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Starting this evening, The Ballad of Suzanne Césaire, the first feature-length work from artist Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich, will begin an extended theatrical release at the Brooklyn Academy of Music with a series of rare 35mm engagements.

The film debuted in Competition last year at Rotterdam before embarking on a buzzy festival circuit tour, which included stops in London, Toronto, and New York. It was during this run that I first heard about Ballad. The film had become a significant point of interest for curators, writers, and the cool kids on the circuit, frequently recommended as a “hidden gem” that had to be seen.

“I’m so glad that people are celebrating and talking about the film,” Hunt-Ehrlich says modestly of the buzz.

Part narrative and part experimental, Ballad is indeed a unique proposition. Zita Hanrot, the French actress best known for her roles in French-language titles like Fatima (2015), stars alongside Motell...

Note: This review was originally published as part of our 2024 NYFF coverage. The Ballad of Suzanne Césaire opens in theaters on June 6.

The Ballad of Suzanne Césaire, the feature debut from artist and filmmaker Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich, aims to foreground its primary literary material and historical context, but instead directs more attention to its oneiric touches and environmental phenomena––the “wind in the trees,” so to speak. The title figure, together with her more widely known husband Aimé Césaire, were both at the forefront of the négritude movement, which sought to put Francophone literature by colonized peoples in greater dialogue with their African ancestry, and to depict this with a supple, surrealistic view of the world. Assembled from deep research, assistance from academic specialists, and consultations with the Césaire offspring, Hunt-Ehrlich’s bold formal schema still prevents us from fully absorbing these efforts: “feeling” does outpace our full understanding. The vibrant...

The Notebook Primer introduces vital figures, films, genres, and movements in film history.Soleil Ô.Historian-Filmmaker, Filmmaker-HistorianMed Hondo’s debut feature, Soleil Ô (1970), concludes with a series of close-up and wide shots of a man screaming, each successive image accompanied by a prolonged, guttural groan. For Hondo, making the film was a form of therapy as he processed his own experiences of racial oppression and alienation as a young African immigrant living in Marseille. Like his contemporaries Ousmane Sembène, Sarah Maldoror, and Safi Faye, Hondo used cinema to interrogate the conditions of immigrant African labor in the metropole. In his expressionist rendering of this eruptive, cathartic scream, Hondo captures a moment of release from the psychological toll of colonization, a prospect Frantz Fanon described in his writings. Here, cinema works to awaken the consciousness of the colonized and plant the seeds of revolution for the liberation of the African continent and diaspora.

Though the summer movie season got off to a stronger start than last year, June is a bit lacking for promising tentpoles. Yet looking deeper, there’s plenty to seek out, from the best title to premiere at Sundance earlier this year to the anticipated return of a zombie franchise to formally thrilling documentaries to a shark thriller with bite.

10. F1 (Joseph Kosinski; June 27)

After his little-seen Top Gun: Maverick follow-up Spiderhead, Joseph Kosinski returns to large-scale entertainment with F1. While there’s something a little more dull about the proposition of branded entertainment with a sports league (as opposed to his previous outing of brashly unfiltered U.S. military propaganda), here’s hoping the $300 million budget was enough for Kosinski to properly deliver high-octane thrills.

9. Hot Milk (Rebecca Lenkiewicz; June 27)

While Emma Mackey is gearing up for a major year with Julia Ducournau’s Alpha and James L. Brook...

Madeleine Hunt Ehrlich’s The Ballad of Suzanne Césaire is less concerned with shedding light on its subject—the under-translated spouse of poet and Martiniquais politician Aimé Césaire—than with the quandaries involved in attempting to do so. Zita Hanrot, the actor tasked with portraying Suzanne Césaire, says as much: “We are making a film about an artist who didn’t want to be remembered.” Accordingly, this film essay grapples with the ethical and political considerations raised in the effort to retrieve Césaire from oblivion.

Fragmentary and self-reflexive, The Ballad of Suzanne Césaire could almost be mistaken for a behind-the-scenes documentary intended to supplement a more conventional film. As if preparing for their roles, the actors—Motell Gyn Foster plays Aimé Césaire and Josué Gutierrez plays André Breton—read and discuss snippets of Suzanne Césaire’s essays in lush surroundings. These writings were published between 1941 and 1945 in Tropiques, the journal...

Exclusive: T A P E Collective has acquired UK rights to The Ballad of Suzanne Césaire, the feature debut from visual artist and filmmaker Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich, and will release the film in cinemas from July 18th.

Based in part on the essay Surrealist Refugees in the Tropics by Terese Svoboda, the film explores the life and work of Suzanne Césaire, a writer, feminist, and anti-colonial activist from Martinique. Suzanne Césaire was at the heart of the Négritude and Surrealist movements in the Caribbean in the early 20th Century. However, much of her work was overlooked and overshadowed by her husband Aime Césaire’s political career, and post WWII, she stopped publishing altogether.

The mysteries of Césaire’s work and life have been an open question of Martiniquan, French, and Caribbean history. Hunt-Ehrlich researched the writer over five years for this film, speaking with family members and biographers alongside reading letters and primary sources.

A directorial debut as hypnotic as it is narratively destabilizing, Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich was one of my favorite discoveries of last year’s New York Film Festival. A post-biopic about Caribbean surrealist Suzanne Césaire, deconstructing the process of bringing an actually-lived life to film, Cinema Guild has picked it up for a June 6 release beginning at Bam, kicking off a special 35mm print tour. Ahead of the release, the first poster and trailer have dropped.

Here’s the synopsis: “The film examines her relationship with her husband, French politician Aimé Césaire, and famed surrealist André Breton. Filmed on the grounds of a tree archive in South Florida, a small group of filmmakers and actors consider the “paradise” of historic and political memory. The film takes place primarily in the space of the film set itself where actors and crew confront the history of this writer in her youth, and then stage scenes from her life.

New York artist Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich makes films that, as she describes it, are “concerned with the inner worlds of Black women.”

Her documentary short A Gentleman’s War explored a Caribbean team playing in a summer cricket league in Brooklyn and “the utopian world this predominantly immigrant community has constructed on their weekends,” as her website highlights. A Quality of Light examined “the under-told story of the haunted artist who also inhabits the unique political position of being Black and a woman” while applying principles of music theory and West African performance structure in its construction. And Spit on the Broom was a surrealist doc that put the history of the African American women’s group the United Order of Tents, a clandestine organization organized in the 1840s during the height of the Underground Railroad, center stage.

This year, Hunt-Ehrlich’s first feature, starring Zita Hanrot, Motell Foster and Josué Gutierrez,...

As exciting as it can be to see some of the most-anticipated films of the year at their festival debuts, it’s perhaps even a more enticing proposition to seek out the films that one may not have a chance to for quite some time. With the 62nd New York Film Festival kicking off this Friday, September 27 at Film at Lincoln Center, we’ve highlighted the must-see selections still seeking U.S. distribution at the time of publishing. For more coverage, follow here and subscribe to our daily newsletter.

Afternoons of Solitude (Albert Serra)

Following up his career-best work with the mesmerizing Pacifiction, Albert Serra is back just a couple years later, this time with a work of non-fiction. Afternoons of Solitude is a mesmerizing portrait of bullfighting star Andrés Roca Rey, set over just a handful of extended sequences in which we bear witness to the primal connection made between man and animal.

Following the Main Slate and Spotlight sections, the 62nd New York Film Festival, taking place September 27-October 14 at Lincoln Center and venues across NYC, has unveiled its Currents section. The Currents slate includes 12 feature films and 28 short films in six programs, representing more than 20 countries, and complements the Main Slate, tracing a more complete picture of contemporary cinema with an emphasis on new and innovative forms and voices. The section presents a diverse offering of productions by filmmakers and artists working at the vanguard of the medium.

Highlights include the 14-hour exergue – on documenta 14, Matthew Rankin’s Universal Language, Matías Piñeiro’s You Burn Me, Guillaume Cailleau and Ben Russell’s Direct Action, the world premiere of Jem Cohen’s Little Big, and Far, Yashaddai Owens’ James Baldwin film Jimmy, Pierre Creton and Vincent Barré’s 7 Walks with Mark Brown, Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich’s The Ballad of Suzanne Césaire, Lilith Kraxner,...

Film at Lincoln Center has announced Currents for the 62nd New York Film Festival, taking place September 27–October 14 at Lincoln Center and in venues across the city. The Currents slate includes 12 feature films and 28 short films in six programs, representing more than 20 countries, and, per the festival, “tracing a more complete picture of contemporary cinema with an emphasis on new and innovative forms and voices.” See the NYFF main slate here. As previously announced, NYFF 2024 will open with RaMell Ross’ “Nickel Boys” and close with Steve McQueen’s “Blitz.” Pedro Almodóvar’s “The Room Next Door” is this year’s Centerpiece.

The Currents Centerpiece selection is the world premiere of Jem Cohen’s “Little, Big, and Far,” told through the eyes of an astronomer searching for a sky dark enough to study the stars. Cohen’s previous films include the acclaimed “Museum Hours,” “Chain,” and “Lucky Three,” with his work...

Spain’s MoreThan Films has secured international sales rights outside France to “Listen to the Voices” (“Kouté vwa”), from Brussels/Paris based Maxime Jean-Baptiste, in the run-up to August’s Locarno Film Festival where the film world premieres in Filmmakers of the Present.

Jean-Baptiste’s feature debut, the fiction film tracks young Melrick, 13, who travels from Stains in the Saint-Denis suburb of Paris to spend with his grandmother the summer holiday in Cayenne, the capital of French Guiana.

For Melrick, the summer may well mark him for life. It is a return to his roots, embodied in his desire to learn how to play the drum and become part of a local drum and dance band, Mayouri Tchô Neg. He never seems happier, encountering also an early sense of his own identity as part of the Guianese diaspora in France.

Yet it’s also his first encounter with larger ethical issues,...

It is both much too big and way too small to describe Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich’s gorgeously allusive “The Ballad of Suzanne Césaire” as a biopic. The impulse behind the film — to re-write this remarkable woman back into the French and Caribbean cultural histories that have long neglected her in favor of her famous politician husband, Aimé Césaire — is standard-issue biopic fuel. But Hunt-Ehrlich complicates and prevaricates on that impulse in increasingly provocative and hypnotic ways, delivering a woozily metatextual essay that lives inside the mystery of Césaire’s tiny but influential corpus of work, rather than trying to solve it.

“Here we are, making a film about an artist who didn’t want to be remembered,” says Zita Hanrot, boldly breaking the fourth wall. She plays Suzanne — a beautiful woman in red lipstick, smoking and swaying to swing records playing on the gramophone — but she also plays a riff on herself,...

M. Raihan Halim’s “La Luna” will close the 53rd edition of International Film Festival Rotterdam, which has also revealed the lineup of its Tiger competition section, a platform for up-and-coming filmmakers, and Big Screen Competition, a program for more established talent.

“La Luna,” which has its European premiere at the festival, is a comedy about a conservative Malaysian village shaken by the arrival of a lingerie store.

Among the Tiger competition films is British director Justin Anderson’s “Swimming Home,” starring Mackenzie Davis, Christopher Abbott and Ariane Labed. Adapted from Deborah Levy’s novel, it centers on Joe and Isabel, whose marriage is dying when Kitti, a naked stranger found floating in the pool at their holiday villa, is invited to stay. Kitti collects and eats poisonous plants, and Nina their teenage daughter is enthralled by her. The film, which is being sold by Bankside Films, is described as...

One of the key character traits of snotty college duo Olivia (Sydney Sweeney) and Paula (Brittany O’Grady) on HBO’s “The White Lotus” is their choice of poolside reading material. They’re skimming through Nietzsche and Freud when not casting side eye and throwing withering commentary about the people around them.

Later, they also pick up Frantz Fanon, Camille Paglia and Aimé Césaire. But Sweeney, speaking Saturday at the Atx TV Festival in Austin, revealed something more about that character: She believes it’s all an act. “Oh, she was not actually reading any of these books,” Sweeney told moderator Danielle Turchiano.

Sweeney said that that at the very least she was excited to read those books on set — only to learn they were props. “They were blank!” she said. The overall series experience, especially the show’s heavy dose of humor, was a delight for the actor. ““Jennifer Coolidge...

Independent film supporter Rooftop Films announced the 2022 Filmmaker Fund winners February 28, exclusively on IndieWire.

The prestigious Water Tower Feature Film Cash Grant was awarded to “The 40-Year-Old Version” writer-director-producer-star Radha Blank, for her upcoming untitled dark dramedy.

Environmental director Eleanor Mortimer also won a Water Tower grant for an untitled deep sea taxonomy documentary, which “follows biologists through the intricate process of discovering deep-sea species as they piece together the unknown ecosystems of the largest biome on the planet.”

The $15,000 grants are made possible by generous support from the Laurence W. Levine Foundation.

The Rooftop Filmmakers Fund grants are available to Rooftop Films alumni directors who have previously had their work screened during the annual Summer Series in New York City. Blank screened her debut feature, “The Forty-Year-Old Version,” with Rooftop Films in 2020 at the Queens Drive-In. Mortimer screened her award-winning short film “Territory” at Rooftop Films in 2016.

This year,...

“At the end of the small hours these countries whose past is uninscribed on any stone, these roads without memory, these winds without a log. Does that matter? We shall speak. We shall sing. We shall shout. Full voice, great voice, you shall be our good and guide.”Aimé Césaire conveys the colonialists' need to keep African history from their canon in Cahier d'un retour au pays natal. This is Négritude’s provenance, the philosophical, cultural and political revolution of Black consciousness that Césaire co-founded. Black history resounds and survives internally, verbally, before it is accurately accounted for from the outside. A protégé of Césaire, filmmaker Euzhan Palcy unearths suppressed Black voices and logs them to film canon. For A Dry White Season (1989), she interviewed the victims and combatants of the Special Branch (the unit of the South African police that lethally destabilized anti-apartheid groups) while undercover in Soweto and...

There’s a neat series of short-film collaborations happening between players at London’s famous theater company the Young Vic and The Guardian. British actor Chiwetel Ejiofor is the latest talent to step behind the camera, this time for a piece about the division of wealth in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The actor played Congolese independence leader Patrice Lumumba, who became the Republic’s first democratically elected prime minister, at the Vic last year. He’ll resume the role for an upcoming film adaptation of the same production, Aimé Césaire's A Season in the Congo. In the meantime, Ejiofor has created this short work, which he wrote about for The Guardian: As I researched for the play, I became fascinated by the story of...

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While a lot of attention has been paid to Chiwetel Ejiofor's formidable chops as an actor thanks to his bravura lead turn in Steve McQueen's "12 Years a Slave," now it's time to meet Ejiofor, the filmmaker. In the latest in a series of short feature collaborations between London's Young Vic and the Guardian, the news outlet yesterday posted Ejiofor's short, "Columbite Tantalite." The post-colonial parable about the west's hunger for African minelal wealth and Congo's struggle to accept its past makes for a provocative watch. In a first person piece for the Guardian, Ejiofor explains how the short was inspired by Aimé Césaire's play "A Season in the Congo." The actor performed the play on stage at the Young Vic. Watch his short below:...

As some of you may recall, a few months ago Chiwetel Ejiofor starred in a new production of Aimé Césaire's drama A Season in the Congo at The Young Vic in London. And now in a series of short films, in a collaboration between the Young Vic and The Guardian newspaper, Ejiofor has written and directed a just-completed short film Columbite Tantalite In just under 13 minutes, Ejiofor has created a truly original and haunting film which, at first, seems to deal with two completely different plotlines, but which come together in an incredibly powerful way.As the Guardian describes it, it's “a postcolonial parable about the west's hunger for African mineral wealth, and about...

Chiwetel Ejiofor on his short film, which focuses on how the wealth generated by a mineral mined in the Democratic Republic of the Congo remains out of reach of the country's people

Earlier this year, I was on stage at London's Young Vic playing Patrice Lumumba – a remarkable man who made a remarkable journey from being a beer salesman to the Democratic Republic of the Congo's first prime minister. The play was called A Season in the Congo, and it focused on the years in which the country won its independence from Belgium. Lumumba was elected to office in June 1960; less than three months later, he was ousted in a coup. The following January, he was killed by firing squad. The plot was almost certainly organised with the backing of Belgium and the Us.

The play, by the Martinique-born writer Aimé Césaire, made me think – about the relationship between African nations and western ones,...

From a critically-acclaimed stage performance to a critically-acclaimed screen performance…and now back to what may be a critically-acclaimed screen performance based on that stage performance.

British actor Chiwetel Ejiofor is signed on to revive his stirring turn in the stage production of A Season in the Congo for the big screen. Ejiofor drew raves at the Young Vic in London this summer for his portrayal of Patrice Lumumba, a beer-seller and political activist who later became Congo’s first democratically elected prime minister – a position Lumumba held for a mere three months. Critics hailed his performance, describing a complexity from the actor similar to the one he displayed in a stage version of Othello in 2008, which won him a Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor.

The film version will be helmed by Joe Wright (Atonement, Anna Karenina), who also directed Ejiofor in the stage play. A Season in the...

He’s gathering Oscar buzz thanks to Steve McQueen's 12 Years A Slave, and Chiwetel Ejiofor is putting together another project that could land him just as much attention. Ejiofor, along with director Joe Wright, is working on an adaptation of the Young Vic theatre production A Season In The Congo.Aimé Césaire's play is an epic retelling of the 1960 Congo rebellion and the assassination of the charismatic political leader Patrice Lumumba, played by Ejiofor.It’s part of the new programme for the Vic, which is exploring the notion of turning successful productions into films. But unlike other companies, which hand the rights off to independent producers, the Vic team wants to make the films themselves, with Congo and Carrie Cracknell’s staging of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House (currently still showing in London and utterly brilliant) as the first attempts.Ejioforr and Wright presented Congo at the theatre,...

UK theatre The Young Vic is spreading its acclaim beyond the stage by taking their plays to the big screen.

Rather than filming an existing production for screening in cinemas (ala "National Theatre Live"), the plan is to shoot proper films of its plays, while using most of the cast and crew from the stage version.

The first in development is an adaptation of Aimé Césaire's "A Season in the Congo" which has attracted actor Chiwetel Ejiofor ("Serenity," "12 Years A Slave") and filmmaker Joe Wright ("Atonement," "Anna Karenina").

The story is a retelling of the 1960 Congo rebellion and the assassination of charismatic political leader Patrice Lumumba (Ejiofor). Wright and Ejiofor presented the play over the Summer and scored excellent reviews.

Filming on the project will begin in Kinshasa early next year. Ahead of that though, a spin-off short film based on the play will be released in November.

The...

Almost a year ago, I reported on Chiwetel Ejiofor's return to the stage this summer to play Congolese nationalist hero Patrice Lumumba, in poet and political activist Aimé Césaire's play A Season in the Congo, at the Young Vic in London. The new stage production was directed by Joe Wright, who helmed the films Pride & Prejudice, Atonement, Hanna, and Tolstoy's Anna Karenina.Now the Young Vic has announced an expansive new plan in which they intend to make feature films based on previous stage productions, and the theater company currently has two films in development - one being a film version of Hennik Ibsen's A Doll's House, which is currently playing.But the...

Chiwetel Ejiofor stars in first feature as theatre adapts acclaimed shows into movies – following bold experiment in short films

It is small in size, but big on innovation. The Young Vic made its name worldwide as one of the UK's most exciting producing theatres, offering fresh versions of the classics, new plays and emerging talent alongside established stars. Now it is breaking more boundaries, with ambitious plans to shoot feature films.

Other theatre and opera companies have had success showing their existing productions in cinemas, filmed by external producers. But the Young Vic is taking the concept further by making original films of plays, using most of the stage version's cast and crew.

Two such movies are in development. The first, to be shot in Kinshasa, is a version of its acclaimed A Season in the Congo, involving two of the industry's biggest names: actor Chiwetel Ejiofor and director Joe Wright.

I realize that it's merely a coincidence, so I'm not necessarily implying that something sinister is afoot. But I thought I'd share one interesting characteristic that runs through the handful of projects that Chiwetel Ejiofor stars in this year - unquestionably the celebrated thespian's biggest year ever! He stars in 3 feature films that are set to debut sometime in the next 4 months - 12 Years A Slave, Half Of A Yellow Sun and Savannah.  He stars in 1 TV series: Dancing on the Edge.  And he stars in Aimé Césaire's play, A Season in the Congo, playing Patrice Lumumba, at the Young Vic in London -...

Young Vic, London; Royal Exchange, Manchester

Patrice Lumumba was democratically elected prime minister of Congo on 23 June 1960. Seven days later, the country gained independence from Belgian colonial rule. By January 1961 Lumumba was dead – shot in murky circumstances that involved Congolese dissenters and foreign powers. His story is the core of Martinican poet, playwright and politician Aimé Césaire's 1966 "decolonisation drama" A Season in the Congo. It's a play I've been curious to see since first reading it on returning from a stay in the country more than a decade ago, while never really believing that any one actor would be capable of the lead part.

The role of Lumumba requires a combination of seemingly irreconcilable characteristics: easy amiability with explosive oratorical power; canny political acumen with poetic vision. It demands a hero of classic stature in a 20th-century reality, able to convince as a man and to embody the idea of a nation.

Before he makes his star turn in Steve McQueen's 12 Years A Slave, and his feature directorial debut with William Kamkwamba's story, revered thespian Chiwetel Ejiofor can be seen on stage, playing Patrice Lumumba, in Aimé Césaire's play, A Season in the Congo, at the Young Vic in London - a production directed by Joe Wright (Anna Karenina, Atonement and Pride & Prejudice). The play opened on July 6, and will close on August 24, so our readers in London have just over a month to catch it. The Young Vic's revival for the late French playwright Aimé Césaire's 1966 drama about the rise and fall of charismatic Congolese...

It was in January of this year when we first reported that Chiwetel Ejiofor is currently adapting William Kamkwamba's book The Boy Who Harnessed The Wind. At the time, details were sparse as to what exactly Ejiofor's involvement would be - whether in front of, behind the camera, or both.  Now thanks to a profile of Ejiofor posted on the UK's Telegraph website today, on his starring role as Patrice Lumumba, in Aimé Césaire's play, A Season in the Congo, at the Young Vic in London, we know just a little more about his film adaptation of Kamkwamba's novel. The piece states that Ejiofor will direct the film adaptation, and not...

Chiwetel Ejiofor talks about his return to the London stage to play murdered African hero Patrice Lumumba in A Season in the Congo – and his emotional trip to the Congo to prepare for it

You have the sense talking to Chiwetel Ejiofor that he would always be prepared to go the extra mile. On screen and off he has a self-deprecating, generous spirit, quick to laugh, but he also carries a watchful air, a real openness to the moment. Directors – from Woody Allen to Spike Lee to Stephen Poliakoff – see this in him too. From his breakthrough role in Stephen Frears's 2002 film Dirty Pretty Things in which Ejiofor so memorably played the illegal immigrant doctor, Okwe, moonlighting as a minicab driver in London, he has been the go-to man for a particular kind of optimistic and highly credible intensity.

He seems fated to certain roles. He made a natural...

Actor will feature in piece written by Belarus Free Theatre and Laura Wade. Meanwhile, the latest short film in the series, Bed Trick, is released today

Jude Law will team up with the Belarus Free Theatre for the next in the series of short films coproduced by the Guardian and the Young Vic theatre.

Over the course of this year, the two organisations will present a series of four films created by the stars and creatives behind Young Vic productions, supported by Bloomberg.

Law, who played Christopher Marlowe's Dr Faustus at the Young Vic in 2002 and has supported Belarus Free Theatre for a number of years, will appear in a film the company has written in collaboration with Laura Wade, the playwright behind the Royal Court's hit Posh.

It will be followed by new short written and directed by Olivier award-winning actor Chiwetel Ejiofor, who stars in Aimé Césaire...

A still from “Charulata”

Satyajit Ray’s Charulata (The Lonely Wife) is one among the twenty feature films to be presented at Cannes Classics, as part of the Official Selection.

Based on a story by Rabindranath Tagore about a lonely housewife, the film features Soumitra Chatterjee, Madhabi Mukherjee and Shailen Mukherjee. It won Satyajit Ray a Silver Bear for Best Director at Berlin international film festival in 1965.

Cannes Classics was created in 2004 to present old films and masterpieces from cinematographic history that have been carefully restored. It is also a way to pay tribute to the essential work being down by copyrightholders, film libraries, production companies and national archives throughout the world.

This year’s programme of Cannes Classics is made up of twenty feature-length films and three documentaries.

Restored Prints

Borom Sarret (1963, 20’) by Ousmane Sembène

Charulata (Charluta: The Lonely Wife) (1964, 1:57) by Satyajit Ray

Cleopatra (1963, 4:03) by Joseph L. Mankiewicz...

Wright's life of Congolese rebel leader Patrice Lumumba is among highlights of Young Vic's 2013 season in London

It is probably as far from Atonement, Anna Karenina and the new Brad Pitt advert for Chanel No 5 as it is possible to get. Joe Wright, director of all of those, admitted he was "terrified" as he talked about one of his next projects, the UK premiere of an epic play charting the rise and fall of the Congolese rebel leader Patrice Lumumba.

Wright will direct Chiwetel Ejiofor as Lumumba in A Season in the Congo at the Young Vic, it was announced last night, marking the actor's first return to the London stage after his award-winning performance as Othello, four years ago.

For Wright, best known for his film adaptations of books including Pride and Prejudice and Ian McEwan's Atonement, 2013 will be the year of his theatrical directorial debut, beginning with...

Chiwetel Ejiofor is returning to his stage roots next summer, when he'll play the Congolese nationalist hero Patrice Lumumba, in poet and political activist Aimé Césaire's play, A Season in the Congo, at the Young Vic in London, next summer July 6 - August 10. Lumumba was the first prime minister of the newly independent Congo after its release from colonialist Belgian rule. However, his plans for the future of the country were considered too radical and threatening by some, and he was overthrown in a coup, and assassinated in 1961 in a CIA-backed plot. Of course, many of you will remember that a film about the life of Lumumba was the subject...

The Cannes Film Festival's unveiled its Classics program today: "Fourteen films, five documentaries, surprises, a Masterclass (Malcolm McDowell), new or restored prints: The program is based on proposals from national archives, cinematheques, studios, producers and distributors. Rare classics to discover or re-discover, they will be presented in 35mm or high definition digital prints."

The Films

The first round of descriptions comes straight from the Festival.

A Trip to the Moon (Le Voyage dans la lune) by Georges Méliès (France, 1902, 16'). "The color version of Georges Méliès most famous film, A Trip to the Moon (1902) is visible again 109 years after its release: having been long considered lost, this version was found in 1993 in Barcelona. In 2010, a full restoration is initiated by Lobster Films, Gan Foundation for Cinema and Technicolor Foundation for Heritage Cinema. The digital tools of today allows them to re-assemble the fragments of 13 375 images from the film and restore them one by one.

Cannes Classics is a recent addition to the festival, and will enjoy its 8th instalment this year. Part of the line-up of this section of the fest is screened at Ceinema de la Plage, that’s right, on the beach. You’ve got to admit that it’s pretty cool – an open-aired screening of a classic film on the French Riviera, away from the exclusivity of the Palais, and able to be enjoyed by Panini-eating passers-by on the Croisette. There should be more of this at the festival, it’s good for the soul.

This year’s line-up of films includes work by Stanley Kubrick, Bernardo Bertolucci, Euzhan Palcy (currently being honored by MoMA in New York) and Jerry Schatzberg, whose photograph of Faye Dunaway is embedded into this year’s festival poster above.

Robert DeNiro and Jane Rosenthal will present a screening of “A Bronx Tale” to celebrate ten...

Cannes Classics is a recent addition to the festival, and will enjoy its 8th instalment this year. Part of the line-up of this section of the fest is screened at Ceinema de la Plage, that’s right, on the beach. You’ve got to admit that it’s pretty cool – an open-aired screening of a classic film on the French Riviera, away from the exclusivity of the Palais, and able to be enjoyed by Panini-eating passers-by on the Croisette. There should be more of this at the festival, it’s good for the soul.

This year’s line-up of films includes work by Stanley Kubrick, Bernardo Bertolucci, Euzhan Palcy (currently being honored by MoMA in New York) and Jerry Schatzberg, whose photograph of Faye Dunaway is embedded into this year’s festival poster above.

Robert DeNiro and Jane Rosenthal will present a screening of “A Bronx Tale” to celebrate ten...

So, it’s the final day at this year’s Cannes Film Festival and, if you’ve been around these parts in the last few weeks, you’ll know about our excitement at the fact that an African film, Un homme qui crie (A Screaming Man), by Chadian filmmaker, Mahamet-Saleh Haroun is in competition for this year’s Palm d’or. Reviews coming out of Cannes have been quite positive and, as of the date of the film’s screening, on May 16th, its has been seen by some as a front-runner for the top prize.

Following up Tambay’s “first look” post over a week ago, I’ve been watching Haroun’s Cannes 2010 coverage on the official Cannes Film Festival website, which now has english language subtitled clips from the film, as well as photo call, press conference and red carpet coverage.

For those of you who didn’t catch Tambay’s post,...