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The Sarajevo Film Festival will debut 15 feature films across its four competition strands during its 2025 edition, running from August 15 to 22.

A total of 50 films will compete for the festival’s Heart of Sarajevo awards. The festival’s four competition sections for feature, documentary, short, and student films will also screen six international, 28 regional, and two national premieres.

Announcing today’s batch of titles, Sarajevo Creative Director Izeta Građević, said: “The competition programs of the 31st Sarajevo Film Festival bring together filmmakers who, each from their own perspective and in various film formats and genres, explore how we live and how we survive within complex and unstable social frameworks. The backbone of this year’s competition programs are films that, transcending national boundaries, remain true to the universal stories that shape our lives. In this range – from topics that deal with today to those that question the past – this selection opens up space to remember,...

Srdan Vuletic’s Otter and Vladimir Tagic’s Yugo Florida are among the five feature world premieres screening as part of the competition programme of the 31st Sarajevo Film Festival dir. Srdan Vuletic*

Stars Of Little Importance (Hun) dir. Renato Olasz*

Yugo Florida (Ser-Bul-Fr-Cro-Mont) dir. Vladimir Tagic*

DJ Ahmet (N Mac-Czech-Ser-Cro) dir. Georgi M. Unkovski

Fantasy (Slovenia-n Mac) dir. Kukla

God Will Not Help (Cro-It-Rom-Gr-Fr-Slovenia) dir. Hana Jusic

Sorella Di Clausura (Rom-Ser-It-Sp) dir. Ivana Mladenovic

White Snail (Austria-Ger) dirs. Elsa Kremser, Levin Peter

Wind, Talk To Me (Ser-Slovenia-Cro) dir. Stefan Dordevic

Competition programme – documentary film

Bosnian Knight (Bos & Her-Cro) dir.

Ukrainian filmmaker Sergei Loznitsa is set to preside over this year’s Sarajevo Film Festival jury while Berlinale head Tricia Tuttle, actor Dragan Mićanović, writer-actor-director Emanuel Pârvu and writer-director Ena Sendijarević are all set as jury members.

Loznitsa has directed 28 documentaries and five feature films, including his Cannes competition debut title My Joy and Donbass, the latter of which earned him the Best Director Prize in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard strand. In addition to presiding over the jury, Loznitsa will present a retrospective of his work at Sarajevo.

Tuttle is currently director of the Berlin International Film Festival, which she has headed up since 2024. Prior to that, she was festival director of the BFI London Film Festival and BFI Flare: London Lgbtqia+ Film Festival. She also led the Directing Fiction program at Nfts.

Serbian actor Mićanović has credits that include Barking at the Stars, Coriolanus and Rocknrolla. He’s been...

Ukrainian filmmaker Sergei Loznitsa and Berlinale director Tricia Tuttle are among the members of the Competition Programme – Feature Film jury for the 31st Sarajevo Film Festival (August 15-22).

Loznitsa is president of the five-person jury, which also includes filmmaker Ena Sendijarevic, actor Dragan Micanovic and filmmaker Emanuel Parvu.

The jury will present the Heart of Sarajevo awards in the competition programme on Friday, August 22. Awards at last year’s festival included best feature film, director, actress and actor.

Loznitsa received an honorary Heart of Sarajevo at the 2022 festival. His latest film Two Prosecutors debuted in Competition at Cannes in May.

Ukrainian director-writer Sergei Loznitsa will be president of the main jury of the 31st Sarajevo Film Festival, it was revealed Friday.

He’ll be joined by Serbian actor Dragan Mićanović, Romanian director, writer and actor Emanuel Pârvu, Bosnian-Dutch filmmaker and screenwriter Ena Sendijarević, and Berlinale festival director Tricia Tuttle.

The jury will select the winners of the Heart of Sarajevo awards in the feature film competition program. The winners will be revealed on Aug. 22 at the awards ceremony.

Loznitsa has directed 28 documentaries and five fiction films. His feature debut “My Joy” (2010) premiered in main competition in Cannes. He won the Fipresci prize at Cannes for “In the Fog” in 2012, and the best director prize of Cannes’ Un Certain Regard section for “Donbass” in 2018.

Mićanović’s film and television credits include the local hit “Barking at the Stars” (1998), and the international productions “Rocknrolla” (2008) and “Coriolanus” (2011).

Recent highlights include his role as...

Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof and Brazilian actress Fernanda Torres are among the competition jurors for the 82nd Venice International Film Festival (August 27-September 6).

Also alongside previously announced jury chair Alexander Payne are filmmakers Stephane Brize from France, Maura Delpero from Italy and Cristian Mungiu from Romania, as well as Chinese actress Zhao Tao.

The seven-strong jury will award prizes including the Golden Lion for best film; the Silver Lion grand jury prize; and awards for best director, actress, actor and screenplay.

French filmmaker Julia Ducournau will chair the Horizons jury, alongside Italian filmmaker Yuri Ancarani, Australian director Shannon Murphy, US...

Ukrainian director Sergei Loznitsa (Two Prosecutors) will serve as the jury president for the 31st edition of the Sarajevo Film Festival next month.

The other members of the jury of the competition program – feature film are Serbian actor Dragan Mićanović, Romanian director, writer and actor Emanuel Pârvu, Bosnian-Dutch director and writer Ena Sendijarević, and Berlin International Film Festival director Tricia Tuttle, who previously ran the BFI London Film Festival.

“Loznitsa joins a rich constellation of film auteurs who have previously presided over the Sarajevo Film Festival jury in past editions,” organizers said on Friday. They inclyde Mike Leigh (2004), Jasmila Žbanić (2006), Jeremy Irons (2007), Nuri Bilge Ceylan (2008), Ari Folman (2011), Danis Tanović (2013), Béla Tarr (2014), Michel Franco (2017), Asghar Farhadi (2018), Ruben Östlund (2019), Michel Hazanavicius (2020), Mia Wasikowska (2023), and Paul Schrader (2024).

The Sarajevo fest winners will be unveiled during the awards ceremony on Friday, Aug. 22.

Italian auteur Paolo Sorrentino is this year’s recipient of the Honorary Heart of Sarajevo award.

Ukrainian director Sergei Loznitsa’s Two Prosecutors, his adaptation of Georgy Demidov’s eponymous novel, is set in the Soviet Union in 1937 during Stalin’s Great Purge and tells the story of a young local prosecutor and dedicated communist who starts to question his undying faith in the regime.

The film, which debuted at Cannes, has been playing in the 59th edition of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival.

“I would like to continue with this topic, based on the same novel,” says Loznitsa of the film, which explores Stalin’s tyranny and totalitarianism more broadly, in an almost Kafkaesque way. “I would like to make my next film about the same repression system, but from the other side, from the side of the people who are prisoners, who were tortured and interrogated in prison. And about what kind of decisions they make because everybody knows that it’s all bullshit.

Documentarians Marcus Lenz and Mila Teshaieva take a similar approach to Sergei Loznitsa’s The Invasion as they consider the enormity of the impact of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on the lives of everyday citizens.

They follow up their 2022 film When Spring Came To Bucha with a multi-faceted snapshot of life focusing again on the liberated Ukrainian city, where hundreds were killed in a massacre by Russian forces in 2022. A multigenerational approach means they track everything from school life through marriage disrupted by military service to some of those who have been hurt on the frontline. While most of the documentaries from Ukraine in recent years have been careful to present the citizenry as stoic and pulling together in the face of Russian aggression, Lenz and Teshaieva’s film is more nuanced in that it shows that the sustained pressure on the populace has led cracks to form...

Stellan Skarsgård will receive the Crystal Globe for Outstanding Artistic Contribution to World Cinema at the 59th edition of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. Skarsgård will also present his latest film, Joachim Trier’s quiet stunner “Sentimental Value,” which won the Grand Prix at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.

Dakota Johnson, Peter Sarsgaard, and Vicky Krieps will also receive the President’s Award. Johnson will present her two latest films, Michael Angelo Covino’s hilarious “Splitsville” and Celine Song’s deconstructed rom-com “Materialists,” while Sarsgaard presents the underrated 2003 journalism drama “Shattered Glass” and Krieps her new drama “Love Me Tender.”

Among many other attendees, there will also be American director, actor, and screenwriter Jay Duplass who will presents his latest bittersweet comedy “The Baltimorons,” French actress Camille Cottin who will present the world premiere of her film “Out of Love,” Hungarian director Bence Fliegau who will be there...

Karlovy Vary International Film Festival has added Iranian feature Bidad by Soheil Beiraghi as the 12th and final title for its main Crystal Globe Competition.

When Karlovy Vary unveiled its line-up in early June, it said would add an Iranian film to the competition but was keeping it secret till closer to the festival to protect the safety of the film’s delegation.

Bidad is the story of the young singer Seti who refuses to accept the fact that women in Iran are not allowed to perform in public. In defiance of her country’s religious laws, she decides to sing in the street.

A film from Iran that has been kept secret so far to ensure the safety of its delegation, along with Dakota Johnson, Stellan Skarsgård, Peter Sarsgaard and Vicky Krieps, has joined the lineup for the 59th edition of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (Kviff).

Known as a popular stop on the film festival circuit for many stars, Karlovy Vary had previously already unveiled a visit from Michael Douglas this year.

The 12th and final film of this year’s Karlovy Vary Crystal Globe main competition program is Iran’s Bidad from director Soheil Beiraghi, which tells the story of young singer Seti who refuses to accept the fact that women in Iran are not allowed to perform in public. “In defiance of her country’s religious laws, she decides to sing in the street,” according to a synopsis. “Her performances quickly gain in popularity, and Seti becomes a star...

Janus Films has acquired all North American rights to Two Prosecutors, Ukranian writer-director Sergei Loznitsa’s Cannes competition entry and Francois Chalais Prize winner.

Based on the novella by Soviet scientist and political prisoner Georgy Demidov, the historical drama is set during Stalin’s Great Purge of 1937 and centres on a newly appointed prosecutor on a quest for justice for a victim of the secret police. Aleksandr Kuznetsov, Alexander Filippenko, Anatoli Beliy, Andris Keišs and Vytautas Kaniušonis star.

The film marks a return to narrative filmmaking for Loznitsa, known for documentaries and dramas exploring Ukrainian history. His previous fiction feature,...

Janus Films has picked up the North American rights to Sergei Loznitsa’s Cannes competition drama Two Prosecutors.

The Ukrainian director’s Soviet-era thriller set during Stalin’s Great Purge in 1937 earned the François Chalais Prize in Cannes. Two Prosecutors centers on a law school grad who tries as a young prosecutor takes on corruption in the Soviet system and winds up facing the consequences.

The drama is based on the novella by Soviet scientist and political prisoner Georgy Demidov and stars Aleksandr Kuznetsov, Alexander Filippenko, Anatoli Beliy, Andris Keišs and Vytautas Kaniušonis.

“Impeccably directed and impressively acted, this slow-burn story of political injustice is filled to the brim with atmosphere — specifically the stifling, claustrophobic atmosphere of the U.S.S.R. at the height of Stalin’s Great Purge,” The Hollywood Reporter film critic Jordan Mintzer said of the historical drama in his Cannes festival review.

Director Loznitsa in...

Janus Films has acquired all North American rights to distribute writer/director Sergei Loznitsa’s “Two Proescutors.” The film premiered in competition at the 78th Cannes Film Festival, where it won the annual François Chalais Prize.

“Two Prosecutors” adapts the novella of the same name by Soviet writer and political prisoner Georgy Demidov. Set during The Great Purge, the film follows a young prosecutor who seeks justice for a man falsely imprisoned by the Soviet Union’s secret police. Demidov himself served more than a decade in Soviet labor camps after being arrested in 1938 during The Great Purge.

“Two Prosecutors” sees Ukranian director Loznitsa return to narrative filmmaking for the first time since 2018’s “Donbass,” earning him Un Certain Regard’s Prize for Best Director at Cannes. Since that time, Loznitsa has directed a number of documentaries, including “Babi Yar. Context,” which won the Golden Eye award for documentary filmmaking...

The Cannes Film Festival is over, and while the Marché Du Film is as booming as ever with exciting packages of future films, the main action has been for those films playing in competition, all of which could make a big splash at the box office or the awards season race for the right buyer. Last year’s “The Substance” was acquired by Mubi before it landed a Best Picture Oscar nomination and made $77.3 million worldwide.

Here are the 13 films we predicted ahead of the festival could find homes quickly, several of which already have. We’ll update the below list with all the acquisitions as they come in.

“Two Prosecutors”

Section: Competition

Distributor: Janus Films

Director: Sergei Loznitsa

Buzz: In the return to fiction filmmaking for the first time since 2018 from the “Donbass” and “The Invasion” director, Sergei Loznitsa adapted a suppressed novella set during Stalin’s Great Purge...

The 59th edition of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (Kviff) will feature key Cannes Film Festival winners in its Horizons section and a selection of action and horror movies, both new and older, for its revamped Midnight Screenings program under the new name “Afterhours.”

In a lineup update unveiled on Friday, Kviff said it will this year screen more than 130 feature films in the picturesque Czech spa town of Karlovy Vary.

The Horizons lineup, which traditionally features highlights from the festival circuit of the past year, includes the likes of Jay Duplass’ The Baltimorons, Tom Shoval’s A Letter to David, Michel Franco’s Dreams, My Father’s Shadow by Akinola Davies Jr., Mary Bronstein‘s If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, Ira Sachs’ Peter Hujar’s Day, Sergei Loznitsa’s Two Prosecutors, Jafar Panahi‘s Cannes Palme d’Or winner It Was Just an Accident, and fellow Cannes...

Lithuanian filmmaker and editor Gabrielė Urbonaitė explores the pressures on young women in her feature directorial debut Renovation, which will world premiere in the Proxima Competition lineup of the 59th edition of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival.

The movie stars Žygimante Elena Jakštaitė (European Shooting Star 2021), Šarūnas Zenkevičius (European Shooting Star 2025) and up-and-coming Ukrainian talent Roman Lutskyi (Under the Volcano by Damian Kocur, 2024). The film’s cinematographer Vytautas Katkus will also be in Karlovy Vary, premiering his directorial debut feature The Visitor in the festival’s main competition.

Now, THR can exclusively reveal the first trailer for the movie about a young woman feeling the pressure to be settled and successful by the time she turns 30.

Ilona, a perfectionist 29-year-old, lives in present-day Vilnius, Lithuania. “At this turning point in her life, she begins to question how she truly wants to live. She moves into a seemingly perfect apartment with her boyfriend Matas,...

Italian auteur Paolo Sorrentino is this year’s recipient of the Honorary Heart of Sarajevo award to be bestowed upon him during the 31st edition of the Sarajevo Film Festival, which will also feature a retrospective of his films that will be screened as part of the fest’s “tribute to” program.

The honor and tribute will be “in recognition of his outstanding contribution to the art of cinema,” Sarajevo fest organizers said on Tuesday. Sorrentino will also hold a masterclass and “share his thoughts on contemporary art in a conversation with the audience,” they noted.

“I am deeply honored to receive this prestigious recognition and grateful for the attention given to my filmography,” said Sorrentino. “I look forward to being with you in Sarajevo. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.”

The fest highlighted the effect the Italian director and screenwriter’s oeuvre has had on audiences. “Paolo...

Illustration by Franz Lang.No official competition title unveiled in Cannes this year spoke to our troubled times with the same full-throated urgency as Jafar Panahi’s Palme d’Or–winning It Was Just an Accident (all titles 2025 unless otherwise noted). It was a historic award for a groundbreaking film. Panahi, who had already received the Golden Lion in Venice for The Circle (2000) and the Golden Bear in Berlin for Taxi (2015), joins Henri-Georges Clouzot, Michelangelo Antonioni, and Robert Altman as one of the four directors to have won top honors at all three festivals. And he completed the trifecta with a film that serves as an explicit, fearless response to the censorship and humiliations he has long suffered at the hands of the regime in his native Iran. In July 2022, the filmmaker was arrested by Iranian authorities for signing a petition against police violence, and subsequently spent several months in jail.

The Cnc’s Aide aux Cinemas du Monde (World Cinema Aid) film fund for supporting feature film co-productions between France and the rest of the world had a record year at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.

The fund supported 16 films in various sections, with a record six titles winning main Competition prizes: Jafar Panahi’s Palme d’Or winnerIt Was Just An Accident, Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value (Grand Prix), Oliver Laxe’s Sirat (Jury Prize), Kleber Mendonça Filho’s The Secret Agent (best director and best actor) and Bi Gan’s Resurrection (special award).

Eight films from the...

Exclusive: Norwegian distributor Fidalgo has topped up its release slate with two further additions from the Cannes Official Selection.

The company has acquired rights to Sergei Loznitsa’s Two Prosecutors, from Edge Entertainment, which had previously acquired rights for the Nordics from sales company Coproduction Office.

Two Prosecutors debuted in Competition on May 14, scoring a strong 3.1 on Screen’s Cannes jury grid – enough to top the final grid alongside It Was Just An Accident. The film follows an idealistic prosecutor in 1937 Ussr, who discovers a prisoner’s letter that exposes Nkvd corruption.

Fidalgo has also acquired Bi Gan’s Resurrection from Les Film du Losange,...

Exclusive: Norwegian distributor Fidalgo has topped up its release slate with three further additions from the Cannes Official Selection.

The company has acquired rights to Sergei Loznitsa’s Two Prosecutors, from Edge Entertainment, which had previously acquired rights for the Nordics from sales company Coproduction Office.

Two Prosecutors debuted in Competition on May 14, scoring a strong 3.1 on Screen’s Cannes jury grid – enough to top the final grid alongside It Was Just An Accident. The film follows an idealistic prosecutor in 1937 Ussr, who discovers a prisoner’s letter that exposes Nkvd corruption.

Fidalgo has also acquired Bi Gan’s Resurrection from Les Film du Losange,...

Last year, in IndieWire’s 2024 Cannes Critics Survey, there was startling unanimity, with Sean Baker’s “Anora” winning Best Film, Best Screenplay, and Best Director. The 2025 Critics Poll couldn’t be less unanimous, with different films topping each of those categories this time. (Read the IndieWire’s staff’s own picks for the best films of Cannes 2025 here.) Even though the 48 critics who voted, representing four continents, largely overlapped with those who voted last year (see Page 2 for the list of all who participated), they seemed insistent upon spreading the wealth this time. For instance, Bi Gan’s “Resurrection” topped the Best Director voting, without appearing at all on the Best Film or Best Screenplay lists.

Best Film in this 2025 edition of the Cannes Critics Survey went to Oliver Laxe’s “Sirât,” the French-Spanish co-production filmed in Morocco about a father searching for his daughter, who goes missing while attending...

Ioncinema.com’s Chief Film Critic Nicholas Bell reviewed the entire competition and more. Here is a comprehensive guide to all the feature films across all sections, including logged reviews and forthcoming ones. Our Cannes coverage continues well beyond the festival dates.

Competition

Alpha – Julia Ducournau – [Review]

Dossier 137 – Dominik Moll – [Review]

Die, My Love – Lynne Ramsay – [Review]

Eagles of the Republic – Tarik Saleh – [Review]

Eddington – Ari Aster – [Review]

Fuori – Mario Martone – [Review]

The History of Sound – Oliver Hermanus – [Review]

It Was Just an Accident – Jafar Panahi – [Review]

La Petite Dernière – Hafsia Herzi – [Review]

The Mastermind – Kelly Reichardt – [Review]

Nouvelle Vague – Richard Linklater – [Review]

The Phoenician Scheme – Wes Anderson – [Review]

Renoir – Chie Hayakawa – [Review]

Resurrection – Bi Gan – [Review]

Romería – Carla Simón – [Review]

The Secret Agent – Kleber Mendonça Filho – [Review]

Sentimental Value – Joachim Trier – [Review]

Sirât – Óliver Laxe – [Review]

Sound of Falling – Mascha Schilinski – [Review]

Two Prosecutors – Sergei Loznitsa – [Review]

Woman and Child – Saeed Roustayi – [Review]

Jeunes mères – Dardennes – [Review]

Un Certain Regard

Aisha Can’t Fly Away – Morad Mostafa – [Review]

Caravan – Zuzana Kirchnerová – [Review]

The Chronology of Water...

Exclusive: Sergei Loznitsa’s drama Two Prosecutors, set against the backdrop of Stalin’s Great Terror, has chalked up a fresh round of deals following its well-received world premiere in Competition at the Cannes Film Festival.

Paris-based Coproduction Office has sealed new sales to Spain, the Nordics and Iceland (Edge Entertainment), Poland (Aurora Films), Greece (Filmtrade) Turkey (Bir Film), Australia and New Zealand (Sharmill Films), Japan (Longride Inc.), Taiwan (Andrews Film), Hong Kong (Edko), India (Impact), Indonesia (Falcon Pictures), Brazil (Retrato Filmes), and Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay (Zeta Films).

Previously announced deals include to Italy (Lucky Red), Portugal (Alambique), Czech Republic and Slovakia (Aerofilms), Hungary (Vertigo), Eastern Europe (HBO Europe), Estonia (Filmstop), ex-Yugoslavia, Israel (Lev) and Middle East (Falcon Films).

The film was pre-acquired by Pyramide Distribution for France, which has set a September release, and Progress Film for Germany.

Adapted from the eponymous novel by physicist and Gulag survivor Georgy Demidov,...

The 78th edition of the Cannes Film Festival has now concluded, with Jafar Panahi’s It Was Just an Accident taking home the Palme d’Or (see all jury winners here). While our coverage will continue with a few more reviews this week––and far beyond as we provide updates on the journey of these selections––we’ve asked our contributors on the ground to share favorites.

See their picks below, and explore all of our coverage here.

Leonardo Goi (@LeonardoGoi)

1. Sirat (Oliver Laxe)

2. Sound of Falling (Mascha Schilinski)

3. The Last One For The Road (Francesco Sossai)

4. The Secret Agent (Kleber Mendonça Filho)

5. Resurrection (Bi Gan)

6. It Was Just an Accident (Jafar Panahi)

7. Heads or Tails (Alessio Rigo de Righi and Matteo Zoppis)

8. Lucky Lu (Lloyd Lee Choi)

9. Two Prosecutors (Sergei Loznitsa)

10. Mirrors No. 3 (Christian Petzold)

Read all of Leonardo’s reviews here.

Luke Hicks (@lou_hicks)

1. Sirat (Oliver Laxe...

Update: In a triumphant in-person return to the Cannes Film Festival, 22 years after he last attended (though some of his movies have screened in the intervening time), Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi was awarded the Palme d’Or this evening for It Was Just an Accident.

An emotional Panahi, who has spent most of his filmmaking career in the crosshairs of Iran’s authoritarian Islamic Republic government — including more than a decade of multiple detentions, prison sentences, house arrests and filmmaking and travel bans — implored from the Lumière stage: “Let’s put all the problems, all the differences aside; the most important thing right now is our country and our country’s freedom.”

To cheers, he continued, “Let’s reach that moment together when no one dares to tell us what we should completely include, what we should say, what we shouldn’t do… Cinema is a society. No one has...

Iranian director Jafar Panahi’s triumphant return to the Cannes Film Festival, “It Was Just an Accident,” has won the Palme d’Or as the best film in competition at the festival, the Cannes jury announced on Saturday evening.

Panahi, who spent almost 20 years in prison or under house arrest in Iran for making anti-government films, was allowed to leave the country and go to the festival for the first time in more than two decades with the film, which deals with victims of oppression who abduct a man they believe was their torturer in prison.

“The bracing thing about ‘It Was Just an Accident’ is that it has married Panahi’s wit and humanism with real anger,” said TheWrap’s review.“… In a festival full of fury, this is one of the films that hits hardest and resonates longest.”

The review also suggested that the film, which premiered on Tuesday,...

Sergei Loznitsa’s Two Prosecutors and Jafar Panahi’s It Was Just An Accident finished joint top of Screen’s final 2025 Cannes jury grid with an average score of 3.1.

The final two titles on the grid, the Dardenne brothers’ Young Mothers, and Kelly Reichardt’s The Mastermind, both landed with 2.7.

See the final grid below:

Young Mothers sees the Dardenne brothers return to Competition with the story of five teenagers, all housed in a shelter for young mothers and hoping for a better life for themselves and their babies.

The film scored two four-stars (excellent), from Peter Bradshaw and Stephanie Zacharek,...

Illustration by Franz Lang.The last time a Tom Cruise blockbuster premiered in Cannes, the year was 2022, and among the 21 Palme d’Or hopefuls was Albert Serra’s Pacifiction, the kind of work that, in my book at least, exemplifies the electrifying cinema the festival’s Official Competition was designed to showcase. I’ve been chasing an equivalent high at all the editions I attended since, with very mixed results. This year, the festival’s top program promises another cinematic cornucopia, but the menu feels almost conspicuously familiar. A good number of the titles announced so far were directed by Cannes regulars and/or Official Competition habitués; even the few exceptions, like Ari Aster’s Eddington, aren’t exactly debut features. And yet, naïve as this will sound, I like to think that the tidal forces that keep pulling us back to this overpriced stretch of the French Riviera have...

Illustration by Franz Lang.As an American, I usually avoid spending too much time at a festival considering the films from my own country—Notebook has an international lens, and those films will get more than enough attention from the mainstream American press. But it’s hard to ignore the American titles in this year’s Cannes selection; to look at this year’s competitors—Wes Anderson, Ari Aster, Richard Linklater, and Kelly Reichardt—is to experience cultural dissociation that suggests not only that our cinema is fine and dandy, but that, gee whiz, our country might be too. At festivals, art films are often burdened with representing the state of an entire country; perhaps too readily, they are taken as national allegories. The positive artistic force on display at Cannes, however, belies the reality back home, where misanthropic, self-serving leaders are governing with unfathomable authoritarian cruelty. These films seem...

The team behind Directors’ Fortnight title Militantropos wore dark outfits with mirror panels attached to walk the red carpetfor the world premiere of their film in Cannes this morning tomake a statement about the ongoing war in Ukraine, on the red carpet

Directors Alina Gorlova, Simon Mozgovyi and Yelizaveta and their colleagues wore the mirrors to“let others see themselves in us” before heading in to the Theatre Croisette for the 08.45 Cest screening of the documentary about ordinary people transformed by the war, including those who leave Ukraine, those who lose everything, and those who stay to resist and fight.

Jafar Panahi’s It Was Just An Accident and Mario Martone’s Fuori have landed joint top and bottom of Screen’s Cannes jury grid.

Iranian drama It Was Just An Accident joins Sergei Loznitsa’s Two Prosecutors in first place with a 3.1 average from the critics.

Click on the image above for the most up-to-date version of the grid.

The film, which follows the chain reaction caused by a minor incident, received four four-stars (excellent) and five three-stars (good) while three critics gave it two-stars (average).

It is an increase on Panahi’s last time in Competition in 2018 where 3 Faces scored a 2.6 rating.

Kirsten Niehuus, the CEO of the influential film fund for the Berlin-Brandenburg region, Medienboard, welcomed guests to its traditional cocktail reception at the Cannes Film Festival for the last time on Saturday. But it’s unlikely international film folk have seen the last of Niehuus, who has a reputation for backing high-quality international films. Niehuus, who steps down at the end of June, is understood to be a frontrunner for another high-profile role within the Germany film business.

Niehuus is well-placed to become the new president of the German Federal Film Board, known as the Ffa, when Bernd Neumann steps down later this year. The Ffa is a powerful body within the German film landscape. It distributed 20 million euros ($22.5 million) to 50 projects for production and script funding last year, including cash for Cannes films like Joachim Trier’s “Sentimental Value” and Christian Petzold’s “Miroirs No. 3,” likely box-office hits...

Julia Ducournau’s Alpha, the follow-up to her Palme d’Or winner Titane, has landed with poor scores on Screen International’s Cannes jury grid.

With an average of 1.5, it is joint bottom alongside Ari Aster’s Eddington. It collected two zero-stars (bad) from Le Monde’s Mathieu Macharet and The Guardian’ s Peter Bradshaw, as well as four one-stars (poor) and four two-stars (average). Screen’s critic and Positif’s Nt Binh were the outliers, awarding it three-stars (good).

Click on the image above for the most up-to-date version of the grid.

Alpha is about a troubled 13-year-old girl,...

German films and co-productions in Cannes this year are sure to entice festgoers and buyers alike with an eclectic selection heavy on historical drama and animation fare.

Highly anticipated works by Fatih Akin, Mascha Schilinski and Christian Petzold are premiering at the festival along with German co-productions from Wes Anderson, Sergei Loznitsa and Kirill Serebrennikov that explore postwar Germany, lives intertwined through time, loss and grief, international espionage, Stalin’s Great Purge and a war criminal’s escape from justice.

Unspooling in Cannes Premiere, Akin’s “Amrum” is a family drama set in 1945 on the titular North Sea German island and based on the autobiographical novel of screenwriter Hark Bohm, who also penned the script. It centers on 12-year-old Nanning (Jasper Billerbeck), who does everything he can to help his mother feed the family during the last days of the war, only to face all new challenges when peace finally arrives.

Ever since the northeastern European nations Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania introduced their filming incentives about a decade ago, the region has been growing as a go-to destination for foreign shoots. No fewer than three weighty European co-productions selected for Cannes have chosen Latvia as a filming destination: Kristen Stewart’s “The Chronology of Water,” Sergei Loznitsa’s “Two Prosecutors” and Kirill Serebrennikov’s “The Disappearance of Josef Mengele.”

The Baltics’ biggest draws are their tax and cash rebates of up to 30% of local spend, which are topped by co-production and regional coin, as well as top crews, competitive production costs and diverse locations, ranging from medieval, baroque castles, Soviet era buildings, to rugged sea coastline and pristine forests.

Swedish producer Piodor Gustafsson who filmed in 2024 the Frank Spotnitz’s co-produced series “We Come in Peace” in Lithuania, praised ‘the “refreshingly straightforward” tax rebate, “exceptionally high” standard of crew and “abundance...

This week on “Screen Talk,” we take you behind the scenes of the goings-on at the 78th annual Cannes Film Festival on the French Riviera, where we recorded on Day Two. Politics dominated the first press conferences with director Thierry Frémaux and the nine-member jury led by Juliette Binoche. They turned up for opening night as well, where Leonardo DiCaprio presented an honorary Palme d’Or to Robert De Niro, and Quentin Tarantino bounded onto the stage to declare the festival open. The opening night film “Leave One Day,” from French rookie Amélie Bonnin, a strictly local jukebox musical with the actors singing French pop hits of the ’80s, will not travel.

Later that night, DiCaprio attended the gala dinner with De Niro at the Palm Beach, where Anne enjoyed talking with “Anora” Oscar-winners Sean Baker and Samantha Quan, the hilarious Michael Covino (“Splitsville”), Amazon’s Scott Foundas, Michael Barker...

by Cláudio Alves

Could Sound Of Falling be the first German film to win the Palme since The White Ribbon?

As the title says, we're back! Well, I'm back, to be precise. Apologies for my absence in the last few weeks, but I've been busy, here in Portugal, covering the IndieLisboa Film Festival. Indeed, I might still write something about the many great works I caught there for The Film Experience readership. But, in the meantime, my attention shall be on Cannes and batting away the cinephile Fomo that befalls those of us who're staying home, watching from afar as some of the year's most anticipated films make their bow at the Croisette. Nick Taylor is doing some anniversary posting while Elisa Giudici is reporting from the festivities, so I'll be doing my usual schtick and explore past works from this edition's Official Competition auteurs.

A few days of competition screenings have passed.

Cannes – Citizens arrested without justifiable cause. Enemies of the state are imprisoned with no chance of due process. An unhinged secret police force working for an authoritarian ruler, attempting to quell any political dissent. These are moments in history that have occurred time and time again. No matter how liberal society believes it has evolved, they consistently return to wreak havoc. These human failings are at the center of Sergey Loznitsa’s historical drama “Two Prosecutors” and, sadly, are more relevant than ever following its premiere at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival.

Continue reading ‘Two Prosecutors’ Review: Sergey Loznitsa’s Totalitarian History Lesson Simmers In Hard Truths [Cannes] at The Playlist.

Oliver Laxe’s Sirat has divided opinion on Screen International’ s Cannes jury grid, receiving an average score of 2.5.

The family drama about a father, played by Sergi Lopez, searching for his missing daughter in Morocco, collected scores of four (excellent) from Justin Chang, Ahmed Shawky, Kong Rithdee and The Telegraph duo Robbie Collin and Tim Robey, as well as two threes (good).

Dragging the average down however was a zero (bad), from Die Zeit’s Katja Nicodemus, as well as ones (poor) from Peter Bradshaw and Mathieu Macheret.

Click on the image above for the most up-to-date version of the grid.

When Donbass arrived in 2018, sandwiched between the start of the 2014 Russian-backed conflict in the titular eastern Ukrainian region and full-scale invasion of the country four years since its release, the world Sergei Loznitsa trained his camera on was a surreal, decaying wasteland. It’s not that the film was necessarily prophetic about the atrocities that would later spread across Ukraine. But it spoke to concerns that now feel especially of-the-moment, the same that have long served as a cornerstone of the Belarus-born, Kiev-raised director’s oeuvre. While Donbass was a work of fiction, its preoccupations with the way truth can be manipulated also haunt the archive-based documentaries for which Loznitsa is arguably best known. From Blockade (2006) to The Kiev Trial (2022), the director hasn’t exhumed Ussr-era footage as a sort of time machine, but a means to reappropriate history from the regime’s official narratives. Which is why to salute...

This is a film about Russia, set in Russia, and made by a filmmaker educated there, yet it was produced by France, Germany, the Netherlands, Latvia, Romania, and Lithuania. And that is very apparent with the mass of production vanity plates prior to an opening shot.

“Two Prosecutors”’ director Sergei Loznitsa claims Ukraine as the closest element of his post-Soviet heritage, and resides in Berlin, but he has all the attributes of a dissident filmmaker, criticizing and scrutinizing something he intimately knows. It would be nice to see Russian-produced films made under a culture of free expression, but our relative compensation are programmes and films with English dialogue like “Chernobyl” and “Doctor Zhivago”, numerous bad ones with worse accents, and also “Two Prosecutors”, shot in Latvia, but authentic as anything.

Loznitsa made arguably his best film to date with the astonishingly prescient “Donbass” in 2018; the pandemic and his extraordinary jones...

In Cannes to promote his Stalinist drama Two Prosecutors, the film-maker said he feared the US and Russia would soon ‘become equal’

One of Ukraine’s leading film-makers has spoken of the “nightmare” of an emergent alliance between authoritarian leaders in Russia and the US, as his new film on contemporary echoes with the Stalinist era opens at the Cannes film festival.

“The events that unfolded in the past 100 days really surprised many people all over the world,” said director Sergei Loznitsa, whose new film Two Prosecutors received its world premiere on Wednesday. “One couldn’t even imagine in a nightmare such a union, such an understanding between two authoritarian leaders.”...

Screen’s Cannes 2025 jury grid has officially kicked off, with both Mascha Schilinski’s Sound Of Falling and Sergei Loznitsa’s Two Prosecutors posting strong scores.

German drama The Sound Of Fallingdebuted with an average of 2.8. Schilinski’s second feature received four scores of four(excellent), butBangkok Post’s Kong Rithdee dragged the average down with a one star (poor).

Click on the image above for the most up-to-date version of the grid.

It is the strongest start to the jury grid since 2021 when Leos Carax’s Annette started with a 3.0 average.

The Sound Of FallingisSchilinski’s second feature and...

Ordeal by Innocence: Loznitsa Mines the Terrors of Naïveté

A good man is hard to find, and if one were to be found, he’s likely wet behind the ears. So begins a retrospective parable in Two Prosecutors, the first narrative feature from perennial documentarian Sergei Loznitsa since 2018’s galvanizing Donbass (read review). His latest is an adaptation of a short story by Russian writer Georgy Demidov, a physicist who later served his own lengthy stint as a political prisoner only a year after this narrative’s setting. In comparison to Loznitsa’s previous narrative films, his latest happens to be his most straightforward, arguably simple.…...

The Belarusian born, Ukraine filmmaker has loaded up the Cannes Film Festival with what feels like an easy dozen offerings in both the docu and fiction form and spreading over into the Competition, Un Certain Regard and Special Screenings sections. With a focus on Ukraine by way of historical memory and history, Sergei Loznitsa‘s most notable work in the fiction form include Cannes-selected My Joy (2010), In the Fog (2012) and 2018’s Donbass (read ★★★★½ review) while his last feature docu The Invasion (read ★★★ review) was an invite last year in the Special Screenings section. Two Prosecutors is Loznitsa’s fourth time in competition.…...

Sergei Loznitsa returns to fiction after a seven-year passage, transporting us to 1937’s Stalin-ruled Soviet Union, where every corridor feels like a cell. The film opens on a frost-bitten prison yard, the gate’s creak as chilling as a verdict. Within those walls, an aging inmate kindles a match to incinerate plea letters, yet rescues one stained with blood. That scrap becomes the spark for young prosecutor Kornyev’s arrival—a man whose faith in lawful process clashes with a system built on terror.

From the first frames, Loznitsa’s austere staging—locked-off camera in an Academy-ratio frame—insists on deliberate stillness. Light falls in rigid rectangles; shadows move like specters. A measured tempo unfolds: moments of waiting stretch into tension, as if silence itself might betray a secret. The atmosphere tightens around Kornyev’s idealism, testing whether belief in justice can survive when faced with the Nkvd’s cold machinery.

Typically, you’d say that people are haunted by things from the past. But Sergei Loznitsa is a director whose films are often set in the past but haunted by the present.

That has everything to do with the fact that Loznitsa was born in Belarus but raised in Ukraine. Whether his films are blackly comic or stark and sobering, the director often makes movies about Russia’s past that are infused with a fury over what Russia is doing today in his homeland.

“Two Prosecutors,” which opened in the main competition at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival on Wednesday, is Loznitsa’s first narrative film since 2018’s wrenching dark comedy “Donbass,” which presented absurdist scenes from early in the Russian occupation of eastern Ukraine. Since then, he’s focused on nonfiction films like “State Funeral,” “Babi Yar. Context” and “The Invasion,” the latter two of which premiered in Cannes. But...