Cannes Film Festival — A–Z of films

It’s fitting for a film set in the “City of Dreams” and that is concerned with life’s illusions and how we navigate them as it is about the here and now.

Emma Benestan’s poetic take on gender, power and corporeality is a deeply animal experience.

What isn't untrue is that Anora is brilliant.

It finds room for those who despise weakness, and are weaker for it, and is stronger because of it.

Less concerned with scrutinising the playground than the dangerous games adults can play with one another.

It is the things taken for granted, as much as the things that stand out, which shape the tale.

The film is a brash, vulgar, joyously realistic portrait of a three-way friendship with roots that run deep.

Amid all the deprivation Arnold, as is her style, uncovers elements that lift the action out of the ordinary and into the realms of fantasy and magical realism.

Visually, Guan never puts a frame wrong, whether he’s setting up a physical comedy set-piece, idly incorporating a solar eclipse or letting the dogs steal a scene.

Chevrollier captures the amplified mood of teenagehood.

The camera drifts through it at a leisurely pace, back and forth, up and down, taking in different details one might when wandering around drunk or half asleep. From these, story and meaning gradually coalesce.

Perhaps the most impressive version to date.

The shorts are all by emerging filmmakers who are all working on their first or second features

Dosch uses the true story to make wider observations about the often fraught relationships between humans and animals.

Audiard has assembled a remarkable team of actors

Cat’s viewpoint predominates, and Zilbalodis has an acute understanding of how the world looks from its point of view, of what catches its attention and how its body follows instinctively.

You've seen it all before, but that's its strength. That cranked footage, those desperate eyes, the obscuring sand.

Illusions are everywhere in this film.

The action is pacy but that doesn’t mean Courvoisier skims the surface.

It has all the hallmarks of a production destined for a television mini-series with apparently three other chapters promised by Costner.

Loznitsa’s approach is quietly observational, capturing the quotidian goings on as they continue beneath the shadow of war.

The director shows how it’s not just Julie’s tennis skills that have been groomed by the coach but large aspects of her life.

The entire cast, especially Stone, who has admitted that Lanthimos is a muse, enter into the grand guignol spirit of the proceedings with gusto.

Between fragments of formal experimentation, the relationship between the two siblings and their father's struggle with melancholia deliver a muddled but tender summer chronicle.

The plotting takes precedence over characterisation, which saps the film of tension, while its melodramatic developments feel out of keeping with the cooler noir vibe.

Slijepcevic is a documentarian by trade and he maintains a strong sense of realism.

The two siblings bond and the disparate threads of their relationship prove immensely touching as they ruminate on the lost years and chances.

It is described simply as “A Fable”, but there is nothing simple about this over-ambitious allegorical sprawl.

Once again, Guiraudie proves himself the master of setting up a mystery by the means of perfect script economy that functions strictly on “need to know” basis.

The choice of hand-drawn animation and its ability to demonstrate a magical realism allows the film to find the right distance from what is being depicted.

In this hothouse, madness easily exerts its grip.

Simply put, the viewer is constantly tempted to attribute the character’s old man’s ramblings both to the author of the source novel and to the filmmaker adapting it.

Nyoni expertly controls her narrative so that it glides effortlessly between the reality of the funeral preparations to the more surreal psychological trauma Shula is working through.

Like fellow Frenchman Quentin Dupieux, Meurisse has an enjoyably devil-may-care attitude for the most part although he feels almost like Dupieux’s evil twin as he begins to stray, first, into Farrelly Brothers’ territory, and then something altogether more violent.

The writing is sharp and succinct.

Writer/director Sandhya Suri - who has a documentary background - is keen to show that everyone plays their part in the prejudices and corruption of the legal system.

A film that probes at ideas of masculinity and the fluidity that the smoke sauna environment might bring to that, the emphasis is on the physical expression of feelings rather than them being vocalised.

Working out where the play-acting stops and the “real” action begins is enough to keep you on the edge of interest.

Grittily compelling

Bojanov draws not only a sensitive portrait of the bond between the two women but also exposes the dyn.amics of a deeply conservative and religious society

This playfully filmed coming-of-age narrative never loses its empathetic eye.

Every frame feels like the product of conscious decision-making, with nothing merely carrying us from one point to another.

There is a feeling of being in a constant movement, with cars and buildings whizzing by as Souleymane is rushing through the city, either riding his bike, or running from one type of public transport to the next.

Through it all is a common thread of authenticity and of women opening up about things and feelings they are rarely asked to scrutinise.

Brutal, bloody and enriched with a specific dark humour.

The heat is omnipresent, rippling through the air, distorting what we see, distorting time and identity.

The character could have proved irksome in less talented hands than Jaoui who invests her character with self-deprecating humour and a sense of resilience.

Beyond the dark loneliness of grief, is the soft light of a shared mourning.