Anora
A Brooklyn lapdancer falls for a super-rich Russian playboy in ‘Tangerine’ and ‘Red Rocket’ director Sean Baker’s latest walk on the wild side, ‘Anora’.
Cannes 2024
From Ground Zero
Under the curation of Palestinian producer-director Rashid Masharawi, ‘From Ground Zero’ is an anthology of 22 short films offering a rawly immediate and deeply human response to devastation in the Gaza Strip.
Ernest Cole: Lost and Found
Haitian filmmaker Raoul Peck (‘I Am Not Your Negro’) once again makes masterful use of the documentary form as a vehicle for social and political commentary in ‘Ernest Cole: Lost and Found’, an intense viewing experience that leaves its mark long after the last photo fades.
The Count of Monte Cristo
A French classic gets new, ambitious life on screen with the ‘The Count of Monte Cristo’, from the same team as 2023’s ‘The Three Musketeers’.
Cannes 2024: The Verdict
Women’s films and issues held center stage at Cannes 2024, while outright political films and cinema’s elder statesmen fell out of favor.
The Most Precious of Cargoes
Michel Hazanavicius’s (‘The Artist’) long-cherished animation project ‘The Most Precious of Cargoes’, bowing in Cannes competition, nimbly combines a classic, grim fairy tale with the horrors of the Holocaust in a well-made but sentimental tale whose audience is unclear.
Sister Midnight
A newly married Mumbai housewife unleashes her inner monster in writer-director Karan Kandhari’s stylish, punky, compellingly strange comedy thriller ‘Sister Midnight’.
All We Imagine As Light
Featuring nuanced performances from its leads, Payal Kapadia’s tender relationship drama ‘All We Imagine As Light’, about three women working in a Mumbai hospital, is the first Indian film to compete for the Palme d’Or in more than three decades.
Beating Hearts
In ‘Beating Hearts’, Gilles Lellouche has produced a gorgeous film that is an epic rumination on love, revenge, class, and the inescapable pull of a certain kind of romance.
Somali Filmmaker Mo Harawe Makes History
When ‘The Village Next to Paradise’ bowed in Un Certain Regard, Mo Harawe became the first Somali filmmaker to compete at Cannes.
Universal Language
Blending autobiographical elements with heartfelt homages to Iranian cinema, writer-director Matthew Rankin’s charmingly surreal comic fable ‘Universal Language’ reimagines Canada as a Farsi-speaking dreamland.
Viet and Nam
Bowing in Un Certain Regard at Cannes, Truong Minh Quy’s third feature ‘Viet and Nam’ leans more on innovative imagery and historical allegory than its underwritten story and characters.
Mahdi Fleifel on the challenging miracle of creating Palestinian films
The Palestinian-Danish director Mahdi Fleifel, in Cannes with a brutally realistic exile story, opens up about the difficulty of exiles making films in exile about other exiles.
Marcello Mio
Low on laughs and with a thin plot, Christophe Honore’s ‘Marcello Mio’ is a quirky tribute to one of European cinema’s most famous filial relationships.
The Village Next to Paradise
Mo Harawe’s story of a Somali family attempting to make ends meet in a troubled environment is visually striking and masterfully told.
The Shrouds
Veteran cult Canadian director David Cronenberg channels personal feelings of grief, loss and enduring love into his latest underpowered but absorbingly weird techno-gothic thriller, ‘The Shrouds’.
The Story of Souleymane
Boris Lojkine’s tale of a Guinean immigrant in France, ‘The Story of Souleymane’, is a vigorously edited piece of cinema with an outstanding performance by first-time actor Abou Sangare.
Everybody Loves Touda
With unconventional yet captivating storytelling, Nabil Ayoush’s ‘Everybody Loves Touda’ champions female empowerment through a young woman who is passionate about the traditional Moroccan folk music of Aita.
The Other Way Around
Jonas Trueba creates a warm and winning ode to love and letting go in the sun-kissed dog days of summer.
The Substance
Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley co-star in French director Coralie Fargeat’s wild Cannes contender ‘The Substance’, a gloriously tasteless but finely crafted feminist body-horror fairy tale.
CineVerdict: Emilia Pérez
Selena Gomez y Zoe Saldaña presumen sus habilidades de canto y baile en el audaz thriller musical mexicano de Jacques Audiard, una lujuriosa celebración de lo queer multicultural y la redención del transgénero.
A Queda do Céu/ El cielo que cae
La lucha de los yanomami, chamánica y ambientalista, es retratada con respeto y conocimiento en este visualmente atractivo documental
The Balconettes
Despite a few bumpy moments, actor-director Noémie Merlant’s gory feminist horror comedy ‘The Balconettes’ paints a rowdy, richly imagined portrait of three ladies on fire.
Limonov: The Ballad
In ‘Limonov: The Ballad’, director Kirill Serebrennikov turns up the volume on his already explosive style (Petrov’s Flu), which is really the only way to recount the mad, violence-tinged rise of Russian poet and political extremist Eduard Limonov.
Caught by the Tides
Re-shuffling footage from films he has shot over the last 23 years, Jia Zhang-ke places his awe-inspiring cinematic mastery on full display in ‘Caught by the Tides’, though its ravishing poetic beauty tends to obscure the story.
The Brink of Dreams
In ‘The Brink of Dreams’, Nada Riyadh and Ayman El Amir deliver a fierce, against-all-odds documentary about a group of young women artists in southern Egypt out to prove their independence as theater performers and independent women in a male-dominated society.
Emilia Pérez
Selena Gomez and Zoe Saldaña show off their song-and-dance skills in French director Jacques Audiard’s audacious Mexican musical thriller ‘Emilia Pérez’.
Oh, Canada
The Richard Gere-Cannes starrer ‘Oh, Canada’ gives us good and bad Paul Schrader in its dry tautness and weirdly unsatisfactory ending.
Kinds of Kindness
Emma Stone and Willem Dafoe reunite with ‘Poor Things’ director Yorgos Lanthimos for ‘Kinds of Kindness’, a slight but fun triple-decker sandwich of macabre absurdism.
Desert of Namibia
Yuumi Kawai delivers a storm of a performance as a young bipolar woman struggling with Japan’s unspoken social norms in “Desert of Namibia”, Japanese filmmaker Yoko Yamanaka’s stunning sophomore effort.
Three Kilometers to the End of the World
The backwardness of a Romanian country village catches 17-year-old Adi in a homophobic trap in Emanuel Parvu’s justly indignant but conventionally scripted ‘Three Kilometers to the End of the World’.
An Unfinished Film
Lou Ye’s 2024 Cannes entry, ‘An Unfinished Film’, takes too long but comes across with some genuinely emotional moments.
The Invasion
Sergei Loznitsa follows up his landmark 2014 doc ‘Maidan’ with a more recent portrait showing the impact of Russian aggression on his country in ‘The Invasion’.
Megalopolis
Francis Ford Coppola’s long-gestating neo-Roman epic ‘Megalopolis’ is a muddled misfire of overcooked kitsch and undercooked ideas.
Meeting with Pol Pot
Rithy Panh’s unnerving screen adaptation of U.S. war correspondent Elizabeth Becker’s real-life 1978 visit to Khmer Rouge-ruled Cambodia vaunts intense performances, a diverse visual palette and an ominous sound design.
Bird
In ‘Bird’ Andrea Arnold once again shows she has the magic keys – in this case Franz Rogowski’s piercingly tender bird-man, and Barry Keoghan’s manically affectionate drug-dealer dad — to extract drama, fantasy and authentic emotion from characters living on the lowest rungs of English society.
The Girl with the Needle
Swedish writer-director Magnus von Horn’s Cannes competition contender ‘The Girl with the Needle’ is a gripping historical true-crime thriller cloaked in deliciously dark Nordic Noir visuals.
Wild Diamond
French writer-director Agathe Riedinger’s coming-of-age Cannes contender ‘Wild Diamond’ is an unpolished gem, but it sparkles with lusty energy and strong performances.
The Second Act
Profilic French prankster Quentin Dupieux finds the funny side of cancel culture, AI and actorly vanity in his meta-comic Cannes film festival curtain-raiser ‘The Second Act’.