2018 Cannes International Film Festival

Before the whole festival imploded under the pressure of a growing number of filmmakers and artists, several films were screened to mixed reactions. Roman Polanski's Rosemary's Baby received mostly glowing reviews, around the theme of 'he's back to the vein of Repulsion'.

Stars and industry leaders converged to Nikki Beach Sunday evening for a very good cause: the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA), in association with Participant Media, awarded the Kailash Satyarthi Children’s Foundation (KSCF), a nonprofit organization dedicated to ending violence against children, a $500,000 grant. Support for entertainment-related charities, scholarship programs, and humanitarian efforts is a core mandate of the HFPA, which has already donated over $30 million over the past years and has been making a point of celebrating great causes in events such as the Cannes Film Festival.

In what has become a Cannes festival tradition, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association awarded its annual humanitarian grant on Sunday. The $500,000 grant will benefit the Kailash Satyarthi Children’s Foundation, founded by Indian human rights activist and Nobel Peace Laureate Kailash Satyarthi.

So much for the early theme of capes – before they could solidify as a trend they disappeared. Today it poured at Cannes.

What brings silence to the utter frenzy of the famous Palais des Festivals red carpet steps? The sight of 82 actresses and industry women marching up the stairs and then standing in solidarity en masse to bring attention to the disparity to the role of women at the legendary festival since its inception in 1946. Symbolically, 82 women gathered to make a point: this is the number of female directors who have been chosen for the main competition, in contrast to the 1,688 male counterparts in the same time period.

Almost halfway there, Cannes 2018 has a mild, steady vibe. Women may be minority on the competition slate but, from juries to new projects, they have been ruling this 71st edition.

At the Cannes Film Festival, Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem walked the red carpet with the Iranian director Asghar Farhadi at the opening night. Their film is Everybody Knows and the real life husband and wife do not play a couple but a couple that once was.

There are four master classes on the Cannes schedule this year, including talks by film icons John Travolta, Christopher Nolan and Gary Oldman. To start, Ryan Coogler kicked things off with an intimate, free-flowing and wide-ranging two-hour conversation with Elvis Mitchell in front of a packed Salle Buñuel.

Two-time nominee and Golden Globe winner Asghar Farhadi is an accomplished cinematic storyteller whose intimate films often revolve around the slow burn of inexorable emotional turmoil. His movies are triumphs of economy whose strength lies precisely in their narrative restraint, and they have garnered worldwide acclaim, not least the jury and screenwriting prizes previously won here in Cannes.

Paris, May 1968, mass protests, street battles and nationwide strikes, a new revolution is on its way, this time, not only a political but social and cultural one.  Intellectuals, students and manual workers took the streets engulfing the country by a social upheaval.