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“Once they adopt you it’s forever,” quipped Pedro Almodóvar during his press conference about the affection shown him by audiences here. “No public is as loyal as the French.

The Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) awarded Help Refugees, a nonprofit organization which provides humanitarian aid to, and advocacy for, refugees around the world, a $500,000 grant at the 2019 Festival de Cannes at their annual philanthropic celebration at Nikki Beach, held in association with Participant Media, located at the center of the Croisette. Helen Mirren presented the grant to Help Refugees on behalf of the HFPA, which will go toward the organization’s pioneering mission of providing humanitarian aid with minimal overhead and maximum impact.

It's hard to throw around superlatives with a two-and-a-half billion-dollar movie still parked on the global charts, but John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum had a fine weekend by its own standards and landed first in the US with $57. 1 million.

“I never felt like I couldn’t do anything because of my gender,” says Nadine Labaki, one of the women featured in Kering’s annual Women in Motion series at the Cannes Film Festival. The series highlights women’s achievements in entertainment and fosters discussions in order to examine what needs to be done to create diversity and equity in the entertainment industry.

Monfermeil, a few miles outside Paris, is one of the historical locations in Victor Hugo’s  “Les Misérables”. In its current incarnation, a banlieue (suburb) of the capital city, it gives the title to French director Ladj Ly’s first feature.

Ken Loach is one of the most decorated Cannes directors ever. The British helmer has won two Palmes d’Or (The Wind That Shakes the Barley in 2006 and I, Daniel Blake in 2016) and three Jury Prizes to boot.

When the lights came back up in the cavernous Grand Theatre Lumière after the world premiere of Rocketman, applause was thunderous and emotions ran high – especially in the central seats reserved for dignitaries and the film’s cast, gathered around its subjects: Bernie Taupin and Elton John. The thunder was commensurate with the spectacle which had just concluded on the GTL’s widescreen which was augmented by the unique feeling of having absorbed a biographical celebration of someone actually present right there in the theater.

I was lucky to meet Elton John in London in October 1970 as I was starting my journalistic career. He had just returned from Los Angeles after his explosive American debut with 6 nights at the legendary West Hollywood Troubadour.

You could call The Dead Don’t Die a neo-noir small town zombie comedy. The apocalypse here hits the small upstate hamlet of Centerville, an actually slightly off-center Mayberry style all-American town, inhabited by zany characters: a movie buff convenience store clerk, amiably gruff diner waitresses, a resident mumbling racist (Steve Buscemi), the motel owner and two somewhat hapless sheriff deputies (Chloë Sevigny and Adam Driver) led by nonplussed sheriff Bill Murray.

For over 40 years the HFPA has recorded famous and celebrated actresses, actors and filmmakers. The world's largest collection of its kind - over 10,000  items- is now in the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences Margaret Herrick Library.