CANNES2025 - remote notes

[Chris Knipp]

WILD FOXES (Valéry Carnoy) - Directors' Fortnight


SAMUEL KIRCHER IN WILD FOXES

WILD FOXES/LA DANSE DES RENARDS, is a debut school boxing drama by Belgian writer-director Valéry Carnoy starring rising young French film actor Samuel Kircher that is receiving mixed reviews. Critics praise Kircher's performance and the film's exploration of masculinity and friendship within a boxing context. Some find the plot predictable and lacking a unique edge, particularly the fox hunt subplot. Jordan Mintzer's revidw in HOLLYWOOD REPORTER highlights Kircher's strong portrayal of the troubled young boxer, while IONCINEMA's review finds "frustratingly familiar tropes" and criticizes the film for its lack of depth. SCREENDAILY's review says the film "lands a punch" and suggests its timely themes of a young school boxer meeting the challenge of a big injury could attract arthouse audiences. The Directors' Fortnight section includes 19 films, some most of note being ENZO (Cantet-Campillo), MIROIRS No. 3 (Christian Petzold), and YES (Nadav Lapid).

[Chris Knipp]

THE DISAPPEARANCE OF JOSEF MENGELE (Kirill Serebrennikov). Cannes premiere



The Rjssian dissident director has worked from a non-fiction novel by French writer Olivier Guez to make this black and white film in German (original title DAS VERSCHWINDEN DES JOSEF MENGELE) about the notorious Nazi war criminal doctor of Auschwitz focusing on his escape and hiding in Brazil. Jordan Miintzer can't see why the film was made and describes. it in his HOLLY3OOD REPORTER review as "artfully directedd" but "intellectually vacuous," a "Holocaust-ploitation flick." The VARIETY review by Siddhant Adlakha says simply the film takes on more ideas than it can handle." Serebrennikov is a chameleon, a genre-hopper, notes Mintzer, as seen in his LETO, TCHAIKOVSKY'S WIFE, and last year’s biopic LIMONOV. August Diehl (A HIDDEN LIFE) as Mengele provides "a committed performance" that "borders at times on caricature," but he is not made "a likeable protagonist." A lush flashback to Mengele performing is worst deeds is pure "Holocaust=poitation," and vulgar, MIntzer says. Jonathan Roomney in SCCREENDAILY is more indulgent, calling the film "’Fascinating, if not entirely successful." It seems technically it is very accomplished, with long takes and gorgeously contrasty B&W. But like GREAT ELEANOR, which also has a Holocaust tie-in, it seems uncomfortable and misjudged.

Poetntially more rewarding films in the Cannes Premiere sectoion are AMRUM by Turkish- German auteur Fatih Akin and the sophomore work SPLITSVILLE by Michael Angelo Covino, whose 2019 debut THE CLIMB was a highly wrought comic masterpiece fully of elaborate long takes. AMRUM is a historical film named after the island in the North Sea, where psychological intrigue looms large in the summer of 1945. See below.

[Chris Knipp]

SPILITSVILLE (Mmciael Angelo Covino) - Cannes Premiere


KYLE MARVIN, MICHAEL COVINO, DAKOTA JOHNSON AND ADRIANA ARJONA IN SPLITSVILLE

Covino continues his THE CLIMB theme of partner-swapping in a sophomore effort that Tim Grierson of SCREENDAILY calls "uneven." Dakota Johnson and Adria Arjona Play the Field in what Guy LOdge in VARIETY calls an "exhausting knockabout rom-com." (I now realize that the trouble with THE CLIMB, which I had so much time for, was that it was exhausting.) This comedy "amuses and grates in equal measure," Lodge says. The film is coming to US theaters through NEON in August, and may make an impression in that dry time. The focus here is more on marital issues than bromance ones, and it's resultingly less pereceptive, he says. The picture reps "a step into broader, more commercial territory for Covino" because "Both the sentimentality and the slapstick have been amped up," and Dakota Johnson adds "some A-list star power" as the two men's "most contested object of affection" with Arjona as her chief rival. Covino again cooaborates with his male best friend Kyle Marvin as the other guy. Grierson says there aren't as many intricate single-take sequences but there are "elegant tracking shots and smart, unshowy compositions" making this a rom-com that is unsually beautiful. Not a success, evidently, but after carefully studing THE CLIMB, this will be interesting to compare. In his 3rd CANNES RECAP #3 he says he loved THE CLIMB and this is just as good.

[Chris Knipp]

ROMERÍA (Carla Simón) - In Competition



In this third semi-autobiographical film from the Spanish director an 18-year-old woman, orphaned through AIDS-related causes at a young age, travels to Spain’s Atlantic coast to meet her paternal grandparents for the first time, confronting a past shaped by absence and long-buried emotions. Wendy Ide of SCREEN DAILY calls it "pensive and rather lovely." Romería is Spanish for pilgrimage. This third feature is very consistent with the filmmaker's admired two first films, especially the more autobiographcal SUMMER 1993 (which I reviewed) and ALCARRAS. The director has won several top awards at Berlin and been Spain's Best Foreign entry. I was very admiring of the 2017 SUMMER 1993, but found that its documentary rapture led to a lack of storytelling energy and character development. Here the 18-year-old goes goes to see her grandparents to get a signature from them to enable her to study cinematography but also learns her status with extended family. Guy Lodge in VARIETY is admiring of ROMERIA in similar terms. The film is multi-lingual. Marina (Llucia Garcia), the protagonist, speaks Spanish with her wealthy famly, Catalan with her adoptive mother, French to a relative, and also Galician. Marina's own fuzzy camcorder footage is woven into the film along with words from her mother's journal as the disciplined Marina explores the world of her hedonistic, drug-addicted parents, whose AIDS death has left her a pariah for many of her extended family, and whom never knew. ROMRIA got a 2.7 on the Cannes Jury Grid, third highest for this relatively lukewarm Cannes Competition year.

THE HISTORY OF SOUND (Oliver Hermanus) - In Competition



Hot Brit stars of the moment Josh O'Connor and Paul Mescal play two young men who go on a song-collecting folk music trip in rural Maine. It's 1917, and they're clandestinely gay, having reunited after bonding two years earlier over their shared love of folk as music students. In VARIETY, Owen Gleiberman's damning reaction is "llike BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN on sedatives." That may be, but the two stars and the gay theme make this a commercial item. It received a none-minute ovation at its Cannes premiere, and it has been bought by MUBI for North America (who did the first big 2025 Cannes buy of DIE MY LOVE for $24 million) and Focus Features/Universal have international rights. In SCREENDAILY Marshall writes that this film will "cement Hermanus as a full member of the commercially-viable arthouse director club." Marshall may be confirming Gleibrman's assessment when he says "Reticence is also the keynote" of not only the story and its telling but the two lead performances. The screenplay is byBen Shattuck from his short story. The Cannes Grid score was 1.9, same as Tarek Saleh's EAGLES OF THE REPUBLIC, and pretty mediocre.

[Chris Knipp]

Cannes news


Davika Hoorne and 'A Useful Ghost'

Critics Week

Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke’s zany romantic drama A USEFUL GHOST has won the top prize at Cannes Critics’ Week.

The feature, which is the first Thai film to play in the parallel section for a number of years, won the inaugural AMI Paris Grand Prize.

This year’s jury was presided over by Spanish director Rodrigo Sorogoyen (The Beasts, Riot Police, The New Years), who was joined by Oscar-winning Judas and the Black Messiah UK actor Daniel Kaluuya, Moroccan journalist Jihane Bougrine, French-Canadian cinematographer Josée Deshaies and Indonesian producer Yulia Evina Bhara. SOURCE




Kevin Spacey receives award

+ Emotional Kevin Spacey Speaks Out At Cannes About Blacklisting And Getting An Award: "It's Very Nice To Be Back". Spacey received an award and spoke about the history of blacklisting, especially Dalton Tumbo and Kirk Douglas, and thanked his manager Evan Lowenstein, who was present. Spacey has contested accusstions against him and been exonerated in court, but has remained unable to get mainstream work. SOURCE

[Chris Knipp]

MIRRORS NO. 3 (Christian Petzold) - Directors' Fortnight


FROM CHRISTIAN PETZOLD'S MIRRORS NO. 3

This is the first time Petzold has brought a film to Cannes. A number of writers say it is a lighter effort. Ryan Latanzio's INDIEWIRE says it is gossaner-light and gives MIROIRS NO. 3 only a B. In the film, a woman called Laura (Petzold's current muse Paula Beer) is in a car accident where her boyfriend is killed and she is adopted by Betty (Barbara Auer), a woman whose house she wanders up to. She begins wearing Betty's dead daughter's clothes, and looks like her, and becomes attracted to Betty's son, who resembles her late boyfriend. Identity, mirror-imaging, changed lives give the sense of a Petzold film. Guy Lodge in VARIETY calls it "an elegant sliver of a psychodrama." Lodge says this "isn’t one of the director’s major works, but is distinguished by his trademark pleasures of texture and tone — and "pushes his ongoing collaboration with star Paula Beer into ever more enigmatic territory." In a bulletin, a writer for FILM COMMENT SELECTS is persnickety, saying MIROIRS along with several other films, including NOUVELLE VAGUE and EDDINGTON, "lacks writerly ambition" and that this is "Petzold’s slightest effort to date." On the other hand, in SCREENDAILY Wendy Ide says MIROIRS is "small but mighty" and "Although it’s a wisp of a thing, it delivers rich rewards." David Romney of HOLLYWOOD REPORTER stresses the ccomplexity of MIROIRS, how hard it us to summarize: "neat and tidy dramas about emotional healing," he says, "are not the gifted German writer-director’s thing." So the dismissal is not perhaps so obivious. I have loved Christian Petzold since JERICHOW (FCS 2008) and am curious to see this, looking forward to the Chopin and Ravel threaded through it and its withholdingness.

[Chris Knipp]

HIGHEST 2 LOWEST (Spike Lee) - Out of Competition


DENZEL WASHINGTON IN HIGHEST 2 LOWEST

OFFICIAL TEASER

Spike Lees's new film is a cracking good New York-set Black (African American) noir respectfully riffing off Kurosawa's masterful 1963 HIGH AND LOW and starring Denzel Washington (their fifth collaboration) with Jeffrey Wright. It's about a kidnapping (just like the Kurosawa) but also has pungent things to say about where the USA is going. Robert Daniels reviews it for ROGEREBERT.COM and gives it three and a half out of four stars. Over and over, Daniels says, it seems one thing, then is another, is an "unpredictable crime thriller that zips when you expect it to zoom." seems a bad Spike-Denzel collaboration, then is a great one; its opening image seems a loss of touch, then is masterful; seems a faithful Kurosawa HIGH AND LOW adaptation, then isn't one; seems "a long-winded procedural," then isn't one., and so on. Peter Debruge in VARIETY explains Denzel Washington plays a music mogul who faces a series of big moral choices in a film "whose sensational third act more than justifies what might have seemed an unnecessary update." Does this mean it's uneven? In fact "brother bro" in his CANNES RECAP #3, strongly confirms that the early part is not at all up to the last part, that the film is "wierdly inconsistent," the music "absoluutely terrible," apparently throughout. Nontheless manstream American critics seem to see HIGHEST 2 LOWEST as confirming that Lee's still on a roll as he has been since 2018's BLACKKKLANSMAN. David Rodney in HOLLYWOOOD REPORTER says the film's "precision-tooled plot engine, snappy pacing and crackling energy recall the technique of Lee's INSIDE MAN." The screenplay is by Alan Fox, based on the novel King’s Ransom by Ed McBain and the Akira Kurosawa film mentioned. Released in theaters Aug. 22 by A24, the film will ultimately stream on AppleTV. The reviews may tell more than you want to know, but Debruge identifies a scene at a Puerto Rican Day parade that is "a spectacular sequence that instantly ranks among the best New York City action set-pieces of all time, up there with the chase scene in 'The French Connection' and the Five Points battle in 'Gangs of New York.'"

[Chris Knipp]

SENTIMENTAL VALUE (Joachm Trier) - Cannes Competition


RENATE REINSVE, INGA IBSDOTTER-LILLEAAS IN SENTIMENTAL VALUE

SENTIMENTAL VaLUE is the sixth feature by the now 51-year-old Norwegian auteur, again starring his outstanding recent collaborator Renate Reinsve and cowritten as usual with Eskil Vogt. It's Trier’s third film in Cannes Competition, after 2021’s THE WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD'S when breakout lead Reinsve won Cannes Best Actress. It is much anticipated by his cinephile fans, of whom I am one. A "moving family drama" (says Tim Grierson in his SCREENDAILY review), it gets a 2.7 on the Cannes Jury grid, the same third-highest rank as NOUVELLE VAGUE and ROMERIA,. But the Cannes concensus may be higher, even much higher. Stellan Skarsgård plays the renouwned filmmaker father and Renate Reinsve the estranged acrress daughter whom he seeks to cast in a semi autobiographical film with Elle FAnning as the more experienced American alternative casting. The story, says Peter Debruge in VARIETY, proposes that "therapy through filmmaking" may actually be a valid concept sometimes. Clearly this is an intense study of family feelings, not so much Nora (Reinsve) reunited with Gustav (Skarsgård) as Nora and younger sister Anges (Ibsdotter Illeass) though Skarsgård is such a great actor, Debruge says, you might think otherwise. The girls' psychiatrist mother, whom Gustav divorced when Nora was very young, has just died when this all happens. Debruge explains Nora is so unsstable, with spectacular and hilarious stage fright-panic attack problems, that the pressure of her mother's death and her father's reentering her life combined might unhinge her. But involvement in the fim could stabilize that. The film Gustav will make will be a film about his own mother, who committed suicide, and he discusses it at length with Rachel (Fanning). (Those familiar with Trier's oeuvre know psychiatric problems and suicde are important and frequent themes.) Gustav will shoot the film at the impressive but partly crumbling ancestral home, occcupied for generations, to which he now proposses to move back: the house becomes a central plaayer. David Rooney in HOLLYWOOD REPORTER calls this film "exquisite," and it looks like all the major critics very much like it. But it is ambiguous, open to different interpretations: Trier's films can be counted on to be intelligent, exciting, beautiful, often adventurous, and intellecually stimulating. Are there going to be awards here? That would be nice; maybe it's inevitable. The OSCAR EXPERT's "broher bro" has posted a 14-minute video walk-and-talk rave at 3 a.m. to celebrate SENTIMENTAL VALUE as "truly great" and just as good as Trier's last film THE WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD that he calls "his best." "Brother bro" thinks SENTIMENTAL VAALUE is the best of the festival. Maybe it's the two beers he had with fest pals, but he predicts it willl get ten nominations and even thinks it could win Best Picture despite being a foreign film. Radhika Seth for VOGUE says SENTIMENTAL VALUE "might be the best film you'll see all year" and that if Trier doesn't win the Palme d'Or this time (THE WORSE PERSON IN THE WORLD having been passed over by Spike Lee's Jury in 2021 FOR TITANE), she'll be "really, truly outraged." I have loved Trier from the get-go. However, SENTIMENTAL VALUE's Jury Grid score is 2.7, same as ROMERÍA, below THE SECRET AGENT, 2.8 (which "brther bro" didn't "get"), which is below TWO PROSECUTORS and IT WAS JUST AN ACCIDENT, which both got a 3.1. But from what "brother bro" says, there is massive, perhaps building, buzz about SENTIMENTAL VALUE. He thinks it's "as good as ANORA," and it got a massive 15-minute ovation.

[Chris Knipp]

YES (Nadav Lapid) - Directors' Fortight


ARIEL BRONZ IN YES

Israeli filmmaker Nadav Lapid "has never shied away from the violence of his homeland," says Jordan Mintzer in his HOLLYWOOD REPORTER review of Lapid's new film premiering in Cannes' Directors Fortnight section. His POLICEMAN, THE KINDERGARTEN TEACHER, SYNONYMS (which was the Berlin Golden Bear winner and partly a hit with me, making me a fan of star Tom Mercier) and AHED'S KNEE all are films "where characters face explosive situations both externally and within." The last, AHED'S KNEE, was "already a furious cri de coeur against the powers-that-be in Israel." But YES "takes that premise to the next level. " It's a "decadant romp" through the "madness and misery" of post October 7 Israel. Bradshaw in his GUARDIAN review (four out of five stars) seconds this, noting that YES's "brilliant, showy set-pieces" add up to "a caricature of the decadence and heartlessness" of today's Israel. Jonathan Romney in SCREENDAILY calls this "A full-on kamikaze approach to contemporary political satire." The focus is on a couple of entertainers in contemporary Israel: Y (Ariel Bronz), a jazz musician and performer, and Yasmine (Efrat Dor), a dancer, who abjectly sell their bodies. Bronz is approached to compose a new Irraeli national anthem. Backgrounds include charred ramains of Gaza and children singing a song of vicous revenge. Romney says ths "isn't an easy film to like" and wasn't meant to be; that it will shock and offend various camps. But some may, in part, like it, since as Bradshaw says it "With icy provocation" presents "Israel’s ruling classes. . . as decadent and indifferent to the slaughter and suffering of Gaza," which it plainly appears they are, while it's also sympathetic to those in Issrael shattered by the "butchery" of October 7. But does YES make clear that the massacre of October 7 was ansered by an extermination?

[Chris Knipp]

RESURECTION (Bi Gan) - in Competition



The 35-year-old Chinese director Bi Gan's came onto the scene and caught everyone's attention with his first feature film KAILI BLUES (ND/NF 2016) and he became a major influence on Chinese cinema with his 2018 LONG DAY'S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT (in Un Certain Regard at CAnnes), NYFF 2018), which asks us to reexamine our notions of memory and time. His new FILM, RESURECTION, Bradshaw reports, presents an "ambitious alternate reality" where people "can live indefinitely." A "dissident dreamer" travels through history reincarnating into "different guises." Packed with dazzling sets and effects, and touching on multiple genres and styles, it is a sometimes exhausting ride – especially when we're struggling to engage with a changing cast of characters rooted in Chinese places, history, legend and religion. It's les emtionally powerful than his 2018 film, Bradshaw says, because it's a "Portmanteau film," a collection of disperate episodes. But it's also a memorable and exhilarating fide. It's "a kind of twentieth-century monster story," writes Lee Marshall in his SCREENDAILY review. While KAILI BLUES was a kind of road movie and LONG DAY'S JOURNEY was a kind of missing person quest, RESURECTION is "almost entirely unclssifiable." It's a trip through Chinese history. Sophie Monks Kaufman in INDIEWIRE isn't sure if this is "imaginative, boundary-defying cinema," or just "an endurance test." She says "to call it impenetrable is an understatement." The tireless Bradshaw plunges into summarizing it, but "wasn’t sure about the silent-movie type effects," though did think it is "a work of real artistry" and gives it four out of four stars. Jessica Kiang of VARIETY found RESURECTION "a marvelously maximalist movie of opulent ambition that is actually five or six movies," each of which is "at once playful and peculiar and part of an overarchingly melancholy elegy for the dream of 20th-century cinema and the lives we lived within it." She says the film mourns the time when we gave the same complete attention to movies as we do to our dreams, but asks us to do that again. I can imagine the Oscar Expert's "brother bro" balking at the complexity of this, but passionate film students drooling at the prospect of it. Runtime 156 minutes.

[Chris Knipp]

ELLE FANNING AND JOACHIM TRIER, SENTIMENTAL VALUE

CANNES #78 2025: THE AWARDS

PALME D'OR: A SIMPLE ACCIDENT (Jafar Panahi)
GRAND PRIX: SENTIMENTAL VALUE (Joachim Trier)
JURY PRIZE: tie between SIRAT (Oliver Laxe) and THE SOUND OF FALLING (Mascha Schilinski)
BEST DIRECTOR: KLEBER MENDOCA FILHO for THE SECRET AGENT
BEST ACTOR (Competition Films): WAGNOR MOURA (for THE SECRET AGENT by Mendoça Filho)
BEST SCREENPLAY: YOUNG MOTHERS/JEUNES MÈRES( Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne)
BEST ACTRESS: NADIA MELLITI (for LA PETITE DERIÈRE)
SPECIAL AWARD: RESURRECTION (Bi Gan)
CAMÉRA D'OR: THE PRESIDENT'S CAKE (Hasan Hadi, in DIRECTOR'S FORTNIGHT), with spefial mention to MY FATHER'S SHADOW (Akinola Davies Jr. in UN CERTAIN REGARD)
QUEER PALM: LA PETITE DERRIÈRE (Hafsia Herzi)
PALM DOG: "PANDA" (in THE LOVE THAT REMAINS by Hlynur Palmason)
UN CERTAIN REGARD AWARDS:
UN CERTAIN REGARD PRIZE: THE MYSTERIOUS GAZE OF THE FLAMINGO by Diego Céspedes
JURY PRIZE: A POET by Simón Mesa Soto
BEST ACTOR: FRANK DILLANE (for URCHIN by Harris Dickinson)
BEST ACTRESS: CLÉO DIARA (for I ONLY REST IN THE STORM by Pedro Pinho)
BEST SCREENPLAY: PILLION by Harry Lighton
BEST DIRECTING: ONCE UPON A TIME IN GAZA by Arab & Tarzan Nasser


Most of my original awards listings above were wrong - I had copied an AI -created list. Dont trust AI! Peter Bradshaw got most of his GUARDIAN predictions wrong. The Oscar Expert's "brother bro" yesterday in his prediction video seemed to do better, but he was more ruminating over alternate possiblities and guessing correctly what films would be scoring somewhere. He seemed to get the PALME D'OR right, but that was a wrong list. He wanted SIRAT,a personal favorite, to win something, and, of course, it did, tied with SOUND OF FALLING for the Jury Prize. Both Bradshaw and "brother bro" knew the top films of the festival; it's hard not to. It's just hard, if not impossible, to guess what they'll get.

As Peter Bradshaw noted in his GUARDIAN roundup, Cannes this year "had a lot to live up to after last year’s award-winners, headline-grabbers and social media meltdowners Anora, The Substance and Emilia Pérez." He wondered if the big fallen palm tree on the Croisette was a sign of . . . something (a partial decline?). But we'll see. Just the lack of big headline-grabbers doesn't mean it wasn't a good festival. These top-mentioned titles all sound really interesting: A SIMPLE ACCIDENT, SENTIMENTAL VALUE, SIRAT, SOUND OF FALLING, THE SECRET AGENT, and the others mentioned in prizes too, are sure to be worth looking for.


KLEBER MENDOçCA FILHO PICKED UP TWO AWARDS, BEST DIRECTOR & BEST ACTOR FOR WAGNER MOURA, WHO WAS ABSENT

[Chris Knipp]

YOUNG MOTHERS (JEUNES MÈRES) (Jean-Pierre, Luc Dardenne)


DETAIL FROM THE DARDENNES' YOUNG MOTHERS

David Rooney in his HOLLYWOOD REPORTER review says it's a mistake to think the "stripped-down aesthetic" and humanistic values mean you know what you're getting with the Dardennes: there are always surprises. He also mentions that they have been helping produce Ken Loach's similiarly conceived films from England since 2009. YOUNG MOTHERS is notably more docu-drama than usual for the Belgian brothers, and also focuses this time, which is also different, on multiple stories, finding and following four young mothers and one about to give birth at a maternal support shelter near Liège. Each young woman has her own specific story. Peter Bradshaw's GUARDIAN review awards YOUNG MOTHERS five out of five stars and summarizes the film as a "poignant, compassionate work of unforced social realism" that shows how "Teen mums are taught how to take care of their babies or prepare them for adoption amid drug addiction, mental illness and family conflict." He says it's "quietly outstanding" and that "gentleness, compassion and love" are its "keynotes." The film presents each of the five mothers and their multiple issues the center helps them deal with, and it lets us fall in love with the babies. The basic question, says Bradshaw, is whether, having rejected abortion as an option, giving up the baby to adoption is or is not then the more responsible choice. Peter Debruge in VARIETY says the "widened focus" makes YOUNG MOTHERS the Dardennes' "most convincing film yet" and their "best film in more than a decade." We begin to understand how it came effectively to fifth place in the Cannes awards with the Best Screenplay award.

[Chris Knipp]

JAFAR PANAHI WITH THE PALME D'OR: AN AWARD WELL EARNED

MORE ABOUT THE CANNES 78 AWARDS AND AWARD FILMS

Bradshaw comments eloquently on why it's great that Jafar Panahi won the highest award at this year's Cannes for his new film IT WAS JUST AN ACCIDENT. He is, he says, the most courageous director in the world. He points out the obvious qualifications. He has endured a 20-year ban on filmmaking in Iran and spent six years in prison there, and he has gone on making films, skillfully pointed political ones, through all this, year after year, in protest against the oppressive regime of his country. (Don't miss his son's charming and pointed 2021 debut, HIT THE ROAD, as well.)

In truth his films have not been very enjoyable or very real the past few years, but there's hope that this one will be, as HIT THE ROAD is. Some would vote like the French Letterboxd contributor who said that Joachim Trier's SENTIMENTAL VALUE is "la véritable Palme d'Or dans mon coeur" (the true Palme d'Or in my heart). And if Mendoça Filho's THE SECRET AGENT is as great as Bradshaw says and SIRAT is as great as "brother bro" thinks, they may outstrip Panahi in our hearts as well. Awards are given by the Competition Jury, headed by Juliette Binoche, with only 9 members. They don't quite mesh with the critics better shown by the Jury Grid.

The Oscar Expert YouTube bros Cole and Mason, in a video reunited after Mason's sojourj in Cannes, discuss the films and future awards prospects for the most celebrated or "Palmares"-gifted films of the festival. "Brother bro" showed a photo of Panahi sitting back with his arms folded over his head, plainly luxuriating in the recognition of his courage and his skill. They also go over the top-ranked Cannes films and other ones we haden't heard of yet, such as the French animations ARCO and LITTLE AMÉLIE, which have good prospects. They too put in a plug for HIT THE ROAD. They don't miss much.

Kudos to both Peter Bradshaw, who provides some of the most helpful and accessible Cannes reviews and commentary, and the Oscar Expert's "brother bro," whose videos were lively and acccessible, not to mention thorough and intelligent. I won't forget his lyrical rant early in the morning thrhough the streets of Cannes extolling one of his two personal favorites, JOCHIM TRIER'S SENTIMENTAL VALUE. These two guys did the work and brought the goods day after day.

I also owe this vicarius coverage to the many other excellent critics who were there, especially trade journal heavies like Jordan Mintzer, Lee Marshall, Peter Debruge, Jessica Kiang, David Rooney, Guy Lodge, and the other veterans who amaze with their fortitude as well as clarity in covering the festival. They are the best because they provide daily coverage and thus make this most important cinematic event of the year come to life as it happens. I hope readers of this thread will follow some of the links I've provided all along, because they do build a sense of what it feels like to watch these films - and to experience the thrill and excitement of Cannes.

[Chris Knipp]

JOSH O'CONNOR IN THE MASTERMIND

THE MASTERMIND (Kelly Reichardt) - In Competition

Josh O'Connor plays something like his role in Rohrwacher's LA CHIMERA only more incompetent by far: an uncmployed carpenter in Nixon-era Massachusetts who imagines he can become a successful art thief, and steal four Arthur Doves from a local art gallery using some very unreliable hired toughs. This goes awry and so does his life. Bradshaw gives it four out of five stars, loving its low-keyed ironies. The Metascore is a modest 73%, but there are enthusiastic reviews from Jessica Kiang in VARIETY and David Rooney in HOLLLYWOOD REPORTER. Kiang calls it "gorgeously rumpled," and Rooney cals it "an understated, funny-sad heist movie like no other." It sounds like some may have trouble tuning into the departure from genre tradition, but Bradshaw loves "the super-naturalistic depiction of an art gallery robbery" that has "no dramatic music on the soundtrack (quite as it would be in real life)" so that Reichardt "has unerringly located the unglamour in the heist." This sounds iike something really special, very much suited to the rumpled, disreputable side of Josh O'Connor we saw also in Guadagnino's CHALLENGERS, honed into "hangdog near-charm" here. We like this kind of role because our own dreams often seem futile and we want to forgive that. O'Connor has gone a long way from playing Prince Charles. In fact Alison Willmore in VULTURE suggests this is the culmination of a series of roles O'Connor has been playing. Alana Haim, Bill Camp and Hope Davis are also featured. David Rooney says, "Leave it to Kelly Reichardt to make a '70s movie that looks and feels like a lost '70s movie, from its scruffy visual aesthetic to its muted colors, its patient character observation and unhurried pacing to its unstinting investment in an underdog protagonist..." This premiered near the end of the Cannes festival. An American gem to watch for.