Cannes at Home: Day 3 – Innocence Lost

by Cláudio Alves

New films by James Gray and Jerzy Skolimowski have hit the Croisette, leading to many a Belfast mention and plenty of donkey talk. Armageddon Time, a memoirist exercise that purports to evoke Gray's childhood, has been met with mixed reactions, including here at The Film Experience. However, the consensus leans towards warmth, and, as a longtime James Gray devotee, I couldn't be more excited. After all, nearly every film the man directed faced some negative critiques, yet I love most of them regardless. Unfortunately, the same can't be said about Jerzy Skolimowski. His filmography has been a dependable source of disappointments. By reading some reviews (including Elisa's), his new project, EO, sounds like the cynical bastard child of War Horse and Au Hasard Balthasar. That being said, I doubt the Bressonian comparison will do EO any favors.

For Cannes at Home, today's topics are the film that should have won James Gray the Palme d'Or and Jerzy Skolimowski's Deep End…

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Cannes at Home: Day 2 - Breakdowns and rebellions

by Cláudio Alves

The first day of Main Competition screenings saw the premiere of a few film by Kirill Serebrennikov, and a collaboration from Felix van Groeningen, and Charlotte Vandermeersch.  Tchaikovsky's Wife (read Elisa's review) marks the third time Serebrennikov competes for the Palme d'Or, but the first time he's been at the Croisette. In the last few years, he's forbidden from exiting Russia after being convicted of deviating state funds for the Gogol Center in Moscow, a subterfuge for punishing an artist who's consistently spoken against Putin's regime. The other screening was less politically charged in comparison. The Eight Mountains (read Elisa's review) is the first directorial collaboration of Groeningen and Vandermeersch, though they previously wrote the screenplay for Groeningen's The Broken Circle Breakdown. Moreover, it's Vandermeersch's debut as a director and is the first of five competition titles directed or co-directed by women – a record in Cannes history.

For the Cannes at Home miniseries, today's films are The Broken Circle Breakdown and Serebrennikov's Leto...

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Cannes at Home: Day 1 - 'One Cut of the Dead'

by Cláudio Alves

Last year, I had a lot of fun with the Cannes at Home project. It was meant as a way to dispel FOMO by running a homebound parallel companion to the most prestigious film festival in the world. Since we couldn't screen the new titles on the Croisette, we discussed their directors' past works. In other words: I'm back on my bullshit this year, and you're invited to play along. While this miniseries will focus on the Main Competition and its auteurs, the festivities didn't start with any competing titles. Instead, Michel Hazanavicius' latest film, Final Cut, opened the festival. It's the French remake of a Japanese zombie comedy, and you can read about it in Elisa Giudici's first Cannes Diary.

It only seems appropriate to kick off this parallel project with some thoughts on the original film – Shinichiro Ueda's One Cut of the Dead…

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Cannes at Home: The Best Palme d'Or Winners Ever!

by Cláudio Alves

It's time to end the Cannes at Home project. Hopefully, these daily posts haven't been a bore. For me, as a writer and film lover, they've been a blast, a sparkling antidote to Cannes-induced FOMO. Thank you so much for reading along. Finally, to end on something special, I decided to rank all Palme d'Or winners from 1949 to 2019, eighty winners in all. For brevity's sake and because it's my birthday and I don't want to dwell on negativity, this write-up is only focused on the top ten, my absolute favorites of the bunch. If you're interested, the complete ranking's on my Letterboxd or you can read an old version of it on the Portuguese website Magazine.HD. And now, without further ado, here are my choices for the best Palme d'Or winners of all time…

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Cannes at Home: Day 11

by Cláudio Alves

Spike Lee's illustrious jury will hand out its prizes Saturday night. Friday was still full of screenings, however, including the last two premieres in the Main Competition. Justin Kurzel's Nitram has generated some controversy, purporting, as it does, to tell the story of the man responsible for the deadliest mass shooting in Australian history. To extend cinematic empathy, or even a gesture of exploitation, towards such a figure is bound to cause a polemic. The other film to screen on this last competitive day of Cannes 2021 was Joachim Lafosse's The Restless, the story of a Belgian family dealing with the struggles brought upon by bipolar disorder. To celebrate the event, we'll take a look at two previous tales of killers from these filmmakers. One is a mythic warrior, haunted by the carnage he commits. The other, a real-life mother who did something unthinkable…

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