Cannes: Nanni Moretti's "A Brighter Tomorrow"

Elisa Giudici reporting from Cannes...

It is not easy being coherent with your work when you have as strong moral compass as Nanni Moretti. The Italian director and Palm d’Or winner (The Son's Room, 2001) has built a career around his political beliefs and precise reading of reality. In Moretti’s world, everything is black or white, with some Communist Red. Compromising is surrendering to the enemy.

His new picture Il sol dell’avvenire  (English title: A Brighter Tomorrow) is a tale of how difficult it is to be alive in a world in which everything you love and believe in is either dying or betraying you. It is a movie within a movie with a half dozen other movies tied up in it (for me, a certain Tarantino picture came to mind but more on that later). After the disappointing Tre Piani, Moretti returns to what he does best: playing a fictional version of himself on screen, and letting the mask slip when necessary to reveal his pain...

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Cannes: Maïwenn & Johnny Depp in "Jeanne Du Barry"

Elisa Giudici reporting from Cannes!

It is fascinating how carelessly Maïwenn gives her detractors such easy targets and ways to tear apart her work. She is the director, screenwriter, and lead actress of Cannes opener Jeanne Du Barry. The biopic takes place in Versailles in the years when both the old king Louis XV and the young and naive future queen Marie Antoinette walked through the halls and the gardens of the magnificent French court. The focus here though is elsewhere. The film centers on the elderly king's favorite, the low-born, sensual, and witty Jeanne. Multi-hyphenate Maïwenn shares Jeanne's giggly confidence, playing the protagonist with Johnny Depp as the aging Louis XV.

If you're thinking of Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette, you’re not alone. It’s the same realm of extreme luxury, absurd etiquette, and incredible loneliness, but viewed from a different side of the royal playground... 

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Yes No Maybe So: "Killers of the Flower Moon"

by Cláudio Alves

Ahead of the film's Cannes premiere, Apple TV has released the teaser for Martin Scorsese's Killers of the Flower Moon. The historical crime drama cum Western epic has been intensely anticipated by film lovers everywhere, making itself the hottest ticket at the Croisette, where it'll screen out of competition. With an exclusive theatrical release scheduled for October before dropping on the streaming service sometime afterward, the picture is well positioned to be one of the awards season's strongest contenders, with many predicting it in early prognostications. Though, when faced with the wonder of Scorsese's cinema, awards talk feels superfluous.

Not all filmmakers slow down in their twilight years, as is the case of this auteur. Indeed, in a recent interview, Scorsese talked about his sense of mortality, how the possibilities of the seventh art keep expanding to him, and there's not enough time to explore them all. It's too late. Following the superb Silence and The Irishman, Killers of the Flower Moon looks like the work of a master who still has much to show us…

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The complete Cannes jury is finally here

by Cláudio Alves

The 76th edition of the Cannes Film Festival is scheduled for this month, from the 16th to the 27th, featuring new films from many of the world's foremost auteurs. Following recent tradition, here at The Film Experience, Elisa Giudicci will be covering the festival at the Croisette, while I'll offer parallel programming through the Cannes at Home miniseries. It's always interesting to explore works from the competing directors, be they this year's offerings or past efforts. Another point of curiosity is the end of that competition when the festival's main jury will reward one of the 21 selected directors with the Palme d'Or. We might even see a past victor repeat their triumph.

That happened at the last edition when Ruben Östlund won his second Cannes with Triangle of Sadness. So, it's only logical that he was invited to preside over this edition's jury, something we've known for weeks. The rest of the jury, however, was only revealed today…

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"Elemental" to close Cannes

by Nathaniel R

Pixar's Elemental will close the Cannes Film Festival this year (Out of Competition) on May 27th before hitting theaters on June 16th. If you missed the original Cannes lineup post, that's here. The only other Pixar features to premiere at Cannes were Up, Soul, and Inside Out. Elemental is directed by Peter Sohn (The Good Dinosaur) 

In other TFE-specific Cannes news, our favourite Italian Elisa Giudici will be covering the festival again for us this year and we couldn't be happier about that. Stay tuned for more on Cannes.