2016 Cannes Critics’ Panel Day 4: The Joke’s on You with Maren Ade’s Toni Erdmann

While the Un Certain Regard section certainly has populated their section with some German items, there have remarkably been zilch film entries in the competition for nearly a decade. Thierry Frémaux has broke the streak with this true upshot from Maren Ade. We’ve been singing her praises since 2009 when Everyone Else captured the essence of a strained relationship between the sexes and was handsomely reward with multiple nods at the Berlin Film Fest. Previously she had directed the 2005 Sundance Jury winner The Forest for the Trees. Ade’s Toni Erdmann on frustratingly been on our radar for several years now, and while this is her first visit to Cannes as a filmmaker, she produced all three of Miguel Gomes’ Arabian Nights. The long, seven year wait appears to have paid off.

Clocking over the two hour mark, actress Sandra Hüller is the firm frontrunner for the BEst Actress award in a portrait that The Hollywood Reporter’s Leslie Felperin calls a “slow-burning thing of beauty, ultimately as moving as it is implausibly funny,” while Indiewire.com’s Eric Kohn has the best grab line of them all: “the Funniest Nude Scene of All Time — But It’s Not a Comedy.”

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