Cannes Jury: Last News

“Akelarre,” (Pablo Agüero)A former San Sebastian Festival Co-Production Forum project, “Akelarre” is the latest from Cannes Jury Prize-winner Pablo Agüero (“First Snow”) and plays in this year’s main competition. Heavily influenced by Jules Michelet’s novel “The Witch,” Agüero’s period drama came from a “feeling of injustice that almost all works of fiction dealing with witch hunts perpetuate, clichés first created by the Inquisition.” Seven companies combined on the ambitious co-production.

EXCLUSIVE: While 2020 was most everyone’s worst year, you’d be hard pressed to find a filmmaker who got more done than Spike Lee. He’s in the middle of the awards season race with his superb Netflix drama Da 5 Bloods; got raves for the virtual Toronto Film Fest and HBO premieres of American Utopia, based on the live Broadway show by former Talking Heads front man David Byrne; and generated the short films New York, New York and 3 Brothers, the latter of which played on CNN and drew connective tissue between the police custody deaths of George Floyd, Eric Garner and Radio Raheem, latter a fictional character from Lee’s 1989 film Do The Right Thing. Here he reflects on 2021 and the year ahead.