Good cinema takes time. Matteo Garrone first thought of the idea behind “Dogman” in 2008. He had this image, that of “a few dogs, locked up in a cage, bearing witness to the explosion of human bestiality” (from the production notes). “Dogman” (Garrone’s fourth film in Cannes) is like a corroded fresco of an Italy that’s concealed from the sightseeing brochures. Like in “Reality,” or “Gomorra,” the characters

En guerre (“At War”) focuses on one event in the life of employees of a French manufacturer of spare parts somewhere in France’s provinces: the shutting down of their plant. Two years after an agreement was reached to maintain jobs at their affiliate plant, the Germany-based parent company decides to call it quits. A strike goes in effect, and Laurent Amédéo (Vincent Lindon, here in his third collaboration with

The Cannes Festival gives so much room to new filmmakers that it leaves one in want of excellence, movies by the top echelon guys, the masters, the dream team. 2018 is a good year in this regard, with two master filmmakers, Lars Von Trier and Spike Lee, coming to present films. Last year, there was only one member from that club, Michael Haneke who presented “Happy End.” 2018 marks a comeback, for the aforementioned

Disappointed, for professional and for personal reasons. This lapsed Catholic grew up in Europe and was raised by Jesuits at one of Paris’s private schools. I’m not a believer, anymore, but I’ve remained a Catholic, existentially speaking, the Vatican being a kind of cultural guide, my go-to moral authority in a Europe that's sometimes hardly recognizable. When I was baptized, I was named after Saint Francis. Pope Francis strikes me

The Shibata family is poor. Osamu, the man of the house, and his boy Shota, get by with petty thievery, one of the women of the household is a sex worker, the other works in an industrial laundry, they all sleep like sardines in a small apartment. Heading home after a shoplifting outing one day, Osamu his son Shota in tow finds Yuri, a little girl who is sitting by the curb. They bring her home. She’s reluctant to talk, keeps to herself.

The Iranian actress Behnaz Jafari receives a video message from a young woman who’s taped her own suicide after reaching the conclusion that she likely won’t fulfill her dream of becoming an actress. The suicide girl lives in a small village, far from Tehran, and any activity that doesn’t involve milking cows or knitting is regarded with a lot of suspicion by the locals, thus bringing dishonor. While suspecting that it is a fake, done to draw attention to herself, Behnaz sets off with director Jafar Panahi to the her village.

In Kurdistan, Bahar (Golshifteh Farahani) is commander of the Daughters of the Sun battalion. They are preparing to free her city from the hands of Islamists, hoping to find her son who is behind enemy lines. A French journalist, Mathilde (Emmanuelle Bercot, of "Mon Roi" fame, among others), joins their platoon to cover the offensive and bring attention to these women warriors. Strong women, who take charge of their own destiny

Poles wear austere, puritanical expressions on their face. And it’s as if filmmaker Pawel Pawlikowski drew on this to style his new film, “Cold war” (“Zimna Wojna”). Every shot is precisely-timed and framed carefully, scenes glisten like a Doisneau photo gallery. There isn’t a single element astray. Pawlikowski shot “Cold War” in black and white, which adds beauty, and gravitas. Zula (Joanna Kulig) tries for a spot on a local choir

The word “the confusão” gets repeated often by the various protagonists in “Another Day of Life.” It describes the terrible chaos, the absolute disorientation that Angola experienced in the early seventies because of an armed conflict. The country’s slide towards civil war, right after it was handed its independence after five centuries of Portuguese domination, would last twenty-seven years and cause the deaths of half a

On the heels of “120 beats per minute,” a unanimous hit last year in Cannes, is Christophe Honoré’s “Plaire, aimer et courir vite,” a film that's in the running for a Palme D’Or. Like “120,” “Plaire” is set in the nineties and conjures up memories of a catastrophic decade for the gay community, one in which the gay community was decimated by the AIDS virus. In “Plaire,” which the Bretagne-born Honoré wrote and directed, an ironic