to allow historic members back into its revamped general assembly including disgraced director Roman Polanski.

The 4,313 members of the body, which oversees the prestigious national César awards, elected the new general assembly earlier this month. This assembly will now vote in a gender-balanced governing board on September 29 as well as male and female presidents who will work in tandem over a two-year period.

However it...

Editors’ Note: Todd McCarthy recently wrote about his layoff from The Hollywood Reporter. To commemorate the sense of collective loss we all feel for the 2020 Cannes Film Festival that would have started tomorrow but had to be scratched for safety reasons like everything else because of the Covid-19 pandemic, McCarthy writes about his long love affair for the singular event, and reveals what movies we would have seen and how, with theatrical moviegoing an uncertainty, some might wait to get their red carpet moment at the Palais in 2021 when Cannes comes roaring back.

I can feel it in my bones. When the pages of the year’s calendar fly off as in an old Hollywood montage to finally arrive at the beginning of May, I know it’s time to get ready for my annual date with the grande dame of all film festivals, the one that requires you—in...

Lee’s Netflix-backed Da 5 Bloods had been due to premiere Out of Competition.

Following the unprecedented cancellation of the 73rd edition of Cannes Film Festival due to the Covid-19 pandemic, delegate general Thierry Frémaux opens up about how he is feeling on the eve of what should have been the opening week of the festival, originally scheduled for May 12-23.

Frémaux also talks about plans for the 2020 Official Selection, what the event plans to do to support cinema over the coming months, and his hopes that Spike Lee will make it for the 2021 edition to take up the...

While the Cannes Film Festival is basking in the glory of having world premiered Bong Joon-Ho’s Oscar-winning “Parasite,” along with many other Oscar contenders, the fate of its presidency is up in the air.

Pierre Lescure, who took over from Gilles Jacob in 2015 as Cannes president, and is running for a third term, was perceived as a shoe-in for reelection considering his solid track record at the helm of the fest, alongside artistic director Thierry Fremaux. But rumors have been swirling in France about another candidate, Mercedes Erra, a top-ranking advertising executive, who is being pushed by the French government, according to the local magazine Paris Match.

Erra, who runs the Havas-owned French advertising agency Betc, is foreign to the world of cinema. However, she may be considered for this position by the culture minister as she’s a prominent advocate for diversity and gender parity, and the government...

The bombshell news about the resignation of the governing board of the Cesar Academy, which distributes France’s equivalent of the Oscars, was greeted with relief within the French film world on Friday.

On the heels of an industry-wide backlash, the 21-member board of the Association for the Promotion of Cinema – the organization overseeing the Cesar Academy – revealed on Thursday evening that it will resign following the Cesar Awards ceremony on Feb. 28.

Among those resigning is Alain Terzian, a French producer who presides over both the Cesar Academy and the Association for the Promotion of Cinema, as well as former Cannes president Gilles Jacob.

“Their resignation is going to give us the opportunity to rewrite the status of the Cesar’s, which appear to be completely outdated,” “Polisse” actor Marina Fois told the French radio France Info on Friday. Fois is one of 400 film figures who signed a petition calling...

Collective resignation comes amid intense criticism of 45-year-old organisation over gender parity, diversity and transparency.

The entire governing board of France’s Academy of Cinema Arts and Techniques, which organises the country’s César awards, resigned on Thursday evening (Feb 13) following weeks of criticism about the way the body is run.

“To honour those who made films in 2019, and to re-establish some calm and ensure that party for cinema remains a party, the board of the Association for the Promotion of Cinema (Apc) has taken the unanimous decision to resign,” the board announced in a statement put out by the César Academy on Thursday.

Bruno Dumont’s “Joan of Arc (“Jeanne”), a semi-musical period drama that world premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and won a special mention in the Un Certain Regard section, has received the Louis Delluc prize from French Critics.

The jury of the Louis Delluc prize is headed by Gilles Jacob, the former president of the Cannes Film Festival.

Dumont’s film follows the journey of the young Joan (Lise Leplat Prudhomme), who believes that God has chosen her and leads the king of France’s army in the 15th century as both France and England fight for the French throne. When she is captured, the church sends her for trial on charges of heresy.

“Joan of Arc,” which is a follow-up to Dumont’s 2017 film “Jeannette, the Childhood of Joan of Arc,” beat out Alain Cavalier’s “Living and Knowing You’re Alive,” Francois Ozon’s “By the Grace of God,...

The feature by Bruno Dumont has been crowned Best French Film of the Year, while Stéphane Batut’s Burning Ghost has come out on top in the Best First Film category. Handed out by a jury of critics and film-industry personalities, and presided over by Gilles Jacob, the prestigious 2019 Louis-Delluc Award for Best French Film of the Year has gone to Joan of Arc by Bruno Dumont. The winner of a Special Mention from the Un Certain Regard jury at the Cannes Film Festival, this feature, starring Lise Leplat Prudhomme in the main role and inspired by Charles Péguy’s stage play The Mystery of the Charity of Joan of Arc, is the sequel to Jeannette, the Childhood of Joan of Arc (premiered in 2017), but adopts quite a different tone. It is the ninth feature-length fiction film by the director, who is due to wrap the shoot for his new.

Beta Cinema has acquired Mahnaz Mohammadi’s Toronto Film Festival entry “Son-Mother” (Pesar-Madar). The Iranian-Czech co-production will have its world premiere at the festival in the Discovery section on Sept. 7.

Mohammadi has made a name for herself with documentaries on social issues such as “Women Without Shadows” and “Travelogue,” in which she interviewed passengers on a train from Tehran to Ankara about the reasons why they decided to flee Iran. Mohammadi has been repeatedly imprisoned and banned from filmmaking and traveling abroad. In 2014, the French directors’ guild launched a petition supported her signed by Costa Gavras and Gilles Jacob, among many others.

“Son-Mother” marks her first fiction feature film and addresses the impact of tradition on the lives of women in present-day Iran, when a young widow is faced with the choice to either abandon her son or succumb to poverty and social degradation.

Leila is a single working mom of two,...

One day after announcing the Official Selection for the 2019 Cannes Film Festival, Cannes artistic director Thierry Fremaux still had 25 movies left to watch. It was the same old story: The flashiest international cinephile gathering is always a rush to the finish line, as Cannes digs through the latest work from A-list auteurs and potential discoveries to assemble a lineup scrutinized around the world. “I really want to pay attention to anything sent in,” Fremaux said during a phone conversation as he rode to another screening. “We want to respect them by watching them all.”

The festival is expected to add more films in the days ahead, but the May gathering is already a lot to take in: New work from Terrence Malick, Jim Jarmusch, Xavier Dolan, and the Dardenne brothers are joined by Competition newcomers like Mati Diop and Céline Sciamma. Fremaux spoke to IndieWire about the range of issues facing the festival this year,...

High Life director Claire Denis will head up this year's Cinefondation and short films jury.

The French filmmaker has had four films in Cannes, including 1988's Chocolat and 2013's Bastards. Her Let the Sunshine In, starring Juliette Binoche, ran in the Directors' Fortnight in 2017.

The Cinefondation selects 15–20 short and student films each year for its competition. The section was launched in 2000 by past president Gilles Jacob, who still heads up the selection, and focuses on seeking out new talent from film schools around the world.

Last year, Saint Laurent director Bertrand Bonello served as head of the ...

High Life director Claire Denis will head up this year's Cinefondation and short films jury.

The French filmmaker has had four films in Cannes, including 1988's Chocolat and 2013's Bastards. Her Let the Sunshine In, starring Juliette Binoche, ran in the Directors' Fortnight in 2017.

The Cinefondation selects 15–20 short and student films each year for its competition. The section was launched in 2000 by past president Gilles Jacob, who still heads up the selection, and focuses on seeking out new talent from film schools around the world.

Last year, Saint Laurent director Bertrand Bonello served as head of the ...

The death of Agnes Varda, a French New Wave icon who was loved and revered around the world, has triggered an outpouring of heartfelt tributes paying homage to her legacy, pioneering work and generous personality.

“Immense sadness. For almost 65 years, Agnès Varda’s eyes and voice embodied cinema with endless inventiveness,” the Cannes Film Festival tweeted. “The place she occupied is irreplaceable. Agnès loved images, words and people. She’s one of those whose youth will never fade.”

Immense sadness. For almost 65 years, Agnès Varda’s eyes and voice embodied cinema with endless inventiveness. The place she occupied is irreplaceable. Agnès loved images, words and people. She’s one of those whose youth will never fade. pic.twitter.com/cpquJXJtwK

— Festival de Cannes (@Festival_Cannes) March 29, 2019

Jr, the French artist and humanitarian who was a close collaborator of Varda and notably teamed with her on her critically-acclaimed documentary “Faces, Places,...

Agnès Varda, the French New Wave director and filmmaking icon behind such films as “Cleo From 5 to 7” and “Vagabond,” has died at age 90. Varda passed away from breast cancer at her home in Paris early March 29. The death was confirmed by Varda’s family, who issued a statement saying Varda was “surrounded by her family and friends” at the time of her passing. The family described the filmmaker as a “joyful feminist” and “passionate artist.” Varda’s funeral is expected to take place in Paris on Tuesday.

Varda got her start as a still photographer before making the jump to feature filmmaking with the 1955 drama “La Pointe Courte.” The film, starring Silvia Monfort and Philippe Noiret, is widely considered to be one of the forerunners of the French New Wave.

Varda’s second feature, “Cleo From 5 to 7,” was entered into the Cannes Film Festival and earned her international acclaim.

Agnes Varda, a leading light of the French New Wave who directed such films as “Cléo From 5 to 7,” “Vagabond” and “Faces Places,” has died. She was 90.

Varda’s death from breast cancer at her Paris home was confirmed Friday by her family. “The filmmaker and artist Agnes Varda died from a cancer at her home in the night of March 29, 2019, surrounded by her family and friends,” the family’s statement said, describing her as a “joyful feminist” and “passionate artist.”

The funeral is expected to take place in Paris on Tuesday.

Just last month, the diminutive director presented her latest film, “Varda by Agnes,” at the Berlin Film Festival and received the honorary Berlinale Camera award. She had films in competition at the festival four times, winning the Grand Jury Prize in 1965 with “Le Bonheur.” But as ill health overtook her in recent weeks, Varda canceled the masterclass she was...