Cannes at Home: Days 2 & 3 – Blood, Sweat & Tears

by Cláudio Alves

WILD DIAMOND (2024) Agathe Riedinger

The first two days of competition screenings have whipped up a storm at the Cannes Film Festival. Things started normal enough with Agathe Riedinger's Wild Diamond, this year's only feature debut vying for the Palme. Reactions were a tad tepid, but the same can't be said about Magnus van Horn's Girl with the Needle, which has horrified some viewers. All hell broke loose on the second day of competition, when both Andrea Arnold's Bird and Francis Ford Coppola's Megalopolis had their world premieres. The British auteur earned general praise, though some found it confounding. As for the American master's long-awaited opus, opinions are so divided that a chasm seems to have broken open across the Croisette. Some say it's a catastrophe of epic proportions, while others see value in its epic mess. Whatever the case, it sounds like a fascinating watch, even as reports from the troubled shoot have enmeshed the picture in controversy. 

Since Riedinger has no previous features, she won't be included in the Cannes at Home fest. For the other filmmakers, let's revisit Sweat, Red Road, and Apocalypse Now…

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My Trip to Bountiful Oscar Completism!

Baby Clyde's Oscar Completist Diaries -- Part 1

I’ve been and gone and done it! It took me nearly four decades, thousands of hours of screen time, a very patient brother and ultimately a trip to the other side of the world, but I’ve finally I’ve watched every available Best Picture and Acting Oscar nomination.

There were highs, lows, tears, laughter and Maximillian Schell in The Man in the Glass Booth but I’ve done it. The first thing I’ve ever had patience to follow through with in my entire life and we have one woman to thank. I know the exact moment my Oscar obsession started: Tuesday March 25th, 1986. 37 years ago, today...   

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Doc Corner: The Best Documentaries of 2022

By Glenn Dunks

There’s only so much one can watch! A recurring refrain inside my brain as I attempt to cram as many more films into my watch pile in order to offer myself, and you dear readers, the best chance at a definitive list of the best documentaries of 2022. It’s always doomed to failure of course. There are many films that I was unable to watch that I wanted to before hitting publish. Some were simply too long to fit in (Mr. Bachmann and His Class) and others were unavailable in my location (Lowndes County and the Road to Black Power), while others make it difficult to even know if they should be eligible. Again, there’s only so much one can watch. I’m already falling behind on 2023!

But here today are my top 15 documentaries of 2022. And because I watched a lot of stuff, a few little extras up top. Are you ready?

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Doc Corner: Andrea Arnold's 'Cow' and more at Hot Spring Documentary Film Festival

By Glenn Dunks

I recently ‘visited’ Arkansas of all places (virtually, of course) to sit on a jury for America’s longest-running documentary film festival. I got to judge on the 2021 Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival’s international jury with Andria Wilson Mirza and Jesse Knight and the three of us awarded the International Documentary Feature Grand Jury Prize (phew!) to Andrea Arnold’s Cow with an honourable mention to Ali El Arabi’s Captains of Zataari. The U.S. Documentary Feature Grand Jury Prize went to Angelo Madsen Minax's excellent North by Current, which we looked at earlier in the year.

So for this week’s column I wanted to look at a selection of the titles from songstresses in Cuba, professional wrestlers in Mexico and, yup, that damn cow.

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Cannes Diary #3: From Haynes to Trier, a binge-watch kind of day

TFE is thrilled to have a correspondent on the ground in Cannes this year. Thank you to Elisa Giudici.

The Velvet Underground

by Elisa Guidici

It was a really intense day. I was greedy, I could not say no to the majority of the movies screened today so I basically spent the third day inside Palais, running from one screening to another. Six in all (!) With some positive surprises.

The Velvet Underground  (Todd Haynes)
OUT OF COMPETITION

It is perhaps predictable that Todd Haynes would do a fine job in telling the story of Velvet Underground in his newest documentary. He is the man behind Velvet Goldmine and I'm Not There so he has already shown an understanding of the sensibility and the struggle of rock music genre and inner restlessness...

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