2023 Cannes International Film Festival

In a film criticism jest many wonder whether Nanni Moretti's latest film, Il sol dell’avvenire (A Brighter Tomorrow), is the result of an AI-generated script made out of every single film the Italian writer/director/actor has made since the '70s. Or, maybe, it's a sort of an artistic testament through which Nanni Moretti, who will turn 70 on August 19th (he was born in Rome in 1953), intends to say farewell to cinema.

Emotions were running high on the red carpet at the premiere of Banel & Adama by Ramata-Toulaye Sy. It was completely understandable.

In addition to its curated and prestigious world premieres, the Cannes Film Festival has a notoriously active marketplace, with producers and filmmakers from all over the world descending each year upon the Côte d’Azur to pitch their would-be projects and attempting to secure financing. In 1982, however, director Wim Wenders had a different aim.

As announced by this headline-grabbing title, it would be an understatement to describe up-and-coming filmmaker Musa Alderson-Clarke as unhappy with former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who ran the United Kingdom from 2019 to 2022. In Alderson-Clarke’s protagonist Kaz (Shadrach Agozino), we meet a grieving man whose mother suffered from depression and who killed herself during the lockdown of the Covid pandemic, a tragedy that coincided with the time when Johnson himself was attending an office Christmas party.

Screened in the official competition at the last Cannes Film Festival in May, Wim Wenders’s Perfect Days is set in Tokyo and follows the quiet and uncomplicated life of Hirayama, a toilet cleaner, played by Koji Yakusho, (this year winner of the Best Actor award). His daily existence consists of driving in his van from job to job, listening to cassettes of classic rock music, as he fastidiously carries out his tasks which he takes much pride in.

  In this week's episode of the Golden Globes Around the World podcast series, we're featuring an in-depth conversation with Flóra Anna Buda, the Hungarian filmmaker who recently clinched the prestigious Palme D’Or for Best Short at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival. Her award-winning animated short, 27, serves as the centerpiece of our discussion.

The Arab films that participated in the 76th Cannes Film Festival varied in both themes and genres. They had a strong and remarkable presence throughout the competition and other programs of the festival.

The 76th Cannes Film Festival marked a major breakthrough for films by Asian filmmakers. In the Competition, Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s About Dry Grasses, Hirokazu Kore-eda's Monster and Wang Bing's Youth (Spring) were screened, while the Best Director award went to Tran Anh Hung for The Pot au Feu.

At this year’s Cannes Film Festival, Hirokazu Kore-eda's Monster, a recent film by the Cannes regular director, received the Best Screenplay award for its script by Yuji Sakamoto. German director Wim Wenders' Perfect Days, funded by the Japanese fast fashion brand Uniqlo, won the Best Actor award for Koji Yakusho, who portrayed a janitor in a public restroom in Tokyo who loves a quiet life.

Wes Anderson’s latest offering is set in the 50s in a fictional desert town named Asteroid City, the site of a US government observatory. It’s also the venue for the annual Junior Stargazer convention, where teen inventors are celebrated, although, in this particular year, an unexpected otherworldly event disrupts the proceedings.