With his new film “Manuscripts don’t Burn” (the title seems to have been taken from Mikhail Bulgakov's novel "The Master and Margarita") currently being shown in the non-competition program Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof, who came to Cannes to show the film today along with the cast, is raising the bar for Iranian filmmakers: rather than bypassing political content he's confronting Iran's regime without

Alexander Payne's new film "Nebraska," a melancholy road movie shot in black and white with some hilarious moments, is a worthy contender for a Grand Prix or a Jury prize. And yet, to say that I was less than enthusiastic going to the 8:30 screening of this film is an understatement: I wasn't a fan of "The Descendants" and a black and white movie, well, it's a risky proposition for any film.

Finally a discovery at the Cannes Festival that’s worth getting all worked up about: “Blue is the Warmest Color,” or, as the original title, “La Vie D’Adèle.” Three hour-long film is a bright gem and a contender for the top nod at this otherwise tepid Cannes selection. "Blue," starring newcomer Adèle Exarchopoulos and Léa Seydoux and directed by Abdellatif Kechiche, is my choice for this year’s Palme D’or, with five films still remaining to be screened in the competition section. But with Steven Spielberg as president of the jury

Nicolas Winding Refn's intent for his new film, shown in competition this morning, is difficult to discern. Is "Only God Forgives" a send-off to his previous film “Bronson” with a (sustained) nod at David Lynch and liner notes from Eastern philosophies? It would be distasteful to call a film a styling exercise. Filmmakers get our admiration because they invest more into filmmaking than you or I can ever imagine. Moviemaking

“A villa in Italy” by French-italian filmmaker Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi provided a welcome dose of charm and comedy yesterday in Cannes. An exultant love letter to her brother, who died of AIDS several years ago, “Villa” is painfully autobiographical, in fact. Besides her brother (played by Filippo Timi) and her real-life mother (to whom former first lady Carla Bruni bears a striking resemblance) as…. her mother, Bruni-Tedeschi also puts her romantic wares on display, casting her real-life (former) lover Louis Garrel, the son of filmmaker Philippe Garrel (the two have since broken up, in 2012) . So many connections

If “Blood Ties” by Guillaume Canet hits all the right notes it’s probably because the partition is a familiar one: an Italian-American family drama based in New York, the gangster’s life, one final hit before I retire. This is a genre in itself.

Starring in no particular order Mila Kunis, Zoe Saldana, Marion Cotillard and Billy Crudup, “Ties” also include Clive

I'd like to thank the Coen Brothers for giving me the opportunity to write this post. I've just waited sixty minutes in the pouring rain for a chance to get inside the Debussy theater and watch "Inside Llewyn Davis" but the theatre filled up and we got left out in the cold. Fortunately I was with my three colleagues from the French site Abus de Ciné so we got a chance to exchange about the day's discoveries (there was a lot to cover).

Stories, whether in film or in literature, generally follow an arc. Things happen to a character or characters that we judge and like or dislike according to their personalities and their choices; situations develop, conversations take place, a certain point is reached, and there is a conclusion. In an Asghar Farhadi film (winner of an Academy Award for Best Foreign Film for “A Separation,”) only the conversation part is certain. In his new film, “Le Passé,” (“The Past”) shown in competition at the Cannes Film Festival, people talk, not hearing each other—as when they talk through a glass pane in an airport—or hearing wrong, or hearing too much.

Four songs and four seasons provide the pace in “Young and beautiful,” (original title: "Jeune et Jolie") the engrossing film by France’s filmmaker Francois Ozon (“The swimming pool”) in competition this year. They provide a neat way to organize the film but also reinforce our oh-so-wrong expectations as we settle into the quaint family vignettes which he tenders in the first part of his film: a semi-normal family (they

There’s a scene in Mexican filmmaker Amat Escalante’s film « Heli » in which a young woman returns home to find a pool of blood across the floor of her home and a family that’s vanished. The camera is set low to knee-height and shows her from behind as she enters, and then slowly withdraws out of the room upon making the gruesome discovery, the camera leading the way as she walks backwards to eventually lean against a wall and slowly