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The overall impact of viewing the Iranian film Goodbye reminds you of another unrelated film from USA. Way back in 1964, Hollywood produced a film called The Pawnbroker. It was directed by the late Sidney Lumet. Anyone who has seen that film will not forget actor Rod Steiger’s scream at the end of the film—a scream so anguished that no sound emanated from his vocal chords. A silent scream is an oxymoron but that single enigmatic scene propelled the career of Steiger and the performance won him a Silver Bear for Acting at the Berlin Film Festival. And Steiger later claimed that he borrowed the idea after seeing the anguish of the male subject’s skyward cry at the right extreme of the famous and massive Pablo Picasso painting ‘Guernica’.

Goodbye is also about anguish—the silent suffering of the ordinary Iranian, intolerance of individual and artistic freedom of...

"Forty-one years young, the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art's annual New Directors/New Films festival is committed to compiling a slate of artistically diverse films from every corner of the world," writes Ed Gonzalez, introducing Slant's collection of reviews. "Twenty-eight countries represent the 29 feature films (24 narrative, five documentary) and 12 shorts that make up this year's program, which kicks off on March 21 with a screening of Where Do We Go Now?, Nadine Lakaki's follow-up to Caramel, and closes with a special surprise screening that won't be revealed to the audience until it screens at Film Society on Sunday, April 1. Any guesses?"

Not from this corner, though the wish-list runs pretty long. "We weren't planning to do a surprise for New Directors," Richard Peña tells the Fslc's Jonathan Robbins, "but there is a unique situation with this film." As for Nd/Nf as a whole, Peña...

All the latest news, reviews, comment and buzz from the Croisette, as it happens

9.15am: Morning all. Well, it's the morning after Britain's big night at this year's Cannes film festival, when Lynne Ramsay's We Need to Talk About Kevin, wildly received by the critics yesterday, got its turn on the red carpet.

We've just launched this reel review on the movie, which also includes various pundits' take on the film, as well as that of our own Xan Brooks. Sample quote: "I'm still scared."

9.26am: So what else is on the cards today? Well we'll be updating our gallery from last night, then in an hour or so we'll launch another video – Xan's exploits wandering round the Marché, that fantastic flogging ground for weird and wonderful flicks. Then we'll have a first review of Habemus Papam, Nanni Moretti's hot potato film about the Pope, plus Xan's diary of the day,...

Banned for 20 years from making movies, and sentenced to six years in prison, Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi and fellow filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof, have each managed to sneak a film into the hands of the Cannes Film Festival organizers, who’ve programmed the projects as Official Selections.

Will their screenings in Cannes help or hurt their efforts? One can only hope that the public attention to their plight, and to the position of other artists in this increasingly hostile environment, will lead to some reprieve. Unfortunately, as was evidenced by the screenings of “Circumstance” and “Green Wave” at Sundance this year, it is starting to seem that anyone of Iranian origins with an artistic inclination, has been better served by leaving their country than by staying and challenging the current status quo.

Here’s the official word from Cannes:

Jafar Panahi and Mohammad Rasoulof, currently subject to legal proceedings in Iran...

Banned for 20 years from making movies, and sentenced to six years in prison, Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi and fellow filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof, have each managed to sneak a film into the hands of the Cannes Film Festival organizers, who’ve programmed the projects as Official Selections.

Will their screenings in Cannes help or hurt their efforts? One can only hope that the public attention to their plight, and to the position of other artists in this increasingly hostile environment, will lead to some reprieve. Unfortunately, as was evidenced by the screenings of “Circumstance” and “Green Wave” at Sundance this year, it is starting to seem that anyone of Iranian origins with an artistic inclination, has been better served by leaving their country than by staying and challenging the current status quo.

Here’s the official word from Cannes:

Jafar Panahi and Mohammad Rasoulof, currently subject to legal proceedings in Iran...

Huge announcement from the Cannes Film Festival today: "Jafar Panahi and Mohammad Rasoulof, currently subject to legal proceedings in Iran which earned them a sentence of six years in prison and a 20-year employment ban, to which they have appealed, will be in Cannes with two films made in semi-clandestine conditions and which reached the festival in recent days." From the Festival:

Bé Omid é Didar (Good Bye) directed by Mohammad Rasoulof (Iran, 2011, 100') is in the Official Selection, Un Certain Regard and will be screened on Saturday May 14th. A feature film, with Leyla Zareh, Fereshteh Sadreorafai, Shahab Hosseini and Roya Teymorian, Good Bye is the story of a young lawyer in Tehran in search of a visa to leave the country, which is what Mohammad Rasoulof did during the winter of 2010/2011.

In Film Nist (This is not a Film) directed by Jafar Panahi and Mojtaba Mirtahmas (Iran, 2011, 75'...