Cannes 2021: Last News

Kirill Serebrennikov is already a director of note in his native Russia. Now that his last two films have competed for the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in back-to-back years, he may also get the recognition he deserves stateside.

How can women overcome negative perceptions about them disguised as societal ideals? Filmmaker Nathalie Álvarez Mesén presents her own examination of feminine reinvention with “Clara Sola.” The 2021 Cannes Film Festival Directors’ Fortnight selection sees a 40-year-old woman facing what she’s accepted as the norm, and how wrong it can be to give in to those notions. READ MORE: Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight 2021 Lineup Includes ‘The Souvenir Part II,’ The Latest From Clio Barnard, Miguel Gomes & More Álvarez Mesén — a participant in Berlinale Talents, TIFF Filmmaker Lab, and NYFF Artist Academy — was intent on showcasing patriarchal concepts that move from generation to generation.

After its world premiere at Cannes last July, Iranian Panah Panahi‘s “Hit The Road” quickly became one of the must-see films from the festival. No doubt part of that is due to Panahi’s father, Jafar Panahi, one of the touchstone filmmakers of the Iranian New Wave.

Unless you’ve been lucky enough to attend a number of select film festivals over the past few months, it’s highly unlikely you’ve seen Joachim Trier‘s fantastic “The Worst Person In The World” yet. And chances are you won’t see it anytime soon as NEON, its U.S.

The 74th Cannes Film Festival came to an end on Saturday night. It was a sweaty fest full of tourists more interested in the beach than the world premieres and lots of spitting in testing vials for non-Europeans, but it proved that a major festival could return at full capacity during the age of COVID.

Director Vincent Maël Cardona uses western Europe in the early-1980s as the canvas upon which he paints his layered and achingly genuine portrait of young love, familial bondage, artistic aspiration, and universal chaos. Unburdened by a firm connection to any one genre or narrative archetype, “Magnetic Beats” tells a simple story with a full arsenal of source music, thoughtful set design, and crisp acting at all levels to pull off this love letter to a particular moment in time.

There is a moment of genuine tension at the very beginning of Joachim Lafosse’s “The Restless” that is worth your attention. Damien (Damien Bonnard), is swimming with his son Amine (Gabriel Merz Chammah, the grandson of Isabelle Huppert, no less) off a boat on the rocky French coast.

It’s a good thing you can’t catch a virus from an image because if you could, just a few frames of Kirill Serebrennikov‘s fabulously yeasty, bilious, dank Competition title, “Petrov’s Flu” would bring all of Cannes‘ anti-Covid measures to naught. A feverish delirium of a film that rollicks through an apocalyptically bleak Yekaterinburg New Years’ Eve as though strapped to an out-of-control hospital gurney, its long takes go on for little eternities, as Serebrennikov weaves queasily into diseased reality and out of splintered memory, colliding bravura filmmaking with theatrical staging and an almost old-fashioned literary vibe.

Tatiana Huezo’s eye for lyrical truth has materialized in documentaries like “Tempestad” or “The Tinniest Place,” works that penetrate some of the most tenebrous corners in recent Latin American history with shimmering compassion. Her stance as an acute observer of the people that survive and persevere through tumultuous sociopolitical and economically disadvantaged contexts produces thought-provoking filmic meditations.

In “A Hero” (“Ghahreman”), Asghar Farhadi blurs the line of innocence and guilt in a fraught drama about the true weight of a good deed. During a two-day reprieve from prison, Rahim Soltani (Amir Jadidi) and his girlfriend Farkhondeh (Sahar Goldust) discover a handbag full of golden coins.

When teenaged environmental activist Greta Thunberg made her now-famous speech at the UN Headquarters in 2019, she was met with equal parts admiration and derision, likely an unfavorable imbalance toward the latter. For every A-list celebrity who reposted a clip on their Instagram story, adorned with enthusiastic heart emojis, surely another handful of Internet trolls lurked in the comments and left discouraging messages.

Iranian director Asghar Farhadi is no stranger to success at the Cannes Film Festival. While the three films of his that have premiered at Cannes haven’t won the coveted Palme d’Or, two have won other prizes at the festival.

The rise in popularity of true crime stories has seen the line between genuine investigation and lurid exploitation become increasingly blurred. With every new Netflix docu-series, podcast episode, and beach-read paperback, content creators are having to go further afield to dig up some crime forgotten to history to recast in a light that often appears oriented for entertainment first, with any richer insights an inadvertent byproduct.

Sean Baker must have a thing for donut shops, the distinctly American small businesses have now been a centerpiece of two of his more celebrated films. The now-defunct Hollywood landmark Donut Time was the setting for significant drama in 2015’s “Tangerine” and now a similar establishment in the greater Galveston, Texas area is a fixture for his latest endeavor, “Red Rocket.” Beyond the welcome to return of such establishments, the real surprise is this Cannes Film Festival selection may be Baker’s most political film to date.

It would be disingenuous not to begin this review by mentioning that, yes, Panah Panahi is indeed related to the titan of Iranian cinema, Jafar Panahi. Panah is the acclaimed filmmaker’s son, and besides going to film school, he has also worked on his father’s films, most recently co-editing his latest feature, “3 Faces.” The most cynical among us may not be surprised to learn that the opening sequence of his feature debut “Hit the Road,” playing in Directors’ Fortnight, alone contains more thrilling cinema than most other films at this year’s Festival de Cannes put together.

A coming-of-age summer romance yarn, “Mi Iubita, Mon Amour” succeeds in shifting the power dynamic within the classic genre archetype, albeit in a way that increases the creep factor. Audiences have seen some version of this before, whether it’s Baby and Johnny in the Catskills, or Elio and Oliver in Northern Italy, and while a person’s mileage on these questionable romances may vary, a mix of interesting characters, personal empowerment, and passionate desire characterizes the successful entries.

What do we really know about children? Until the Renaissance, artists were still painting them as freakish shriveled adults. Only in the last century-ish did American society decide they probably should go to school instead of laboring all day in sweatshops.

We can all stop wishing it a long life: the new flesh is thriving, living rent-free in Julia Ducournau‘s fucked-up titanium brain, oozing from every frame of her bizarrely beautiful, emphatically queer sophomore film, and thence seeping in through your orifices, the better to colonize your most lurid, confusing nightmares, as well as that certain class of sex dream that you’d be best off never confessing to having.

“Magnetic Beats,” the directorial debut from Vincent Maël Cardona, is one of the most exciting new features at this year’s Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes. And in the wake of the recent world premiere of the feature, we’re happy to offer our readers an exclusive clip from the new drama.

Premiering in competition at this year’s Festival de Cannes, Nanni Moretti’s wild melodrama “Three Floors” is based on a 2017 Israeli novel called “Shalosh Qomot” from writer Eshkol Nevo and begins with an undeniably tragic event. One dark night on a quiet street of Rome, a drunk driver runs over a lady crossing the road, narrowly avoids hitting a pregnant woman, then finally crashes into a building, landing straight into a family’s living room.

CANNES – Considering it was already pegged as an Oscar contender for 2021 if the pandemic had never occurred, it’s no surprise that Wes Anderson‘s magnificent new concoction, “The French Dispatch,” will make waves for the upcoming 2022 awards season. The film debuted in competition at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival after originally being invited last year.