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It has been a big week for beloved musical The Umbrellas of Cherbourg at the Cannes Film Festival, where it won the 1964 Palme d’Or and went on to international acclaim and five Oscar nominations and served as one of the key inspirations for Damien Chazelle’s La La Land.

The film got a special 60th anniversary Cannes Classics screening Thursday of the exquisitely new restoration at the Agnes Varda Theatre, which is named after the late director and is also wife of late Cherbourg writer-director Jacques Demy. This week also has seen the world premieres of two documentaries related to the film here. On Saturday night at the Buñuel Theatre in the Palais came the premiere of Once Upon a Time: Michel Legrand, an extensive two-hour documentary on the late great composer of Cherbourg and so much more.

Then on Wednesday night, also at the Buñuel, was the unveiling...

As Cannes Film Festival kicks off, the Paris-based international sales company MK2 Films has revealed it has acquired three films and made substantial investments in new restorations, set against the backdrop of a strong presence at Cannes Classics.

MK2 Films has entered into a collaboration with the Niki Charitable Art Foundation on the global rights (excluding the U.S.) for two films directed by artist Niki de Saint Phalle: “Un Rêve plus long que la nuit” (1976) and “Daddy” (1973). “Un Rêve plus long que la nuit” has been restored in 4K by L’Immagine Ritrovata (Bologna-Paris) under the supervision of Arielle de Saint Phalle and with funding from Dior. It was presented at Il Cinema Ritrovato in Bologna, New York Film Festival and the new Los Angeles Festival of Movies. “Daddy” will soon be available in a restored version. MK2 Films described it as a “unique feminist work by one of...

One of the grand paradoxes of Jean-Luc Godard is that he was a radical, an outlier, a filmmaker who guarded his purity and always looked askance at “the system,” yet because the nature of filmmaking is that it requires a lot of money, and is connected to fame, and produces images that can spread with iconic power, Godard was an outsider who was also an insider; a poet of cinema who made himself a celebrity; an artist who bridged the larger-than-life, old-school ethos of movies with the forbidding imperatives of the avant-garde.

All of that contradiction is on full display, with a luscious kind of resonance, in “Godard par Godard,” an hour-long documentary, written by Frédéric Bonnaud and directed by Florence Platarets, that was presented at the Cannes Film Festival today as a tribute to Godard, eight months after his death on September 13, 2022. The documentary was shown along with Godard’s final film,...

We’re now in the month of Cannes Film Festival 2023 and they have a few more surprises up their sleeves thanks to the announcement of their Cannes Classics lineup. After being heavily rumored, it’s now confirmed a posthumous film from the legendary Jean-Luc Godard will premiere at the festival, billed as “Trailer of the film that will never exist: Phony Wars” and clocking at 20 minutes. Described as “the ultimate gesture of cinema,” Godard wrote this accompanying text: “No longer trusting the billions of diktats of the alphabet to give back their freedom to the incessant metamorphoses and metaphors of a true language by returning to the places of past shootings, while taking into account the present stories.”

Also amongst the lineup is Room 999 featuring interviews with James Gray, Rebecca Zlotowski, Claire Denis, Olivier Assayas, Nadav Lapid, Asghar Farhadi, and Alice Rohrwacher; a mini Ozo retro; Man Ray restorations scored...

The Cannes Film Festival will pay tribute to iconic late director Jean-Luc Godard, following his death last September, with a trio of works in its Cannes Classic cinema heritage line-up.

A highlight of the homage to Godard, who died last year at 91, will be the world premiere of the 20-minute trailer he created for a film that will never get made: ‘Drôles de Guerres (Phoney Wars).

The 20-minute work is billed as A Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello and Vixens production, in coproduction with L’Atelier.

“Jean-Luc Godard often transformed his synopses into aesthetic programs. Phoney Wars follows in this tradition and will remain as the ultimate gesture of cinema,” said the festival.

It quoted the text that accompanies the short work to give an indication of the director’s intention. It reads: “To no longer trust the billions of diktats of the alphabet to give back freedom to the incessant...