Festivals

(First of two parts of our round-up of women directors whose films were in competition for Palme d'Or and Un Certain Regard. ) At the recent Cannes Film Festival, we applaud women directors who bagged awards, including Claire Denis (Stars at Noon, Grand Prix, jointly awarded), Charlotte Vandermeersch (Le Otto Montagne or The Eight Mountains, Jury Prize, shared with co-director Felix Van Groeningen, jointly awarded), Lise Akoka and Romane Gueret (Les Pires or The Worst Ones, Un Certain Regard Award), Lola Quivoron (Rodeo, Coup de Coeur Award), Riley Keough and Gina Gammell (War Horse, Camera d’Or), and Chie Hayakawa (Plan 75, Camera d’Or Special Mention).

Con la presencia de uno de sus fundadores, el ganador del Globo de Oro a mejor actor Edward James Olmos, dio inicio el Festival Internacional de Cine Latino en Los Angeles (LALIFF), que se celebra anualmente en esta ciudad californiana. En esta ocasión, el festival se llevará a cabo desde el 1 al 5 de junio en el icónico Teatro Chino de Hollywood.

Politics, religion, and sex are the trinity that always dominate Arab cinema in international film festivals, especially in Cannes. The Cannes International Film Festival is used to welcoming and celebrating these controversial films, which are not allowed to be screened in their original countries for various reasons.

In Cannes, Belgian director Felix Van Groeningen, best known for the Oscar-nominated The Broken Circle Breakdown and his Hollywood debut film Beautiful Boy, presented his latest film The Eight Mountains, alongside his real-life partner/actor Charlotte Vandermeersch, who also co-directed and wrote the film. Intimately shot by Ruben Impens in the 4:3 aspect ratio, this touching story about friendship is set in the breathtaking and wonderfully photographed Italian Alpine valley of Aosta.

Weeks before arriving in Cannes for my first Cannes Film Festival experience, I understood that sleep was going to be off the table. The festival (which this year returned to a traditional, in-person event for the first time in two years) had implemented a new online ticketing system to avoid day-of lines.

In case you were living in a cave with no internet (and the lack of internet does feature prominently in this podcast), you might have missed the return of the in-person Cannes Film Festival with all the pomp and pageantry one would expect from the preeminent European festival that celebrates both the world’s filmmaking elite, from Tom Cruise to David Cronenberg, to foreign indie directors who took home big prizes again this year. Check out the list of winners and more coverage on www.