Cannes at Home: From Linklater to Ducournau

by Cláudio Alves

Between an Oscar, a Silver Bear, and THE SECRET AGENT's sterling reviews, Brazilian cinema is having a moment.
The 2025 Cannes Film Festival is almost over, so I've got to get going with this miniseries. After the directors already discussed in parts one and two, it was Richard Linklater's turn to present his latest creation. Nouvelle Vague purports to tell the making of Godard's Breathless, paying homage to the vanguard's aesthetic in a fashion some have compared to Michel Hazanavicius' Oscar-winning pastiche. Lynne Ramsay proved polarizing, as usual, with her Die, My Love, a literary adaptation that's gotten critics raving about Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson. But the best-reviewed title of this batch has to be Kleber Mendonça Filho's The Secret Agent, a period thriller of epic proportions with Wagner Moura in the leading role. Then there's Tarik Saleh's supposedly underwhelming Eagles of the Republic and Julia Ducournau's follow-up to her Palme d'Or victory. The AIDS crisis allegory Alpha divided audiences and disappointed many of the director's fans, but that's to be expected with such a provocateur.

For this chapter of Cannes at Home, I invite you to revisit Linklater's Waking Life, Ramsay's Morvern Callar, Mendonça's Aquarius, Saleh's Cairo Conspiracy, and Ducournau's Titane…

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Cannes Diary 06: "Sirât" derails expectations

by Elisa Giudici

Film festivals remain the last true sanctuary for an endangered species of film experience: going in cold. Armed with little more than a title, director, an evocative still, or a whisper of plot, you surrender to the unknown. The magic of Sirât is that even this meager intel offers no real map for the territory director Oliver Laxe is about to unveil; not even the most seasoned cinephile will be able to predict the journey ahead. The bittersweet truth, however, is that in describing this film, I am surely chronicling an experience that will be increasingly hard to replicate. Like its protagonists, Esteban and Luis, you must lose yourself in Sirât, allowing the unexpected to detonate within you. But can such a pure encounter survive an age where every narrative tremor is seismically registered and dissected online mere hours after a world premiere?

Nevertheless, I'll endeavor to convey the thrill of what has been, for me, the most electrifying jolt in this year's competition...

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Cannes Diary 05: "Die My Love" - A Tale of Two Comebacks

by Elisa Giudici

Die My Love was poised to mark two significant female comebacks, both artists seeking a powerful resurgence. One fully succeeded; the other, decidedly, did not, though pinpointing exactly what went wrong with the latter isn't straightforward.

Let's start with the winning bet: Jennifer Lawrence. After Causeway and No Hard Feelings (films that showcased good performances but had limited media impact), Lawrence has made a comeback worthy of her marquee name. Her performance here is a strong contender for festival awards and, looking ahead, could go far, especially since MUBI has acquired the film for international distribution...

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Happy Cannesiversary to "Dancer in the Dark"!!

by Nick Taylor

Happy (belated) Mother’s Day, everybody!! I did not plan on watching Lars von Trier’s Palme-winning musical tragedy at the break of dawn on May 11th, but sometimes fate gives you a funny little coincidence to make a work of art even more resonant than it would already be. Dancer in the Dark ranked high on the list of films I should absolutely have seen by now, based on literally every aspect of my tastes and personality, and the 25th anniversary of its Cannes premiere made for the perfect excuse to finally check this out . . . .

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Happy Cannesiversary to "In the Mood for Love"!!

by Nick Taylor

We at TFE are wishing a Happy 25th Birthday to Wong Kar-Wai’s melancholic romantic drama In the Mood for Love, which debuted on this day at Cannes. It went home with the Best Actor award and the Technical Grand Prize for its cinematography and editing, and if you ask around there’s a good chance folks would say it still got short-shrifted by Luc Besson’s jury. Its stamp on the cinema firmament, an apex of the sumptuous mood and style Wong made his name on, is beyond reproach. If you haven’t seen it, you’ve almost certainly felt its reverberations in art house cinema writ large, on individual directors like Barry Jenkins, aesthetic blogs or photoshoots, and an entire chapter of Everything Everywhere All At Once. More importantly, if you haven’t seen it then go watch it! Right now! You’re back? Then let’s discuss this masterpiece . . . .

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