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There was both high anxiety and high anticipation before this year’s Cannes Film Festival, still the most important event in the calendar of global cinema. The 74th edition kicked off July 6, two months later than usual, and after skipping one year, amid safety concerns due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

With his new film, The Worst Person in the World, the acclaimed Danish-born Norwegian Joachim Trier (Louder Than Bombs, starring Isabelle Huppert, The Oslo Trilogy) continues to impress critics and viewers with his melancholy meditations about love, ambition, memory, and identity. The movie, which world-premiered in competition at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, offers a subtle portrait of a young woman named Julie, who is very much a product of her times.

Tokyo Story, Good Morning, Early Spring, Floating Weeds, Late Autumn, Equinox Flower, The Flavor of Green Tea over Rice are just a few of the most movingly memorable films directed by Yasujirō Ozu.   Besides a legacy of many unsurpassed masterpieces, the prolific filmmaker also left 32 pocket agendas in which he diligently recorded facts and events of his daily life, from 1933 until a few months before his death in December 1963, at age sixty.

Egyptian Omar El Zohairy’s seriocomedy, Feathers, won the Nespresso Grand Prize at the Critics’ Week, the Cannes Film Festival’s section dedicated exclusively to first or second films. The 2021 program, which marks the sidebar’s 60th edition, featured 13 world premieres.

A love letter to cinema, shot across the US, Iran, Chile, China and Thailand by seven of today's most vital filmmakers, The Year of the Everlasting Storm is a timely anthology about the impact of the global pandemic on various countries and cultures. The anthology, which is world-premiered here in the Special Screenings sidebar will be released domestically by A24.

In Lamb, a supernatural folktale from first-time director Valdimar Jóhannsson, Noomi Rapace and Hilmir Snaer Gudnason star as a childless couple who discover a mysterious newborn creature. A24 picked up the rights for the film's release in the U.

What a year this was! A rich crop with some of the best filmmakers came to the Croisette: Antonioni (L'avventura), Fellini (La Dolce Vita), Carlos Saura (Los golfos), Minelli (Home From the Hill), Jules Dassin (Never on Sunday), Buñuel (The Young One), Bergman (The Virgin Spring), Roberto Farias (A cidade ameaçada) - and Peter Brook, with Seven Days.

Diane Paragas wears many hats as an award-winning writer, director, editor, cinematographer, and producer of features and documentaries. It’s hard to believe it was only two years ago she presented her debut feature film, Yellow Rose, and made history in doing so as the first Filipino-American film theatrically distributed by a major Hollywood studio.

Actor-director Sean Penn, a multiple Golden Globe nominee and winner (Mystic River), returns to the Cannes Film Festival this year with his latest directorial effort, Flag Day, starring his daughter, Dylan Penn, and Josh Brolin, among others. The movie played in the Main Competition, where several of Penn's previous films had appeared, including The Pledge in 2001 and The Last Face in 2016.

Black Widow smashed domestic box office records but the other big news was that Disney, for the first time, disclosed Disney Plus Premiere Access’ earnings from the latest Marvel Cinematic Universe installment on its streaming premiere. In a rare move, Disney announced that director Cate Shortland’s Natasha Romanoff standalone film grossed $60 million in streaming revenues on Disney Plus.