• "Age of Uprising: The Legend of Michael Kohlhaas" recounts the adventures of a horse trader by the name of Michael Kohlaas (played by Mads Mikkelsen) who leads an army of rebels in a fight against the local nobility.

    After setting camp in the woods in the vast expanses of France’s Cevennes region, Kohlhaas and his posse of soldiers are visited by various people, friends and enemies, in scenes which gives "Age" the

  • First seen in the Orizonti section of the 2013 Venice Film Festival this portrait of two young punk girls at the peak of their adolescent years makes for a compelling and fun drama about female friendship. Swedish director Lukas Moodysson of "A hole in my heart" fame (2004) hadn’t directed anything since "Mammoth” which he took to Berlin in 2009 and was received rather coolly. He is making a comeback with this friendly

  • CANNES (France) - In a brief ceremony in the Debussy theater prizes for the Un Certain Regard (“a certain look” in French translation) program were given by the jury, presided over by Pablo Trapero.

    While these films run in the non-competitive selection, they are awarded prizes.

    Something happened tonight which I’ve never seen before.

  • The Cinéfondation and Short Films Jury headed by Abbas Kiarostami and including Mahamat-Saleh Haroun, Noémie Lvovsky, Daniela Thomas and Joachim Trier, has awarded the 2014 Cinéfondation Prizes during a ceremony held in the Buñuel Theatre, followed by the screening of the winning films.

    The Cinéfondation Selection consisted of sixteen student films, chosen out of 1,631

  • This Cannes Festival has finally been unshackled from the supremacy of older males turning out less than stellar work: Xavier Dolan, a twenty five year-old filmmaker from Québec who's brought films to Cannes before has thrown down the gauntlet. His new film "Mommy" is the first one to appear in the competition section and is the new favorite for the top prize this year. In “Mommy” single-mother Diane raises her violent son Steve

  • Major rush trying to get into the Lumiere theater for the mid-afternoon premiere of Godard’s “Adieu au Langage” yesterday, people pushing, shoving, huffing and puffing their way inside the theater.

    “We’re about to go watch the new Godard film in Cannes,” I told my colleague in the rush to the theater, “it’s incredible.” In the end, it felt more like we were stuck in a space-time continuum.

  • "The Search," which screened for the press yesterday morning is a two-and-a-half hour-long war drama set in war-torn Chechnya in 1999. In this new film by "The Artist" director Michel Hazanavicius we follow four different people as they contend with the vagaries of war, the main one being about a woman who's separated from her brother after a bombing attack and goes on the search of the title. The director’s wife Bérénice Bejo plays

  • My knowledge of Greek cinema is imperfect, I admit--but am I alone? Greek cinema has historically suffered from a lack of promotional support abroad, which leaves moviegoers with scant information about the Greek canon. I remember watching Yorgos Lanthimos’s “Dogtooth” in Cannes a few years ago and feeling unnerved but also strangely delighted. Lanthimos took risks by putting characters that that were not likable in a situation so unusual

  • Two years ago with “Cosmopolis,” and now with “Maps to the stars” Canadian filmmaker David Cronenberg has been boosting his Hollywood cred with the appropriation of Robert Pattinson as his muse. Is this going to last much longer? While I waited to get into the Debussy theater for the film's 7:30pm screening a journalist told me, ironically, “they’ll shoot another third movie together and that one will be

  • The city. A couple in their late teens living in broken homes and attempting to get by in a Spain that's choking under the weight of austerity measures. From the very beginning of "Beautiful youth" ("Hermosa Juventud" in the original Spanish title) clues in the way of dialogues and confrontations are provided pointing to the bitterly difficult situation that this young couple, and so many others of their generation, are