Any film critic who has covered the Cannes Film Festival will tell you that those 10 days on the Croisette are not as glamorous as they seem on Instagram: it’s more back-to-back films and press conferences than parties and red-carpet photo ops.
Most of us journalists watch up to five films a day, which means in addition to being daylight-starved, we are made up almost entirely of coffee and croissants by the end of it all. While the buzzy premieres dominate social media algorithms, there are plenty of under-the-radar gems from around the world waiting to be discovered (and scooped up by the likes of Mubi, Neon and others). At the end of the week, it’s easy to start picking up on themes and throughlines among the various films, spanning a multitude of languages, countries and genres. Below are some themes that emerged from this year’s lineup.
Films about making films
An early standout of the festival was Richard Linklater’s Nouvelle Vague, which chronicled the inventive and groundbreaking process of making Breathless, Jean-Luc Godard’s debut film. Egyptian film Eagles of the Republic, starring Lebanese-Swedish actor Fares Fares (in some of the best onscreen outfits of the festival), is the third of filmmaker Tarik Saleh’s Cairo trilogy and follows a popular actor who gets roped into making a propaganda film lionising the country’s president. Once Upon a Time in Gaza, from Palestinian twin filmmakers Arab and Tarzan Nasser, zooms in on two friends trying to get by in a city short on opportunities, by both honest and dishonest means. A series of events leads to one of them playing the role of a local hero, a deceased militant, in a film authorised by the Ministry of Culture to keep up the morale of Gaza’s residents. Lastly, Norwegian filmmaker Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value, which received this festival’s longest standing ovation (15-minutes!) and later won the esteemed Grand Prix award, explores grief, reconciliation, and healing in a family of artists through film.
Films about father-child relationships
At the heart of Wes Anderson’s latest whimsical caper, The Phoenician Scheme, is a father (Benicio del Toro) who, in becoming increasingly aware of his mortality, tries to reconnect with his estranged daughter (Mia Threapleton). My Father’s Shadow, the first Nigerian film to play at Cannes, takes us on a journey to Lagos with two young boys whose largely absentee father (Slow Horses’ Sope Dirisu) looms large in their imaginations as a mysterious and magnetic figure. Sentimental Value (aforementioned under ‘Films about making films’) follows Stellan Skarsgård’s Gustav, a Norwegian filmmaker who writes a role for his actor daughter (played by Renate Reinsve) in a misguided attempt to repair their relationship. In Lucky Lu, from Canadian filmmaker Lloyd Lee Choi, a New York delivery driver suffers through an onslaught of unfortunate events that lead him to make some regrettable decisions but it’s his young daughter who ensures he never strays too far from himself.
Films about psychological trauma
Jennifer Lawrence stars in Lynne Ramsay’s Die, My Love, a film that pulls no punches in exploring a lethal mix of suppressed trauma and postpartum depression. In Kristen Stewart’s directorial debut, The Chronology of Water, Imogen Poots plays a woman who escapes an abusive household and goes down the long and circuitous road of rewriting her story. German film The Sound of Falling follows the interconnected lives and wounds of four generations of young girls, across different time periods, on the same rural farm. Neeraj Ghaywan’s sophomore feature, Homebound, explores multi-generational trauma caused by deep-rooted societal prejudices. It’s these shared indignities—and a fierce desire to transcend them—that bind the lead characters, played with great depth and tenderness by Ishaan Khatter and Vishal Jethwa.
