Ioncinema

The Romanian master filmmaker Cristian Mungiu moves away from a backdrop he knows far too well to explore the family unit way further up north. Winner of the Palme d’Or in 2007 for his sophomore feature 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, Mungiu has stock piled the Croisette with Best Actress and Best Screenplay winning Beyond the Hills (2012), Best Director winning Graduation (2016), and the criminally neglected RMN in (2022). His 2002 debut Occident was also a Croisette offering for the Directors’ Fortnight and so were Tales from the Golden Age and Bridges of Sarajevo (2014). With Fjord — we find Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve topline this as the Gheorghiu family — about a Romanian father and a Norwegian mother, who have moved to the mother’s birthplace, a remote Norwegian village, and befriend the neighboring Halberg family.… Read the rest

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She Who Is Not: Harari Explores Existential Identity Issues in the Body Swap

“A woman, for me, must remain a woman,” stated Andrey Tarkovsky when once asked what he thought about women, proposing their innate femininity and weakness as their only uniquely defining qualities. Such attitudes have arguably been apparent in the limited characterizations the Russian auteur presented in his filmography, most often as archetypes interpreted as misogynistic and from a blatantly heteronormative worldview. In comparison, there’s something quite intriguing in The Unknown, the third film from writer/director Arthur Harari, which is reminiscent of Tarkovsky’s predilections with displacement while also exploring dimensions which are at odds with the natural world as it concerns a (probably) malevolent entity which displaces one’s essence through a colonization or possession of their body.… Read the rest

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French director Arthur Harari might be best known as the co-writer of Anatomy of a Fall, but prior to that he saw 2013’s Peine perdue land at the Venice Film Festival’s Critics’ Week and his 2021’s Onoda: 10,000 Nights in the Jungle open the Un Certain Regard section. Themes of identity shaped through performance and deception, moral ambiguity within political and historical systems, and obviously isolation are key to his cinema. For the just under two hour The Unknown, he employs Léa Seydoux, Niels Schneider and filmmaker Radu Jude for the tale of David Zimmerman, a photographer who no one knows it.… Read the rest

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Monster Squad: Hong-jin Goes Full-Blown Extraterrestrial

For his fourth feature, South Korean director Na Hong-jin goes for breakneck, relentless mayhem in the curiously titled Hope. Always tending to blend genre elements in his previous efforts, Hong-jin has increasingly leaned into logical exaggerations, beginning with his most successfully conceived film to date with his 2008 debut The Chaser (which is also a title befitting this venture). There’s much to wonder about in this propulsive narrative made up quite extensively of formidably choreographed chase sequences wherein two separate groups of humans are plagued by creatures eventually revealed to be extraterrestrials (but who seem to be made of inextinguishable materials, like organic versions of Transformers).… Read the rest

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Fruit on the Vine: Marrakchi Harvests Bitter Justice

“We give our bodies. All that for peanuts,” is an anguished remonstrance from the protagonist in Strawberries, the first feature film from Moroccan filmmaker Laïla Marrakchi in over a decade. A story of sordid working conditions for seasonal laborers demeaned by their employers in southern Spain, it’s a far cry from Marrakchi’s breakout film, Marock (2005), a sweet rom-com about religiously star-crossed lovers, and 2013’s family reunion film Rock the Casbah (which featured Nadine Labaki and Hiam Abbass). Her latest is led by Nisrin Erradi (the title character in Nabil Ayouch’s Everybody Loves Touda, 2024), a quiet spoken woman desperate for a better opportunity who’s eventually forced to exert valiance in the face of injustice.… Read the rest

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Rosé is the Warmest Color: Herry Explores a Liver of No Return

In several ways, Jeanne Herry’s latest socially conscious drama Garance (unfortunately outfitted with the inconspicuously bland international title, Another Day) serves as a maturation of her storytelling style, inexplicably forced to cut through the chaotic ensemble nature of her favored structure to finally settle into the promise of the actual in-depth character study of her titular character. Herry, daughter of revered French star Miou-Miou (notably absent from this production), reunites with Adéle Exarchopoulos, who won a Best Supporting Cesar Award for her turn as an incest/sex abuse victim in All Your Faces (2023).… Read the rest

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Elevator the Gallows: Nemes Aims to Exhaust in Homage to the French Resistance

Jean-Pierre Melville’s classic account of the French Resistance, Army of Shadows (1969) opens with a quote from the French novelist Georges Courteline – “Bad memories! I welcome you anyway…you are my long lost youth.” With his fourth feature Moulin, so seems to be the sentiment of Hungarian director László Nemes, returning to the inferno of WWII with this homage to Jean Moulin, a leader of the French Resistance who was credited with unifying an array of various networks. He was captured, tortured and murdered in 1943, sent to his grave without betraying cause or country.… Read the rest

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Another first time filmmaker to the competition but no stranger to Cannes, South Korean filmmaker Na Hong-jin has showcased 2008’s The Chaser (Midnight Screening), 2010’s The Yellow Sea (Un Certain Regard) and 2016’s The Wailing (Out of Competition) in the past. Perhaps the most costly production of all the offerings, a filmmaker who likes to examine moral collapse under pressure, fear, paranoia and contagion of violence and the limits of rational investigation, for he proposes another mixed bag of genres – this is set in the remote village of Hope Harbor, near the heavily fortified Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), the community is thrown into chaos when a tiger is suspected to have appeared and local police chief Bum-seok is alerted.… Read the rest

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No Man’s Land: Women Wage Resistance in Ishaq’s Wartime Debut

Yemenis director Sara Ishaq approaches an examination of life during wartime in her native country for the first time as a narrative feature in The Station. An opening statement declares the events in this film are “depicting a parallel world caught in an endless cycle of fighting,” wherein the women left behind bear the burden of keeping everything together. Out of context, this suggests science-fiction or metaphorical detachment from the subject, but Ishaq’s choice to invent the rival gangs and locations somehow collapses universality and specificity. Warped fictions have collided and replaced a sense of normalized, stable reality, and suggests a futility in depending upon anyone or anything to quell endless cycles of violent conflict.… Read the rest

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Among the least known filmmakers in the comp, the cinema of Jeanne Herry usually focuses on themes of care, custody and institutional responsibility, emotional repair and human connection, and looking at the construction of truth. Garance aka One Another Day is a France-Belgian co-production starring Adèle Exarchopoulos in the titular role. Her films to date include Elle l’adore (2014) – a Directors’ Fortnight selection, Pupille (2018) and All Your Faces (2023). This is story of Garance – a young actress but not a star. She manages things as best she can, finding fuel and comfort in alcohol. As she embarks for an eight-year journey of life changes, she drinks more and more.… Read the rest

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