Festivals

Director Batbayar Chogsom’s Out of Paradise took the Golden Goblet, the top award of the Shanghai International Film Festival. Besides the Mongolia-Switzerland co-production, the 21st edition of the festival awarded the Best Actress prize to Isabelle Blais, for the Canadian film Tadoussac, the Best Actor, to the US’ Tye Sheridan for Friday’s Child, and Best Director to Rodrigo and Sebastian Barriuso for the Cuba-Canada co-production A Translator.

Cannes 1968  was the festival that never ended. It made perfect sense in a year marked by turmoil, drastic change, growth spurs, counterculture, and an explosion of creativity and talent, all at the same time.

So the curtain finally came down on the 71st Cannes Film Festival with one last glamorous red carpet that had the full jury, led by Cate Blanchett, walk filmdom’s most famous staircase, followed by the cast of The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, the closing film which was screened after the ceremony. The Terry Gilliam movie is legendary for the production nightmares which plagued it and the decades-long legal wrangling in which it became entangled, resulting in a 30-year delay in its eventual completion and wrapping it in an aura of ultimate film maudit.

BlacKkKlansman, Spike Lee’s instant Cannes hit, walked away with the Grand Prix, holding the second spot to Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Shoplifters, winner of the 2018 Palme d'Or. The jury led by Cate Blanchett also awarded an unprecedented Special Palme d’Or to Jean-Luc Godard, for his Image Book, and for being, in Blanchett’s words, “a cinematic artist who is continually striving to define and re-define what cinema can be.

Festival guest Truman Capote, still riding high on the success of In Cold Blood, enjoys the luxurious comfort of the Carlton Hotel in the company of his friend, Geraldine Chaplin, who plays the part of a dedicated hotel maid. Chaplin is in Cannes with director Carlos Saura's Peppermint Frappé - a movie that will soon be part of the festival history, not for being shown, but for not being shown.

Things have (thankfully) finally been stirring on the Croisette after a rather lukewarm start to the festival here with a couple of high profile movies hitting the big screen of the Grand Theatre Lumière. One is by perennial controversial Danish director Lars Von Trier (Antichrist, Melancholia) just back from a years-long time-out for bad behavior.