Tag: 2025 Cannes Film Festival
Pillion | 2025 Cannes Film Festival Review
Sit & Deliver: Lighton Assumes Positions in Titillating Debut
There’s a melancholic seductiveness to Pillion, the directorial debut of Harry Lighton, based on the 2020...
The Phoenician Scheme | Review
Much Ado About Fussing: Anderson Spills More Twee
The Wes Anderson devotee cult has been searching for a way to justify his cinematic sainthood following...
2025 Cannes Film Festival Winners – Competition [Video]
The jury of Juliette Binoche, Alba Rohrwacher, Indian filmmaker Payal Kapadia, French-Moroccan writer Leïla Slimani, thesps Halle Berry and Jeremy Strong, South Korean auteur...
2025 Cannes Film Festival Winners – Un Certain Regard [Video]
Molly Manning Walker and her jury of Louise Courvoisier, Croatian director of the International Film Festival Rotterdam Vanja Kaludjercic, Italian director, producer and screenwriter...
2025 Cannes Film Festival Winners – Directors’ Fortnight [Video]
We missed out on the award ceremony at the Critics' Week, but managed to be part of the festivities for the Directors' Fortnight and...
2025 Cannes Film Festival – Checklist of Our Reviews
IONCINEMA.com’s Chief Film Critic Nicholas Bell reviewed the entire competition and more. Here is a comprehensive guide to all the feature films across all...
2025 Cannes Critics’ Panel – Laxe, Mendonça Filho, Panahi & Trier Reign Supreme
The final grades trickled in and finally, our top three has slightly changed. Instead of a firm trio, we now have a foursome as...
The Mastermind | 2025 Cannes Film Festival Review
Thieves Like Us: Reichardt Wanders with an Inscrutable Slacker
Abstract paintings are not the only undefined objects in The Mastermind, the latest from Kelly Reichardt,...
2025 Cannes Film Festival: Jafar Panahi’s ‘It Was Just an Accident’ Wins the Palme d’Or
He won Venice. He won the Berlinale. He now wins the Palme. With strong competition from the likes of Kleber Mendonça Filho, Oliver Laxe...
Jeunes mères (Young Mothers) | 2025 Cannes Film Festival Review
Bonjour Tristesse: The Dardenne Bros. Explore Teenage Pregnancy
In their latest neo-realist exercise on plights of the disenfranchised, the Dardenne Bros. return to gentler themes...
2025 Cannes Critics’ Panel: ‘Sirat’ ‘The Secret Agent’ & ‘It Was Just an Accident’ Finish 1-2-3!
Tomorrow is the big day. There were twenty-two films in competition and only one will take home the big daddy prize. If it were...
2025 Cannes Critics’ Panel: Day 11 – Kelly Reichardt’s ‘The Mastermind’
While she has dropped world premieres at Sundance and Venice (plus Telluride), Kelly Reichardt has been flirting with Cannes on three occasions total (plus...
2025 Cannes Critics’ Panel: Day 11 – Dardenne Bros.’ ‘Jeunes mères’
Winner of the Palme d'Or for 1999's Rosetta (which also took Best Actress for the recently departed Émilie Dequenne) and 2005's The Child, Luc...
2025 Cannes Critics’ Panel: Day 10 – Bi Gan’s ‘Resurrection’
An already acclaimed filmmaker in his own right after 2015's Kaili Blues won the Golden Leopard at the Locarno Film Festival and 2018's Long...
2025 Cannes Critics’ Panel: Day 10 – Saeed Roustayi’s ‘Woman and Child’
Iranian filmmaker Saeed Roustaee (also spelled Saeed Roustayi - I know its annoying) became part of the Cannes family when he gave us the...
Resurrection | 2025 Cannes Film Festival Review
In Dreams: Gan Explores a Century of the Cinematic Syndrome
We are such stuff as dreams (and celluloid) are made on, according to the sumptuous...
Woman and Child | 2025 Cannes Film Festival Review
All the Regime Allows: Roustaee Finds a Woman Scorned
If there were ever an equivalent to the Hollywood ‘woman’s film’ genre in Iranian cinema it...
Caravan | 2025 Cannes Film Festival Review
All About My Martyr: Kirchnerová’s Debut Finds the Journey is the Destination
For her directorial debut, “Caravan,” Czech director Zuzana Kirchnerová weaves autobiographical elements into...
YES | 2025 Cannes Film Festival Review
Break My Soul: Lapid Explores Compromised Artistry During Wartime
Essentially, YES, the latest film from Israeli auteur Nadav Lapid, is a portrait of an artist...
Sentimental Value | 2025 Cannes Film Festival Review
Life as a House: Trier Turns Broken Hearts Into Art
In Woody Allen’s Interiors (1978), an unhappy tale of three sisters contending with their parents’...
2025 Cannes Critics’ Panel: Day 9 – Joachim Trier’s ‘Sentimental Value’
Everyone took notice with his 2006 debut Reprise, but it is his Cannes' Un Certain Regard 2011 sophomore feature Oslo, August 31st where this...
2025 Cannes Critics’ Panel: Day 9 – Oliver Hermanus’ ‘The History of Sound’
South African filmmaker Oliver Hermanus might be another newbie in competition but this first trip to Cannes as he premiered 2011's Beauty in the...
2025 Cannes Critics’ Panel: Day 9 – Carla Simón’s ‘Romería’
In competition film #16 of the twenty-two offerings, and the first of a three day competition buffet, and the second com title from Spain,...
The History of Sound | 2025 Cannes Film Festival Review
One Sings, the Other Doesn’t: Hermanus Plays a Tune for the Broken Hearted
“Happiness doesn’t tell stories,” is a sage observation uttered in The History...
Romería | 2025 Cannes Film Festival Review
Blood Relatives: Simon Treads Familiar Water with Continued Autofiction
After winning the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival for her 2022 sophomore film Alcarras,...
Fuori | 2025 Cannes Film Festival Review
Hoosegow Girls: Martone Pays Delicate Tribute to Goliarda Sapienza
“Never refuse to see the unpleasant aspects of life,” wrote Goliarda Sapienza in her widely...
It Was Just an Accident | 2025 Cannes Film Festival Review
Phantom Limb: Panahi Treads Ripples of Retribution
Jafar Panahi continues to poke the bear with It Was Just an Accident, his latest being another film...
2025 Cannes Critics’ Panel: Day 8 – Mario Martone’s Fuori
In an even split, and in two different waves, Italian filmmaker Mario Martone has populated the Un Certain Regard section with L'Amore molesto (1995)...
2025 Cannes Critics’ Panel: Day 8 – Jafar Panahi’s ‘It Was Just an Accident’
Jafar Panahi might be more synonymous with Berlin say over Cannes, but he has left his mark with the likes of 1995 Camera d'Or...
Aisha Can’t Fly Away | 2025 Cannes Film Festival Review
Buliana Simon Shines In Gritty Immigrant Story That Struggles To Take Flight
As the opening credits reveal, Aisha Can’t Fly was developed with the support...
2025 Cannes Critics’ Panel: Day 7 – Julia Ducournau’s ‘Alpha’
Body horror, psychological issues, and social commentary best describe the cinema of Julia Ducournau and we could potentially find the same in what could...
Alpha | 2025 Cannes Film Festival Review
Turn to Stone: Ducournau Hits a Wall with Disease Allegory
“Death is the cure for all illness,” wrote English writer Thomas Browne, which is a...
2025 Cannes Critics’ Panel: Day 7 – Tarik Saleh’s ‘Eagles of the Republic’
Swedish filmmaker Tarik Saleh has been moving up from arthouse The Nile Hilton Incident (read ★★★ review) and genre items The Contractor (read ★★...
Eagles of the Republic | 2025 Cannes Film Festival Review
One Flew Over the Coup’s Nest: Saleh Muddles Through Propaganda Politics
“Propaganda, to be effective, must be believed. To be believed, it must be credible....
Dites-lui que je l’aime (Tell Her I Love Her) | 2025 Cannes Film Festival Review
The Family Tree Grows Tangled Roots In Romane Bohringer’s Metafictional Feature
Family can make you and family can break you apart. The ties that bind...
Meteors | 2025 Cannes Film Festival Review
Male Friendship Comes Apart In Hubert Charuel’s Assured Sophomore Feature
A meteorite enters Earth’s atmosphere moving up to 72 kilometers per second and (usually) burns...
The Richest Woman in the World | 2025 Cannes Film Festival Review
The Biggest Camel: Klifa Recruits Huppert to Spoof the Bettencourt Affair
Thierry Klifa, who continues to work some of the most notable grand dames of...
Sleepless City (Ciudad Sin Sueño) | 2025 Cannes Film Festival Review
A Boy & His Dog: Galoe Sweeps Through Slums in Restrained Debut
Home is where the heart is, but such a sentiment becomes difficult to...
The Secret Agent | 2025 Cannes Film Festival Review
Mischief, Thou Art Afoot: Filho Captivates with Seductive, Furtive Period Thriller
Pregnant with dread and jam-packed with homage to the tone and time of sweaty,...
2025 Cannes Critics’ Panel: Day 6 – Wes Anderson’s ‘The Phoenician Scheme’
With three previous films in the Cannes competition beginning with Moonrise Kingdom (2012), followed by 2011's The French Dispatch (read ★★ review) and 2023's...
2025 Cannes Critics’ Panel: Day 6 – Kleber Mendonça Filho’s ‘The Secret Agent’
A favorite filmmaker of the festival, and perhaps the best Brazilian filmmaker currently working, Kleber Mendonça Filho has been to Cannes on many occasions....
Nouvelle Vague | 2025 Cannes Film Festival Review
Make Me Lose My Breath: Linklater Meddles in Manicured Homage
It’s unclear what the exact purpose of Nouvelle Vague is meant to serve, other than...
2025 Cannes Critics’ Panel: Day 5 – Lynne Ramsay’s Die My Love
A Cannes Film Festival regular, British filmmaker Lynne Ramsay has five features under her belt and all of them have shored up on the...
Renoir | 2025 Cannes Film Festival Review
Family of Straw: Hayakawa Paints Busy Coming-of-Age Portrait
Going in the opposite direction of her 2022 debut Plan 75, a sci-fi meditation on Japan’s aging...
2025 Cannes Critics’ Panel: Day 5 – Richard Linklater’s ‘Nouvelle Vague’
This is Cannes Film Festival's third invite (second time competition) to veteran American indie filmmaker Richard Linklater. Oddly his first visit was almost two...
Die My Love | 2025 Cannes Film Festival Review
Images of Yellow Wallpaper: Ramsay Charts a Psychotic Break
For her first narrative feature in eight years, Lynne Ramsay returns with Die My Love, based...
2025 Cannes Critics’ Panel: Day 5 – Chie Hayakawa’s ‘Renoir’
Gradually making her presence known on the Croisette first with her Cinéfondation selected Niagara (2013) short, and eventually with 2022's Plan 75 - an...
I Only Rest In The Storm | 2025 Cannes Film Festival Review
White Impact: Pinho Explores the Ponderous Progress Through Post-Colonial Perceptions
“We never seem to be where we are,” remarks one of the characters in Pedro...
A Useful Ghost | 2025 Cannes Film Festival Review
Ghost in the Machine: Boonbunchachoke Ain’t Afraid of No Ghost
Spirits, in all their various forms, are an abiding fixture in Thai culture and folklore,...
La Danse des Renards (Wild Foxes) | 2025 Cannes Film Festival Review
Fox on the Run: Carnoy Explores Bruised Masculinity
Following the incestuous liaison of Catherine Breillat’s Last Summer (2023), Samuel Kircher (son of Irene Jacob) braces...
