Women filmmakers swept most of the top awards from Competition to Un Certain Regard and Critics’ Week.
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Festival Reviews
Hounds
A taut, failed caper story with film noir elements set during a long night in the underbelly of Casablanca is well-paced and grittily shot.
Cannes 2023: The Verdict
Anointed auteurs padded the competition while the scramble for tickets became exhausting.
The Old Oak
After angry, affecting portraits of northern England’s working class families in his previous two films, director Ken Loach travels to a former mining village where Syrian refugees are being resettled, to tell a moving but more generic, less engaging story than its predecessors.
La Chimera
The latest wondrous creation from Italian filmmaker Alice Rohrwacher casts Josh O’Connor as a grave robber in 1980s Etruria.
Salem
A powerful, at times remarkable sophomore feature from Jean-Bernard Marlin that takes the usual “Romeo and Juliet” plot, drops it into the projects of Marseille, and then widens its scope with a story of an apocalyptical plague and magical redemption.
In Our Day
The latest feature from South Korean auteur Hong Sang-soo, a rather slender drama, closed the Directors’ Fortnight.
Last Summer
Catherine Breillat’s first film in ten years is a more romantic update of the Danish film ‘Queen of Hearts’.
Bread and Roses
Sahra Mani’s raw documentary about the dire situation for women in Afghanistan, as well as those all but abandoned in so-called safe houses across the border, forces Western audiences to pay attention and stop averting their gaze from the Taliban’s reign of terror.
Perfect Days
In his minor-key but charming Cannes contender ‘Perfect Days’, German art-house veteran Wim Wenders delivers a poetic paean to Zen and the art of toilet maintenance.
Inside the Yellow Cocoon
Pham Tien An’s first feature follows a young man’s slow spiritual journey with long takes, magical imagery and rarely seen glimpses into Vietnamese society.
The Pot au Feu
The pièce de résistance of unabashed culinary cinema, Tran Anh Hung’s ‘The Pot au Feu’ serves up a French country idyll in romantic 19th century sauce for audiences whose tastes run to the fine wines and 12-course meals.
Levante
Cine Verdict: La directora brasileña debutante Lillah Halla hace una película llena de entusiasmo y empatía sobre una talentosa jugadora de voleibol que resuena en el panorama actual de los derechos reproductivos.
Power Alley
Brazilian newcomer Lillah Halla makes a film full of zest and empathy about a talented volleyball player that resonates in today´s pro-choice panorama.
Pictures of Ghosts
Kleber Mendonça Filho’s poetic docu-essay is a passkey to his previous films as well as a personal reflection on his relationship with Recife and cinephilia, but this terrifically edited meditation is also a more universal ode to the way memories become ghosts that inhabit the physical spaces of our lives.
Terrestrial Verses
A fresh and angry look at Iran today approaches the country’s malaise in a series of black comedy skits that pit ordinary citizens against a wide range of bureaucratic authorities.
No Love Lost
Erwan Le Duc conjures a stylish and swoony look at the quick flame of first love and the lingering, unresolved pain of heartbreak.
Kidnapped
The devastating true story of a 6-year-old Jewish boy who, in 1858, was abducted by the Papal State to be raised a Catholic provides the ideal framework for director Marco Bellocchio to weave his familiar themes into a tense, edge-of-seat historical thriller.
CineVerdict: Cerrar los ojos
“Cerrar los ojos” es una apasionada y atractiva reflexión sobre el arte, la memoria, la identidad y la recuperación del tiempo pasado. Una película del venerado maestro vasco-español Víctor Erice, contada atípicamente, pero que típicamente aborda grandes temas.
Asteroid City
Scarlett Johansson, Tom Hanks, Jason Schwartzmann and a cast of thousands reach for the stars in director Wes Anderson’s visually ravishing retro rom-com ‘Asteroid City’.
The Buriti Flower
Portuguese-Brazilian directors João Salaviza and Renée Nader Messora return to Cannes with a complex, highly-charged chronicle of how different generations of a Brazilian indigenous community fight back against intruders on their ancestral lands.
Club Zero
Austrian director Jessica Hausner’s offbeat school thriller about a classroom cult of teenage diet extremists, ‘Club Zero’ is visually delicious but lacks dramatic bite.
Man in Black
Chinese filmmaker Wang Bing’s second entry at Cannes 2023 is an intensely physical portrait of the life and tribulations of Chinese composer Wang Xilin.
The Other Laurens
In his feature-length debut, Claude Schmitz aims to simultaneously pay homage to, and blow up, film noir tropes, and while that’s not exactly the result, his film is a handsome, largely enjoyable play on the genre that becomes a bit too shaggy by the end.
Fallen Leaves
Aki Kaurismäki’s latest is a largely familiar but lovely new work.
The Book of Solutions
Back after a long hiatus with his most personal film to date, French writer-director Michel Gondry’s ‘The Book of Solutions’ is a scrappy, self-indulgent but entertaining love letter to asshole artists.
If Only I Could Hibernate
Japan-educated Mongolian filmmaker Zoljargal Purevdash’s first feature provides a sensitive yet sobering account of a teenager’s struggle for his family’s survival, even if it means sacrificing his own future.
Firebrand
Alicia Vikander steps into the robes of Henry VIII’s last queen in a drama more concerned with turning Katherine Parr into feminist icon than is historically believable, yet bold visuals and a fine cast raise the appeal of Brazilian auteur Karim Aïnouz’s first time in Cannes competition.
Anatomy of a Fall
German actress Sandra Hüller plays a woman accused of murdering her French husband in Justine Triet’s latest, an unconvincing and overlong drama.
Mambar Pierrette
Cameroonian documentary director Rosine Mbakam makes her fiction debut with this modest look at the life a seamstress in Douala.
May December
The combined talents of Natalie Portman, Julianne Moore and veteran indie auteur Todd Haynes are largely wasted on humdrum Cannes competition contender ‘May December’.
Killers of the Flower Moon
Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro compete to out-grimace each other in Martin Scorsese’s latest monumental but lumbering period true-crime thriller ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’.
Banel & Adama
French-Senegalese director Ramata-Toulaye Sy’s strikingly shot, solid debut set in the Senegalese Sahel features a compelling central figure whose monomaniacal love for her husband sets nature itself against their village.
The Rapture
In this promising feature debut, French writer-director Iris Kaltenbäck has turned what sounds like a high-concept pitch for a Hollywood comedy — a girl tries to pass off her best friend’s baby as her own — into a thought-provoking, emotionally involving look at both...
The (Ex)perience of Love
Ann Sirot and Raphaël Balboni’s sex comedy, a Critics’ Week title, is always light on its feet.
Cannes 2023 Awards
Women filmmakers swept most of the top awards from Competition to Un Certain Regard and Critics’ Week.
Hounds
A taut, failed caper story with film noir elements set during a long night in the underbelly of Casablanca is well-paced and grittily shot.
Cannes 2023: The Verdict
Anointed auteurs padded the competition while the scramble for tickets became exhausting.
The Old Oak
After angry, affecting portraits of northern England’s working class families in his previous two films, director Ken Loach travels to a former mining village where Syrian refugees are being resettled, to tell a moving but more generic, less engaging story than its predecessors.
La Chimera
The latest wondrous creation from Italian filmmaker Alice Rohrwacher casts Josh O’Connor as a grave robber in 1980s Etruria.
Salem
A powerful, at times remarkable sophomore feature from Jean-Bernard Marlin that takes the usual “Romeo and Juliet” plot, drops it into the projects of Marseille, and then widens its scope with a story of an apocalyptical plague and magical redemption.
In Our Day
The latest feature from South Korean auteur Hong Sang-soo, a rather slender drama, closed the Directors’ Fortnight.
Last Summer
Catherine Breillat’s first film in ten years is a more romantic update of the Danish film ‘Queen of Hearts’.
Bread and Roses
Sahra Mani’s raw documentary about the dire situation for women in Afghanistan, as well as those all but abandoned in so-called safe houses across the border, forces Western audiences to pay attention and stop averting their gaze from the Taliban’s reign of terror.
Perfect Days
In his minor-key but charming Cannes contender ‘Perfect Days’, German art-house veteran Wim Wenders delivers a poetic paean to Zen and the art of toilet maintenance.
Awards Corner
Cannes 2023
- No awards yet.