Wednesday, May 20Wednesday, May 20Pedro Almodóvar has returned to the Cannes Film Festival after a seven-year absence with his latest film, *Bitter Christmas*, a self-reflective drama exploring themes of filmmaking, grief, and artistic betrayal. The film, described as a "life-v-art auto-metafiction," follows a director navigating personal and professional crises, blending elements of noir and melodrama. Almodóvar’s return to the competition section has drawn significant attention, with critics noting the film’s rich visuals and complex narrative structure, though some suggest it revisits familiar thematic ground. The director received a 10-minute standing ovation at the premiere, marking a reconciliation with the festival following his last appearance with *Pain and Glory* in 2019 .
Andrey Zvyagintsev premiered *Minotaur*, a gripping noir thriller set against the backdrop of Russia’s war in Ukraine, which has been praised as a masterful exploration of political cynicism and moral decay. The film, Zvyagintsev’s first in nearly a decade, follows a mini-oligarch entangled in a web of infidelity, murder, and systemic corruption, drawing parallels to Greek mythology and classic noir. The director’s return to Cannes is particularly notable given his near-fatal illness in 2021, which left him in a coma for months .
Nicolas Winding Refn unveiled *Her Private Hell*, a surreal and slow-burning thriller that blends dystopian horror with dreamlike visuals. The film, Refn’s first in a decade, shifts between reality and hallucination, featuring quasi-Lynchian characters and neon-drenched aesthetics. Refn emotionally recounted his near-death experience in 2023 during the film’s press conference, adding a personal dimension to the premiere .
Almodóvar se reconcilia con Cannes siete años después y recibe una ovación de 10 minutos Desde Dolor y gloria, y después de un León de Oro en Venecia, el director no había comparecido con ninguno de sus largometrajes en el festival francés Leer
elmundo · 1 day ago
Pedro Almodóvar chases elusive Palme dOr as Andy García returns to Cannes with noir passion project Spanish author Pedro Almodóvar returns to Competition at the Cannes Film Festival with Bitter Christmas, a self-reflective drama about filmmaking and mental collapse. Meanwhile, Russian director Andrey Zvyagintsev premieres the gripping Minotaur dealing with tensions in Russia, while Andy García unveils Diamond – his long-awaited noir passion project starring Vicky Krieps and Brendan Fraser.
france24 · 1 day ago
Bitter Christmas — Pedro Almodóvar at his most acerbic The Spanish director returns to Cannes with a self-lacerating tale of women on the verge
financial times · 1 day ago
Bitter Christmas review – grief, loss and artistic betrayal in Almodóvars film within a film Cannes film festival: Spaniards latest life-v-art auto-metafiction feels slightly muddled as he directs a director directing a directorWith its rich, warm, summery colours, nothing could surely be less bitter or less Christmassy than this film. Its the latest from Cannes competition regular Pedro Almodóvar, partly set during Christmas; the female lead actually complains about the yuletide traffic at one stage. But theres no tinsel or sleigh bells or shopping for presents. Like Die Hard, it eludes classification. It is another – which is to say, yet another – double-layered creation by Almodóvar, a kind of movie auto-metafiction of the sort that he has virtually invented, a life-v-art dialectical process that he is evidently unable to do without.Like the recent Pain and Glory, Bitter Christmas is a candidly personal movie, circling around ideas like grief, loss, the vampirism of art and the betrayal involved in basing fictional characters on real people. Perhaps by emphasising this last point, Almodóvar is pre-empting or cauterising a crisis in his own life, showing us a gay male artists perspective on the question of whether women are not being given enough credit as the wellspring for inspiration or indeed as artists themselves. The result is a complex, slightly muddled, almost surreally modernist noir-melodrama or open-ended telenovela of the sort he habitually offers. Almodóvar always alchemises the real-unreal duality into something watchable, although perhaps he is going over old ground. Bitter Christmas, incidentally, features what for arthouse movies is becoming mandatory, the haughty anti-Netflix gag, even though the film does feel like streaming TV in some ways. Continue reading...
theguardian · 1 day ago
Nicolas Winding Refn breaks down at Cannes recalling near-death due to leaking heart The director of Drive, unveiling new thriller My Private Hell, told journalists he died for 25 minutes in 2023The Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn, best known for films such as the Pusher trilogy and Drive, has emotionally spoken about his near-death experience and heart surgery three years ago.The director, whose first film in 10 years, Her Private Hell, premiered on Monday evening, told gathered journalists that he had died for 25 minutes in 2023. Continue reading...
theguardian · 1 day ago
Die Rückkehr der „Star Wars-Filme „Star Wars im Kino, zum ersten Mal in sieben Jahren: Da steht sofort die Frage im Raum, ob „The Mandalorian and Grogu von Regisseur Jon Favreau wirklich zur Saga gehört und an alles anschließt, was diese seit den 70er Jahren ausmacht – oder ob der Film nur das Spin-off einer Spin-off-Serie ist, die ausschließlich eingefleischte Fans interessiert.
orf.at · 1 day ago
El director ruso Andrey Zvyagintsev conmociona Cannes con una escalofriante refutación del crimen perfecto, con la guerra de Ucrania al fondo (*****) Andrey Zvyagintsev atempera el gesto, rehúye de las maneras más crudas y exigentes de su cine, y ofrece una obra maestra en su concisión, violencia y oscuridad: Minotaur. A su lado, Nicolas Winding Refn crispa los nervios y se enroca en su cine exageradamente adictivo en Her private Hell (***) Leer
elmundo · 1 day ago
Her Private Hell review – Nicolas Winding Refns shapeshifting fantasia is a dreamy swirl of strangeness Refns film eludes definition as it moves through time and space, from doomy reality to strange dream worlds populated by quasi-Lynchian charactersThe titles first word should probably be His. Nicolas Winding Refn has returned to Cannes with a bizarre new fantasia moodscape, a midnight movie of fear and dreamy disquiet, meaning … what, exactly? The setting of the film – a twist on the 60s pulp shocker of the same title by Norman J Warren – morphs and shapeshifts from place to place, with the antilogical procedure of a dream, from a supposedly real outer world to the inner space of hallucination and memory. It starts in a giant, empty hotel (whose colossal Stygian corridors are not unlike those in Refns Only God Forgives) in the middle of a digitally rendered dystopian city, wreathed in the kind of mist that tends to conceal a serial killer, and people here are frightened of someone called the Leather Man.We move to the fictional action of a movie the hotels inhabitants are (possibly) planning to make, or perhaps to the world of their fears and imaginings, their ideas occasioned by this ostensible realist premise. And then we move to a situation from the past in US-occupied postwar Japan, where a haunted GI is looking for his daughter. This is a story populated by quasi-Lynchian characters and gargoyles with strange nicknames – the whole imagined landscape, lit by Refns throbbingly neon purples, reds and blues, looks like a nightclub in hell. And yet it is less violent and explicit than his earlier adventures. The pace is doomy, sepulchral and slow; like Refns TV series Too Old to Die Young, it moves at the pace of a zombie which has been shot but still keeps on shuffling forward. Or perhaps it is more like that of a sleepwalker who walks and talks slowly, but has a clearer idea of what is happening than those who are, in a more banal sense, awake. Continue reading...
theguardian · 1 day ago
Minotaur review – Andrei Zvyagintsevs scorching noir intrigue amid the Ukraine war Cannes film festival: The great Russian directors first film for almost a decade is tremendous drama following the ill-deeds of a mini-oligarch who comes up with a toxic new way to feed Russias war machineLife during wartime is the theme of Andrey Zvyagintsevs film. It is set in provincial Russia, a portrait of a nation paralysed with disillusionment and fear, slowly coming to terms with, or retreating into collective denial about, the terrible mistake in Ukraine. Its an inspired variation on Claude Chabrols La Femme Infidèle from 1969, mixed with Gogols Dead Souls and the 14 sacrifices required for the Minotaur in Greek myth. It is also a noir thriller of infidelity and vengeful murder, lent a new meaning by the context of deadly cynicism and political bad faith, a world in which powerful people, gloomy with self-hate, have made covering up misdeeds their way of life.There is a telling early scene in which the male lead, mini-oligarch businessman Gleb (Dmitriy Mazurov), goes out for an expensive restaurant meal with his boorish plutocrat friends and their spouses and girlfriends, including Glebs elegant, beautiful wife Galina (Iris Lebedeva) who is almost catatonic with unhappiness. One girlfriend there tells a racy joke about a guy applying for a job on an adult movie, despite having a tiny penis unlike all the other well endowed applicants – because, he says, all films need anti-heroes. Minotaur is full of anti-heroes. Continue reading...
theguardian · 1 day ago
Russian Director Andrey Zvyagintsev Returns to Cannes Film Festival After Near-Fatal Illness Zvyagintsev, director of the acclaimed films Leviathan and Loveless, was left in a coma and unable to walk for a year after an extreme reaction to Russias Sputnik V vaccine in 2021.
themoscowtimes · 1 day ago
Estonian movie At Your Service bags Cannes Film Festival prize Young Estonian director German Golubs under-production film Teie teenistuses (At Your Service) has won an award at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival.
news.err · 1 day ago
Andie MacDowell on timeless beauty at the Cannes Film Festival From stepping out at the festival with Wim Wenders and Diane Keaton to recent appearances as an ambassador for LOréal cosmetics, Andie Macdowell has become a regular at the Cannes Film Festival. She sits down with FRANCE 24s Eve Jackson to talk about movies, motherhood and promoting a more inclusive definition of beauty. Eight years after Cannes first grappled with the #MeToo movement, actress and director Judith Godrèche brings her adaptation of Annie Ernauxs A Girls Story to the screen, pointing out that its themes of sexism and sexual violence are just as pertinent seven decades after the events it describes.
france24 · 1 day ago