FESTIVALS
Cannes 2023 week two roundup-Third female Palm D'Or is French.
This year’s Cannes Film Festival jury awarded the Palme d'Or unanimously to Anatomy of a Fall by French director Justine Triet. A poignant and absorbing drama about the wife of a frustrated writer charged with his murder after his death in suspicious circumstances. While their 11-year-old son tries to make sense of what happened, it is the woman’s way of life, that appears to be under examination, more than the question of guilt. This is an articulate portrait of a woman, passionate and fiercely intelligent, infused with a feminist verve. The French filmmaker in her acceptation speech made a political statement in support of the struggles of the French people, for the right to the retirement rights.
The FIPRESCI Critics’ award and the Jury Prize went to Jewish filmmaker Jonathan Glazer for The Zone Of Interest. Based on the novel by Martin Aims. The family life of Nazi commander Rudolf Hoss proceeds in idyllic normality untouched by the atrocities of the gas chambers taking place just beyond the walls of his lavish residence, surrounded by a garden of flowers, children play, while a dark smoke coming from the chimney of the concentration camps. It makes for an uncomfortable spectacle, a claustrophobic horror, evoking painful memories and inviting candid reflection on human behaviour.
Best Actor Award was given to Japanese actor Koji Yakusho for Win Wenders’ Perfect Days. It is a simple, touching story of a working-class man scraping a living cleaning Tokyo’s public toilet. Warm-hearted and boundlessly touching, this piece of humanist cinema is sharp in its social criticism, yet ultimately mighty in its belief in the decency of ordinary people. While the actor fills the screen with thoughtful silences, his eyes reflect the amazement and joy of the little things in life. Wenders follows his activities with obsession and respect. Like a documentary, he records the details of his daily routine, as he wakes up early, waters his plants, takes his uniform, an old mobile phone, a few coins, and the keys to his van. With devotion, he scrubs one toilet after another. Until late one evening, his humble routine is interrupted by an unexpected visit. Clearly Wenders is not a “provocateur”. He tells the story with a gentle, elegant, poetic touch. The film has a compassionate, romantic look, but isolation, social justice, and solidarity are its backdrop. Poverty is not something that belongs only to less affluent parts of the world but can be found too in big modern city like Tokyo.
Sadly, my favourite movie was left empty-handed. Ken Loach’s The Old Oak centred on the last remaining pub in a small village in county Durham that has never recovered from the mine closures of the 1980s. Syrian refugees have just been housed in the village and while the local community disintegrates in reaction to the new arrivals, the Old Oak becomes contested territory. The village becomes a sort of microcosm of the national mentality, where the inhabitants are infested with rage and xenophobic resentment, fuelled by the anti-immigration rhetoric of the current Conservative government. The Syrian refuges, meanwhile, are in despair, totally abandoned by the institution. But Ken Loach gives the story a clink of hope, a solution, and some of the residents start to offer their solidarity. Among the finest films of the festival, it promotes a strong political message that “when the working-class unites, an incredible power emerges, and everything can be transformed.”
Scripted by regular collaborator, Paul Laverty, and produced by Rebecca O’Brien, Loach's movie is a visceral, emotional, and intellectual experience. There is a clarity` and severity in this film that takes it beyond a social realism: this is a film with a rigorous transforming stare, an extraordinary and passionate urgency. Moving, forceful, and outstanding, it is a film whose grace and lyricism earns it, solely, status of classic: something of real prominence.
Loach’s movie offers hope, Finnish filmmaker Aki Kaurismaki’s Fallen Leaves, winner of the Jury Prize, presents a pessimistic observation of labour exploitation. It’s a harsher vision with a story hinging on the precarious insecurity of working conditions. Ansa works in a supermarket under an exploitative contract, part of her job is to dispose of expired food, one day she is fired for trying to take home an out-of-date sandwich. She finds love in a karaoke bar where she meets construction worker Holappa, but soon Holappa’s depressive tendency to hit the bottle leads him too to lose his job, and Ansa. Kaurismaki’s modern social satire kind-heartedly employs deadpan humour and rock music to rescue the viewer from absolute despair. A graceful, pure, deeply humanist work that celebrates the working class, tough despite its limpid beauty.
This year’s Cannes festival has been one the festival’s strongest and most political editions for some time, with a strong international perspective and so many stories in which the ordinary, the outcast, were given the spotlight.
Cannes Film Festival 2023
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FILM FESTIVAL 2022
The second edition of the Red Sea Film Festival kicked off its second edition on Friday
The Red Sea Film Festival has grown over two years to become one of the most ambitious Film Festivals in terms of programming in the Arabic regions.
Held in the auditorium of the Ritz Carlton hotel in Jeddah, on the Red Sea’s eastern shore, the festival served as a strong affirmation of the event’s theme “Film is Everything,” with retrospective and tributes to some leading figures in the international cinema around the globe, and countless premiers and previews of films and a busy red carpet that alongside a flood of Arab talent also saw international starts as Sharon Stone, Spike Lee, Guy Ritchie and Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan.
Cannes Film Festival 2021
Oliver Stone about JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass
Thirty years after J.F.K., Oliver Stone returns to confront the assassination of John F. Kennedy more aggressively than ever. Presented at the Cannes festival this week, JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass is a documentary full of new interviews, new research, and new perspectives on the subject. Stone told the press at Cannes:
“In 1963, a great crime happened and people maybe who were born afterward don't know much about it, and they go on with their lives, but they don't realize that the world has been shaped by people before them. President Kennedy was the last American president who really struggled for peace in the world. He called for peace with the Soviet Union, which was the end of the Cold War, the first one to do so. He signed the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty with the Soviet Union, the first treaty that existed between the Soviets and the US. It's very important - that treaty is still in effect, basically. He also was looking for a peace with Cuba, which was a big problem for the United States, and remains after 60 years. He sought good relations with Asia, with South America, with Africa as was shown with his concern about Patrice Lumumba's murder in the Congo. Where have you seen an American president do the same thing consistently since then? And above all, as I try to point out because I was in Vietnam, he was withdrawing from Vietnam as early as 1963. The first orders were given for the first 1,000 troops to come out. By December of '63. This is now history but of course you get the wrong history still in the US. We were much criticized for suggesting Kennedy was withdrawing from Vietnam. But [former] Secretary of Defence Robert McNamara has said bluntly that Kennedy was withdrawing from Vietnam, no question, no doubt. Even if we lost. Even if the South Vietnamese Government lost to the North Vietnamese. This must not be forgotten. Then of course Bundy, McGeorge Bundy, who was his National Security Advisor, also says the same thing, Kennedy was withdrawing from Vietnam. Bundy didn't agree with it by the way, but he said he was. Why do we keep this illusion up that Johnson, Lyndon Johnson who succeeded him, is the same man, carried out the same policy as Kennedy? It's false, rubbishes history, and it continues to be a myth and it must be taken apart. Thank God there are young historians now doing this, but still, it's very slow and conservative and rather stupid frankly. But we're trying. Anyway, that's a motive for murder. The motive for murder is change. Kennedy was changing things. Since Kennedy, no American president has come close to making these moves, not close. We now cannot touch the military; we cannot touch the intelligence agencies. So, it's some bind for a president. You're not really in power, you don't really have power because these people do what they want. Things changed on November 22, 1963, up until now. We can change it back.”
After seeing the 50th anniversary specials, the work of the Assassinations Review Board, prompted by the original movie, and all the new evidence, new discoveries, new research, Stone decided he “wanted to make a project that would assemble all this stuff, knowing that there aren't many people in the world who are going to read 12 or 15 books to get this information. Let's bring in the independent researchers that did this work, have them speak for themselves, and give the public this information in a short format. It didn't get finance out of the United States either. We had to go to England to get the money. America is changed. It's become more censorship oriented.”
There were two big mysteries always. Who killed JFK? And what's in the locker at Area 51 in Roswell, New Mexico? Then the third mystery was handed, what is the secret between the relationship between former President Trump and Vladimir Putin?
“Now, that's interesting, but it's outside our subject matter. As you know, I do know something about it because I did interview President Putin. And he denies any kind of involvement in any kind of Manchurian Candidate scenario, which is a very American idea, very bad guys, good guys. We must get away from those stereotypes. Our two countries must get along. We must, because frankly there's a much bigger threat ahead than war, than nuclear war. It's climate change. Both countries are very advanced in their research. Russia primarily is doing the most because they really are putting a government effort behind it. The United States makes it a private affair. Although Biden is bringing up the investment, so there's hope. But there's no reason we can't be partners in something like this. And with China too for that matter. So, I don't agree at all with the United States policy of hostility to China, Russia, Iran, and all our other enemies, Venezuela, Cuba. Cuba's yesterday's news. Why do we want enemies? Why? Are they real, or is it because there's a lot of money involved? And we have a massive military industrial complex that requires to be fed with money and emotions and endless amounts of designs for new weapons that cost a fortune. People are making big money on this, and this is a very sick world because of it, and a sick economy. All that money could be used for much better purposes within the United States.
Should your administration have the will to do something about it, maybe create another commission?
I doubt it. I don't think the Biden Administration's even thinking about it. There are three official investigations. The Warren Commission, which I've done my best and many people have done their best to debunk. The second one was the House Select Committee on Assassinations in 1978/79. And in the film, we show some of the problems they had. George Blakey, who took over the commission, admits that he was lied to by the CIA on a key issue.
RDS
Read Sea International Film Festival
In a country where cinema had been banned for 35 years, the first edition of the Red Sea Film Festival started at full steam with the valiant support of the international film community. Taking place from December 6 -15 and is set to bring the best in Arab and World Cinema to the UNESCO world heritage site of Jeddah Old Town. Alongside a retrospective programme celebrating the masters of cinema, the festival provides a platform for Arab filmmakers and industry professionals and offers a rich mix of arthouse films, talks about politics, everyday life, relations between men and women, violence, films that spark conversation and debate.
The festival was due to hold its inaugural edition in March 2020, but the COVID-19 pandemic frustrated this plan. It finally got under way on Monday night with an opening gala that brought celebrities from all over the Arabic world and a prestigious selection of international guests, among them Hend Sabry, Anthony Mackie, Clive Owen, Hilary Swank, Thierry Frémaux, Michele Morrone, Yaqoub AlFarhan, Mila AlZahrani, Yassir AlSaggaf and Godus Brothers
The first night seems to have started in tune with many of the year’s other international festivals by honouring three female prominent film figures: the first female Saudi filmmaker, Haifaa Al Mansour, French actress Catherine Deneuve and Egyptian actress Laila Eloui.
The opening movie was the romantic musical Cyrano, directed by Joe Wright. This is Wright’s first opportunity to direct a musical and he brings both intimacy and scope to the adaptation of Erica Schmidt’s 2018 stage musical of the same name, which was itself based on the classic 1897 play Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand. While Wright had fallen in love with the story of Cyrano as a teenager, he’d come to consider making his own version after seeing Peter Dinklage and Haley Bennet. A musical might sound a peculiar choice for an inaugural film, as the genre is not everyone taste, but for an audience deprived of cinema for so many years, everything is exiting, and reveals cinema as a social entertainment, experienced together, on a big screen, away from streaming platforms (Netflix, Apple, Amazon).