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Cohen Media Group hopes a Spanish film can dent the tough market for foreign language fare, Bleecker Street is out with a hostage drama and A24 presents Owen Kline’s directorial debut about a teenage cartoonist as the arthouse market flexes more muscle than it has in weeks.

When ranging out of Mad Max territory, George Miller’s films are highly diverse and unpredictable in nature, and never has this proved more the case than with his time-traveling, narratively far-ranging new drama, Three Thousand Years of Longing. In this Cannes Film Festival competition entry, the director delves back into old texts to examine the nature and power of legendary stories that have endured for centuries in a way that is both sharply creative and a bit off-putting; the film begins on quite a high, only to slowly deflate as it works its way toward its modern-day ending.

Zack Sharf George Miller electrified the Cannes Film Festival with “Three Thousand Years of Longing,” his first directorial effort since “Mad Max: Fury Road.” Miller’s latest, starring Tilda Swinton and Idris Elba, earned a six-minute standing ovation after its world premiere at Cannes’ Palais theater.A love letter to storytelling and its tropes and parables passed down through history, “Three Thousand Years” follows a solitary academic (Swinton) and a burdened genie (Elba) she finds in a bottle in the markets of Istanbul. His history unfolds in the stories of those who had found him before.While his memories were relayed in dazzling ancient locations with heavy special effects, half of the film is spent in a hotel room (the same that Agatha Christie lived in when she wrote “Murder on the Orient Express,” a bellhop tells Swinton).

It hopefully should not be controversial to say that “Mad Max: Fury Road” is a titanic work of modern filmmaking. It may then come as a surprise that its equally iconic creator, George Miller, has not made a film since its release.