Writer-director Katharina Rivilis is clearly telling an personal story with I’ll Be Gone in June, an observant film about one German girl’s year as an exchange student in New Mexico. (How personal? According to the press notes some of the costumes are her own clothes from the time.) The southwestern …
It’s rare that the context of a movie’s making is as important to appreciating it as that of A Girl’s Story. It’s not only that the writer whose story has been adapted, Annie Ernaux, won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2022. Ms. Ernaux has spent her life documenting, well, …
The title comes from a song; this isn’t really a Christmas movie. There are ups and downs in every career, but Pedro Almodóvar has been on a downswing lately. He commented at the Cannes Film Festival in 2023 that he is no longer interested in exploring human sexuality onscreen, though …
In The Black Ball directors Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo (known as Los Javis) and cinematographer Gris Jordana have created an unusually beautiful work of art. The Black Ball is kind and tender, very clear-eyed about the trauma of war and the misery of addiction. But above all it is …
Rwandan filmmaker Marie Clémentine Dusabejambo won the Camera d’Or – the prize for best debut feature in any of the festival’s competition strands – at this year’s Cannes Film Festival for Ben’Imana. This is a double achievement as Ben’Imana is also the first Rwandan film ever to compete at Cannes …
Tang is the powdered drink mix marketed as enjoyed by astronauts and which purportedly had more vitamins and minerals than orange juice. One of the guests at the titular wedding, Guy (Xavier Lacaille), has recently become its regional head of sales so at one point he goes into his full …
Critics have been enjoined not to spoil Karma’s big plot twist, which basically means we’re not supposed to mention two-thirds of the film. Normally that would be a problem, but Karma’s initial set-up is so preposterous that everything which follows just gets more and more ridiculous. This is just an …
Nagi is a real town in rural Japan. It is next to a ‘self-defence force’ base which uses live ammunition in its training. As compensation for the constant sounds of shooting in the background, the town was given a world-class art museum, the Nagi Museum of Contemporary Art. There is …
We must congratulate director Andrey Zvyagintsev both for winning the Grand Prix at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, and for using his thank-you speech to ask Putin to stop the carnage of the war in Ukraine. Mr Zvyagintsev now lives in exile in France thanks to his political beliefs, but …
The French title of this film, Garance, is the uncommon name of the heroine and also that of the flower which is known in English as the rose madder. The choice to use Another Day instead of something like “Rose Madder” for the English title dampens the effect of that …
The absence of any major American films from this year’s Cannes Film Festival competition allowed room for some French films to sneak in. The Birthday Party aka Histoires de la Nuit is a film which would have never otherwise been allowed to compete for the Palme d’Or. It’s the kind …
Writer-director Volker Schlöndorff probably remains best known for his 1979 film The Tin Drum, but that underestimates his career. He has been a solid and thoughtful filmmaker both in English and his native German for more than this half-century, without ever quite having a major hit that provides an easier …
The best film of the 2026 Cannes Film Festival premiered out of competition. La Bataille de Gaulle: L’Âge de Fer, which has the English title De Gaulle: Résistance, is an absolute triumph of cinema. It is a fast-paced and largely true historical epic that handles complex and layered political events …
Ulysse is once again the kind of daily-life film at which French cinema excels. Here the family is a mother, her disabled son, and the army of professionals whose job it is to help her son find his way in the world. It is indeed an odyssey, told from the …
Cannes Film Festival liked doing things in pairs in 2026. It jointly awarded All of a Sudden’s two lead actresses, the French Virginie Efira and the Japanese Tao Okamoto, the Best Actress prize. (Ms. Okamoto beginning her acceptance speech by referring to herself as a “mediocre Japanese actress” prompted a …
It is a pleasant surprise that the two lead performances of Coward shared the Best Actor prize at this year’s Cannes. In the announcement, the jury mentioned that is because these performances change how masculinity is normally portrayed onscreen. But what the performances in Coward do is meet the current …
The Greek director Konstantina Kotzamani has a massive short film haul in her career, most of which have played at the world’s central events. Washingtonia premiered at the Berlinale. Yellow Fieber and What Mary Didn’t Know were at Locarno. Electric Swam was at the Venice Film Festival, and Limbo was …
The Un Certain Regard Jury for the 2026 Cannes Film Festival was announced in April, and included three women: French actress Leïla Bekhti as jury president as well as Italian director Laura Samani and Senegalese director-producer Angèle Diabang. It’s clear Ms. Diabang was chosen because her movie So Long a …
When a movie pulls its punches it’s always a good idea to ask why. In the case of Moulin, a biopic of a national hero of France from the second world war, the obvious answer is because it was designed with younger audiences in mind. As a primer for who …
The existence of art for art’s sake is always wonderful to see. It might not necessarily meet the moment or fill a need, but people have gone to some trouble to create it and this hard work and good cheer is always fascinating. The Man I Love is precisely just …