Before he wrote a novel and directed a film Jonathan Littell was, for a long time, an international aid worker. He managed big-scale logistical operations in Africa and, throughout his life, attended to war fronts from Bosnia to Syria as part of humanitarian relief teams. Littell, who doesn’t consider himself an optimist, is no stranger to the savagery of man so it’s no surprise, therefore, that he should be so persuasive when writing or making films about it.

Like in many of his previous films every scene of “Julieta,” the new Almodovar that premiered in Cannes today, is visually perfect: flawless lighting, pristine combinations of color, evocative sculptures, colorful fabrics that stand in as metaphors for love, aging, masculinity, all of which are a part of the rich ecosystem symbols that propel Almodovar’s films. The venerable, La Mancha-born Almodovar turns 68 next September.

“Personal Shopper” by Olivier Assayas is a movie about ghosts, the ghost that Maureen (played by Kristen Stewart) works for as personal shopper and that of her dead brother Lewis, whom she is trying to reconnect with. Kyra Gellman (Nora von Waldstätten) is an international socialite who needs her wardrobe constantly augmented, so she hired Maureen to regularly

CANNES, France - On Sunday morning a new film slayed the rest of the competition. “Loving,” starring Joel Edgerton and Ruth Negga and directed by Jeff Nichols, moved past festival favorites “American Honey” and “Toni Erdmann” to get to the number one place. Richard and Mildred Loving (Edgerton and Negga) are an interracial couple living in Virginia in the late sixties.

CANNES, France - “American Honey,” which I consider to be the best film out of this still-young Cannes Festival, played here last night. The Andrea Arnold-directed road movie stars newcomer Sasha Lane and Shia Labeouf and Riley Keough (Elvis’s granddaughter) and follows a crew of twentysomethings from all over the country (from Texas to Nebraska) who circle the mid-west selling

CANNES, France - A year ago luxury-brand conglomerate Kering became one of the Cannes Festival's official sponsors. Ever since then the talks “Women in Motion” which they fund have been the rendez-vous point for discussing, arguing and articulating the women in film platform. Kering, through its appreciable position has been able to bring some of the industry’s most eminent representatives, from the fields

CANNES, France -- Are you familiar with the Raoul Effect? Probably not, because it's a phenomenon that's known only to those people who've been to the Cannes Festival and watched films tendered in the official selection.

Someone, it's unclear who, screams "raoul" at the beginning of the daily 7pm screening in the Debussy theater. No one knows why. It's unclear who the author of the scream is, or

CANNES, France - Like Woody Allen Ken Loach is a Cannes-minted director, a filmmaker whose films premiere in Cannes almost exclusively. Unlike Allen, however, Loach creates consequential human dramas. In a Loach film, society’s ills play a character, Loach often training his camera on society’s invisible links, the poor, the disabled, the unemployed, people who, under the pressure of necessity, may

CANNES, France – Seems like French actor and host of […]

It would be hard to imagine the Cannes Festival without […]