Cannes Begins: Iñárritu and His Jury Arrive

by Nathaniel R

The 72nd edition of the world's most famous festival has officially begun. We'll try to bring you comprehensive daily coverage by astral projecting ourselves across the ocean (i.e. watching online videos from France and following critics on Twitter). Earlier today the president of this year's main jury Alejandro González Iñárritu arrived with his gender-balanced fellow jurors in tow (or "classmates," as Maimouna N'Diaye so charmingly put it in the preference conference)... 

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Cannes Look-back: "The Class"

As we await the Cannes closing ceremony with all its awards glamour, let's take a look back at a previous Palme winner which has connections to a competition entry this year.  Here's John Guerin...

The Class, Laurent Cantet’s 2008 Palme d’Or winner, left me both exhausted and inspired. An autobiographical chronicle of François Bégaudeau’s first year of teaching French language and literature at an inner-city high school in Paris, The Class is an entirely self-contained glimpse into the daily challenges, joys, dead-ends, nuisances, amusements, and tensions in one especially spirited classroom. Although The Class is spatially confined to the school building, the currents of the outside world frequently wash ashore and brush up against Bégaudeau’s attempts to lead a discussion of the imperfect tense or find meaning in The Diary of Anne Frank or do just about anything constructive.

Cantet and Bégaudeau, with the assistance of co-writer and editor Robin Campillo (director of the underrated 2013 Eastern Boys and this year's Queer Palme winner 120 Beats per Minute), smartly avoid clichés of the Exasperated Teacher genre and opts instead for ambivalence over didacticism; there is no breakthrough in Bégaudeau’s attitude from frustration to satisfaction, there is seldom a transformation of student rancor into exuberance, there is no “saving” exactly, but the film doesn’t descend into cheap cynicism either... 

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120 Reasons to be excited about '120 Beats Per Minute'

by Murtada

Of all the movies that unspooled at this year’s ongoing Cannes Film Festival, the one that got this writer most excited is 120 Battements Par Minute (120 Beats Per Minute). The movie has gotten almost unanimous praise and is expected by many to nab a major prize at the festival. Update: And it won the Queer Palme award as expected. 

Campillo (center) and his cast at Cannes

Let’s count the reasons to be excited about it after the jump. I lied, not 120 reasons, but here are 9... 

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