🔴 Breaking — Cannes honors Bardot, Bardem critiques masculinity, and Bollor sparks cinema censorship debate.

A naive view of regulation of politics in media in France, expert says The head of Frances biggest film producer, Canal+, said Sunday that the group would no longer work with 600 industry professionals who signed a petition against right-wing billionaire owner Vincent Bolloré. Speaking with FRANCE 24s Mark Owen, Renaud Foucart, Senior Lecturer in Economics at Lancaster University, highlights the risk of media concentration, saying that France has always perhaps had a naive view of regulation of politics in media.

france24 · 2 days ago

French cinema faces reckoning as media mogul Bolloré blacklists stars for daring to challenge him Frances film industry is reeling after its biggest production company – Canal+, owned by right-wing billionaire Vincent Bolloré – announced it would no longer work with some 600 professionals who signed a petition opposing Bolloré and the grip of the far right on cinema. The fallout is highlighting some uncomfortable truths about the industrys reliance on one company.

france24 · 2 days ago

Sebastian Stan unrecognisable in Cannes drama Fjord Cannes is buzzing over Sebastian Stans dramatic transformation in Fjord, while Alicia Vikander shocks audiences in the blood-soaked Korean sci-fi thriller Hope – one of the festivals biggest breakout hits. France 24s Culture editor Eve Jackson brings us the latest from the festival.

france24 · 2 days ago

Inside Cannes: Five things you dont know about the Festival 📸Photocalls, Cinéma de la Plage, Quinzaine... 🎞️Beyond the official competition and the red carpet, the Cannes Film Festival revolves around many other events. Here are five things you might not know yet about the Festival!

france24 · 2 days ago

Fjord review: Cristian Mungiu at sea with strange child abuse drama starring Renate Reinsve and Sebastian Stan Cannes film festival: The Palme laureate here makes a misstep with an odd, disquieting film that leaves too many issues unresolvedRomanian director and Palme laureate Cristian Mungiu – the winner here in 2007 with his stunning 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days – comes to Cannes with an anticlimactic, underpowered movie which it seems to me could be part of an odd phenomenon at this years festival, detectable also in films here by Kantemir Balagov and Ryusuke Hamaguchi: auteurs making coproduction movies outside their home turf and mother tongue with big foreign stars, perhaps as a result of creative conversations at international film festivals with admirers from all over the world – and losing focus. Fjord is an odd film, bearing Mungius signature, certainly, with enigmatic long shots and avoidance of closeups, and one very distinctive crowding of faces in a dinner-scene tableau. But the ostensible pain and trauma of its story is conveyed without the rewarding complexity that we have come to associate with him, and without revelation or mystery. Ultimately, the film does not compellingly deliver a blazing truth about its various relationships – but neither does it intriguingly withhold any such truth from us. Sebastian Stan plays a Romanian guy called Mihai, married to a Norwegian woman called Lisbet (Renate Reinsve); they have to come to live in the beautiful, remote village of Lisbets birth because Mihai, a qualified software engineer, can get an IT job and there is a strong church community thereabouts which is a great attraction as Mihai and Lisbet are fundamentalist conservative Christians who are very strict. They are given a warm welcome by their (non-Christian) neighbours, who are the schools headteacher and his wife. The film begins on a disquieting, ambiguous moment: Mihai has clearly just delivered a punishment of some sort to their teenage daughter who is now required to give him a penitent hug. The schools staff notice that the children have marks and bruises. They are gently but pointedly questioned and (perhaps) incriminate their parents because they are not sufficiently proficient in any language other than Romanian. Perhaps the language issue also contributes to the calamitous statement Mihai then gives to the police with no lawyer present. With lightning speed, the children are taken into provisional care pending a hearing and criminal trial. Things are complicated by a growing concern about their neighbours elderly disabled father and about Mihai and Lisbets daughter forming a close relationship with their neighbours rebellious teen daughter. There is something undoubtedly ingenious in the way Mungiu invites the audience to sympathise with the children, and side against this ice-cold patriarch – and then almost side with the patriarch against the blandly smug, supercilious officers of a system weighted against them. Liberal prejudice against them as Christians or as Romanians arguably plays its part. But the facts of the matter do not seem to be in doubt: Mihai concedes he smacks or slaps the children occasionally – quite normal in the robust world of Romania. But dont those bruises and marks show something worse than that? The matter is not resolved in court or in the film and then we have a strangely inert and suspense-free finale at the ferry terminal which reveals that the relationship between the teen girls Elia (Vanessa Ceban) and Noora (Henrikke Lund-Olsen) is something else the film has not sufficiently told or not told us about. Mungius technique will always be interesting but this is a disappointment.• Fjord screened at the Cannes film festival Continue reading...

theguardian · 2 days ago

The Unknown review – Léa Seydoux gets invaded in uncanny and bizarre body-swap horror Cannes film festival: A man is terrified to wake up in Seydouxs body in this metempsychotic mystery film about gender identityArthur Hararis film is adapted from a graphic novel he wrote with his brother Lucas called The Case of David Zimmerman. It is a doomy, murky and intriguing supernatural noir mystery, hardly visible within the dark toxic cloud of its own strangeness, populated by people bearing stricken expressions of misery and fear. There are some genuinely uncanny and disquieting moments. Maybe it is a parable for the crisis of gender identity – or just identity, and everyones occasional experience of the profound, unreconcilable unknowability of our own bodies. There is also something of the mood of Blow-Up, or Basil Deardens Brit pulp chiller The Man Who Haunted Himself, or indeed David Robert Mitchells modern classic It Follows. But this one, sadly, is flawed by that perennial problem of how to end a story with a great premise.Niels Schneider plays David Zimmerman, a photographer in his late 30s documenting the way in which his home town has changed over the past century – a project inherited from his photographer dad. (He has an old photo of them both seated on the pavement, apparently mimicking Chaplin and the Kid.) David is overworked, dishevelled and depressed, but is just about persuaded to go along to a raucous New Years Eve party where he is stunned to glimpse a woman staring at him, played by Léa Seydoux, whom he realises he photographed a few months previously. Continue reading...

theguardian · 2 days ago

Éric Cantona takes centre stage at the Cannes Film Festival Football legend Éric Cantona is back on the Croisette with two films in Cannes: Marvellous Mornings, the debut feature from director Avril Besson, and Cantona, a British documentary exploring his turbulent years at Manchester United. Away from the premieres, the festival is also facing a growing political controversy after hundreds of film figures accused Canal+ and billionaire Vincent Bolloré of contributing to a far-right shift in French culture.

france24 · 2 days ago

Dogs allowed on glitzy Cannes beach newly renamed after French film star Brigitte Bardot A beach in Frances glitzy city of Cannes that was renamed in honour of Brigitte Bardot on Monday will be open to dogs in tribute to the late French film stars animal rights activism, local authorities said. Bardot is a controversial figure in France due to her passionate support of the both the animal welfare movement and far-right politics.

france24 · 2 days ago

Dogs allowed on new Brigitte Bardot beach in glitzy Cannes Dogs will be allowed on one of the normally tightly controlled beaches in Cannes that was renamed Monday after late film legend-turned-animal rights activist Brigitte Bardot.

france24 · 2 days ago

Biggest French cinema producers blacklist threat could recall Hollywood McCarthyism Its an earthquake rocking the world of French cinema. The head of Frances biggest film producer, Canal+, said that the group would no longer work with 600 industry professionals who signed a petition against right-wing billionaire owner Vincent Bollore. The petition called people to mobilise against the growing grip of the far right on the film industry under the influence of Bolloré - an accusation Saada has called an injustice toward the Canal teams. FRANCE 24s tells us more about what happened, and the context in which the upheaval has happened.

france24 · 2 days ago

Cannes, la spiaggia del cinema intitolata a Brigitte Bardot. Per omaggiarla ammessi anche i cani Lattrice in passato era stata molto critica nei confronti del festival, questa sera proiezione del suo film del 1965 Viva Maria di Louis Malle

corriere · 2 days ago

Kristen Stewart on the red carpet in Cannes, while Javier Bardem slams toxic masculinity Eve Jackson brings us an update from the mid-point of the 79th Cannes Film Festival as Adam Driver joins Miles Teller and director James Grey on the red carpet for Paper Tiger, a film that explores corruption and moral downfall in the United States of the 1980s.

france24 · 2 days ago