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Exclusive: Aisling Bea, the BAFTA-winning writer behind This Way Up, Savanah Leaf, the BAFTA-winning filmmaker of Earth Mama, and Censor writer-director Prano Bailey-Bond are among the latest speakers added to Element Pictures’ upcoming Storyhouse, its Dublin-based screenwriting festival that celebrates storytellers and storytelling.

Writer-director Aislinn Clarke (Fréwaka), writer Cara Loftus (Spilt Milk), writer Courttia Newland, director Morgan Matthews, writer Richie Conroy and writer-director Tom Sullivan (Arracht) have also been added to the lineup for this year’s event, which will be held at the Irish capital’s Light House Cinema on April 3rd and 4th.

They’ll join previously announced speakers Peter Straughan, who is fresh off of his Oscar win for Best Adapted Screenplay for Conclave, as well as Kenneth Lonergan, Laurie Nunn and Nia DaCosta.

The festival has also announced the hosts...

Last year, the Un Certain Regard section had several gems. Caméra d’Or jury prized Halfdan Ullmann Tøndel’s Armand and the Ucr jury of Xavier Dolan bestowed the top prize to Black Dog. Other solid film items included Souleymane’s Story, September Says, On Becoming a Guinea Fowl, Holy Cow and the Oscar-winning Flow. Christian Jeune will be looking to steal some high value directorial debuts from the Critic’s Week and Directors’ Fortnight sections (such as the buzz titles from actor-turn-directors Kristen Stewart and Harris Dickinson) and we are anticipatinga handful of return guests who’ve previously premiered their works at the Debussy.…...

Universal’s “Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy” delivered a record-breaking debut at the U.K. and Ireland box office, grossing £12.3 million ($15.5 million) in its opening four-day weekend, according to Comscore. The highly anticipated fourth installment in the “Bridget Jones” franchise not only secured the biggest opening of the year but also made history as the highest-grossing romantic comedy debut ever in the region, surpassing the previous record set by “Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason.”

Universal reports that the U.K. and Ireland opening for “Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy” was across 2,250 screens. The film claimed the title of the highest-ever opening for a Working Title production and landed as the 11th biggest Universal opening of all time in the market, ranking just behind “Jurassic World Dominion” and ahead of the opening weekends of “Oppenheimer,” “Minions” and “Despicable Me 3.”

The romantic comedy, behind which Miramax is the studio and co-financier,...

"She's the person I've always wanted to be." Mubi has revealed an official trailer for the September Says, an intriguing thriller set in Ireland. This first premiered at the 2024 Cannes Film Fstival last year and will arrive in theaters coming up in the next few months. When September is suspended from school, her sister, July, begins to explore her own independence. Tension in the family builds while on holiday in Ireland as a series of surreal encounters test the them all to their limit. A dark and unsettling exploration of sisterhood from writer-director Ariane Labed. Starring Mia Tharia and Pascale Kann as the two sisters, along with Rakhee Thakrar. Adapted from the novel "Sisters" written by Daisy Johnson. This earned some positive reviews from festivals last year - in which they state that the film is: "An elegantly unmoored tale of two sisters that, in its tart and tense examination...

The European Film Market has named Huub Roelvink, founder of of Benelux outfit Cherry Pickers Film Distribution, as the winner of its inagural EFM Distributor Award.

The award, launched to recognise the work of film distributors, comes with a cash prize of €7,500 and is sponsored by Fintage House. It will be presented during the EFM’s Kick-Off event on February 12.

Cherry Pickers releases around 12 to 15 titles a year. Recent titles include My Favourite Cake, No Other Land, Hard Truths and September Says. Before founding the company in 2016, Roelvink was managing director of Imagine Filmdistributie Netherlands and founder of Cinema Delicatessen,...

Greece’s Thessaloniki International Film Festival returns this evening for its 65th edition with a screening of Maria, the latest feature from Chilean director Pablo Larraín.

The pic, which stars Angelina Jolie and debuted at this year’s Venice Film Festival, will screen for audiences at Thessaloniki’s Olympia Theatre following an opening ceremony.

Running 31 Oct – 10 Nov, Thessaloniki will this year screen 12 films in its international competition. Titles include Edinburgh-based filmmaker Laura Carreira’s haunting debut feature On Falling. The pic, which debuted at Toronto and landed the Sutherland Award for debut film at London, follows Aurora, a young Portuguese woman who struggles to make ends meet across one week in her adopted home of Glasgow, Scotland. Other titles include Ariane Labed’s debut feature September Says and the buzzy Palestinian feature To A Land Unknown. A total of 252 feature and short films will be screened at Thessaloniki. The international...

It is fitting that for the 30th year of the Geneva International Film Festival, artistic director Anais Emery and her team are going back to the future.

“It was very important to recall the history of the festival but not through a retrospective,” says Emery of the event that takes place in the Swiss city from November 1-10.

”We wanted to renew, to celebrate and underline Giff’s speciality and specificity.”

That means showcasing innovative storytelling delivered via the myriad audiovisual mediums available to creators, from film, TV and web content to installations, virtual reality and extended reality (Xr) works.

International awards contendersAll We Imagine As Light andThe Girl With The Needleare among the films screening as part of the international competition at the 30th anniversary edition of the Geneva International Film Festival, taking place in Switzerland from November 1-10.

Payal Kapadia’s Indian dramaAll We Imagine As Light centres on three woman living in modern-day Mumbai and was awarded the grand prix at Cannes earlier this year.

Several of the competition films are also representing their countries at the Oscars as international feature submissions includingMatthew Rankin’s Universal Languagefor Canada and Magnus von Horn’sThe Girl With The Needlefor Denmark.

Ariane Labed’s feature directorial debut September Says won the Golden Hitchcock for best film at Dinard Festival Of British & Irish Film, which drew to a close in its French seaside setting yesterday (October 6).

The film follows two sisters on a holiday in Ireland, adapted from Daisy Johnson’s 2020 novel Sisters, and world premiered earlier this year in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard.

Best performance went to Irish actor Lalor Roddy, for his role in Pat Collins’ That They May Face The Rising Sun, which world premiered at last year’s BFI London Film Festival. A couple return from London to...

The Dinard film festival (2-6 October), traditionally a celebration of all things British, brought its 35th iteration to the seaside city’s screens with a soft relaunch this year, after retitling itself to include Irish films and co-productions. The result was suitably eclectic, with just six films competing for the Hitchcock d’Or, which was voted on by an eight-strong jury of actors and directors. Including The Quiet Girl director Colm Bairéad and House of the Dragon star Phoebe Campbell, the judging panel was headed up by French actress-director-model-singer Arielle Dombasle, a favorite of Claude Lelouch, Éric Rohmer and Alain Robbe-Grillet but more recently seen this summer singing her song “Olympics” to herald the arrival of the Olympic torch in Paris, ahead of the recent games.

Opening with Alice Lowe’s horror-comedy Timestalker and ending with Matt Brown’s psychological drama Freud’s Last Session, the festival — curated by Dominique Green...

Mubi has acquired several territories including UK on Ariane Labed’s directorial debut September Says, which had its world premiere in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard section in May.

Mubi has picked up the film for the UK, Germany, Austria and Turkey, with Volta Pictures acquiring all rights for Ireland. The Match Factory, which is owned by Mubi, handles international sales on the title.

The film follows two sisters – one who is suspended from school, leading to the other exploring her own independence and creating tension on a holiday in Ireland. Mia Tharia, Pascale Kann and Rakhee Thakrar star in the film.

Festival favourites from throughout 2024 will screen at France’s Dinard Festival of British & Irish Film, including two films starring Barry Keoghan, Andrea Arnold’s Cannes premiere Bird and Chris Andrews’ Toronto title Bring Them Down.

Bring Them Down, a rural Ireland-set revenge story partly filmed in the Irish language and co-starring Christopher Abbott, will play in the main festival competition, alongside Ariane Labed’s Cannes premiere and directorial debut September Says.

Another Irish-language title in the 53-strong line-up is Rich Peppiatt’s Sundance breakout hip-hop biopic Kneecap. While Irish titles have previously been included in the festival’s programme, this...

Fifteen features will world premiere at the 68th BFI London Film Festival (Lff), including Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin’s documentary Endurance, and previously announced opening title Steve McQueen’s Blitz.

The festival takes place from October 9-20.

Free Solo and Nyad directing duo Vasarhelyi and Chin direct Endurance alongside Natalie Hewit, which examines the lost ship of Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton. Further world premieres include Sophie Compton and Daisy-May Hudson’s documentary Holloway, about one of the largest women’s prisons in Europe.

Steven Knight’s Victorian boxing series A Thousand Blows, starring Stephen Graham, will receive its world premiere.

The 68th BFI London Film Festival has unveiled its star-studded 2024 lineup, featuring Angelina Jolie, Elton John, Daniel Craig, Florence Pugh, Andrew Garfield, Saoirse Ronan, and more in a program boasting 39 world premieres and 12 international premieres among its 253 feature, short, series and immersive works.

The festival’s headline gala screenings will showcase a range of high-profile films. The world premiere of Steve McQueen’s “Blitz” starring Ronan opens the festival, while Morgan Neville’s “Piece by Piece” closes it.

Other gala screenings include R.J. Cutler and David Furnish’s “Elton John: Never Too Late,” Sean Baker’s “Anora,” Ali Abbasi’s “The Apprentice” starring Sebastian Stan, Andrea Arnold’s “Bird,” Edward Berger’s “Conclave” with Ralph Fiennes, Jacques Audiard’s “Emilia Pérez,” Mike Leigh’s “Hard Truths,” Ben Taylor’s “Joy,” Pablo Larraín’s “Maria” featuring Jolie, Marielle Heller’s “Nightbitch” starring Amy Adams, Pedro Almodóvar’s “The Room Next Door...

The BFI London Film Festival (Lff) 2024 will screen documentaries about “witches,” and zoos and animal rescue centers in Argentina, first features from directors of varied backgrounds, and Ali Abbas’ Donald Trump film The Apprentice in its gala lineup organizers said on Wednesday as they unveiled the full program for this year’s event.

Overall, Lff will screen 253 titles, including features films, shorts, series, and immersive works, that hail from 79 countries and feature 64 languages. Of the total, 112 works are made by female and non-binary filmmakers, or 44 percent of the program, the fest said.

The London doc lineup includes the likes of Elizabeth Sankey’s 90-minute goth-y Witches, which posits a connection between historical witchery and post-partum psychological suffering and debuted at the Tribeca Film Festival.

Meanwhile, the first feature program at Lff includes Denise Fernandes’ Hanami, which recently world-premiered at the Locarno Film Festival, and Neo Sora’s Happyend, which debuted...

France’s Dinard Festival of British & Irish Film has unveiled the line-up of its 34th edition, including two films starring Barry Keoghan, Andrea Arnold’s Cannes premiere Bird and Chris Andrews’ Toronto title Bring Them Down.

Bring Them Down, a rural Ireland-set revenge story that’s also partly in the Irish language and stars Poor Things’ Christopher Abbott, will play in the main festival competition, competing for the Golden Hitchcock award for best film award, alongside Ariane Labed’s Cannes premiere and directorial debut September Says.

Another Irish-language title in the 53-strong line-up is Rich Peppiatt’s Sundance breakout hip-hop biopic Kneecap.

Sydney Film Festival has added several titles to its line-up that played at Cannes last month, including award winners The Seed Of The Sacred Fig and Black Dog.

The 71st edition of the festival, which opens on Wednesday (June 5) and runs until June 16, previously announced it will close with Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance, which played in Competition at Cannes and won the prize for best screenplay.

The new additions include Mohammad Rasoulof’s The Seed Of The Sacred Fig, which also played in Competition and won the jury special prize and Fipresci award, and Guan Hu’s Black Dog,...

Ioncinema.com’s Chief Film Critic Nicholas Bell reviewed the entire competition and more. Here is a comprehensive guide to all the feature films across all sections, including logged reviews and forthcoming ones. Though Cannes might be over, we still have unpublished reviews that will be released over the next month.

In Competition:

All We Imagine as Light – [Review]

Anora – [Review]

The Apprentice – [Review]

Beating Hearts – [Review]

Bird – [Review]

Caught by the Tides – [Review]

Emilia Pérez – [Review]

The Girl with the Needle – [Review]

Grand Tour – [Review]

Kinds of Kindness – [Review]

Limonov: The Ballad – [Review]

Marcello Mio – [Review]

Megalopolis – [Review]

The Most Precious of Cargoes – [Review]

Motel Destino – [Review]

Oh, Canada – [Review]

Parthenope – [Review]

The Seed of the Sacred Fig – [Review]

The Shrouds – [Review]

The Substance – [Review]

Three Kilometres to the End of the World – [Review]

Wild Diamond – [Review]

Un Certain Regard:

Armand

Black Dog

The Damned – [Review]

Dog on Trial

Flow

Holy Cow – [Review]

The Kingdom

My Sunshine

Niki

Norah

On Becoming a Guinea Fowl

Santosh

September Says

The Shameless

The Story of Souleymane...

The 76th edition of the Cannes Film Festival has now concluded, with Sean Baker’s Anora taking home the Palme d’Or. While our coverage will continue with a few more reviews this week––and far beyond as we provide updates on the journey of these selections––we’ve asked our contributors on the ground to share favorites.

See their picks below, and explore all of our coverage here.

Leonardo Goi (@LeonardoGoi)

1. Grand Tour (Miguel Gomes)

2. All We Imagine As Light (Payal Kapadia)

3. Misericordia (Alain Guiraudie)

4. Anora (Sean Baker)

5. Eephus (Carson Lund)

6. Viet And Nam (Trương Minh Quý)

7. Christmas Eve In Miller’s Point (Tyler Taormina)

8. Black Dog (Guan Hu)

9. Megalopolis (Francis Ford Coppola)

10. Good One (India Donaldson)

Read all of Leonardo’s reviews here.

Luke Hicks (@lou_hicks)

1. Anora (Sean Baker)

2. Caught by the Tides (Jia Zhangke)

3. Oh, Canada (Paul Schrader)

4. Viet and Nam (Trương Minh Quý)

5. The Seed of the Sacred Fig...

There is a subgenre that basks in the creaturely natures of girls and women. Forget the ethereal sisters of “The Virgin Suicides” for here are some hot messes. Found in the literature of Shirley Jackson, Angela Carter and Deborah Levy and in films by Josephine Decker and Luna Carmoon, this is a mode of characterisation that delights in stripping away the illusion of a “fairer sex” in order to marinate in the feminine grotesque.

Ariane Labed’s entry to this canon, her directorial feature debut “September Says,” is infused with her own history as a Greek New Wave actress. There are shades of her break-out role in Yorgos Lanthimos’ claustrophobic family drama “Dogtooth” and a callback to her animal impressions in Athina Rachel Tsangari’s sublime, underrated “Attenberg.” Otherwise, Labed follows the sketchy map laid out by Daisy Johnson’s source novel, “Sisters.”

September (Pascale Kann) is older than her...

In the latest instalment of Screen’s Cannes Close-Up interview series, Ed Guiney, Co-CEO and founder of Element Pictures, talks about his best Cannes memory and discovering a brilliant fish restaurant.

Guiney has three films in official selection this year, Yorgos Lanthimos’ Kinds Of Kindness in competition, and Rungano Nyoni’s On Becoming A Guinea Fowl and Ariane Labed’s September Says, both in Un Certain Regard.

In the interview, Guiney discusses his approach to working at Cannes, and why he’s “way happier sitting in a theatre than having a maybe not so fruitful meeting”.

Watch the full interview above.

In the latest instalment of Screen’s Cannes Close-Up interview series, Ed Guiney, Co-CEO and founder of Element Pictures, talks about his best Cannes memory and discovering a brilliant fish restaurant.

Guiney has three films in official selection this year, Yorgos Lanthimos’ Kinds Of Kindness in competition, and Rungano Nyoni’s On Becoming A Guinea Fowl and Ariane Labed’s September Says, both in Un Certain Regard.

In the interview, Guiney discusses his approach to working at Cannes, and why he’s “way happier sitting in a theatre than having a maybe not so fruitful meeting”.

Watch the full interview above.

Focus Features has taken worldwide rights to Yorgos Lanthimos’ latest project Bugonia, the remake of South Korean sci-fi comedy Save the Green Planet, which sees the Greek director reunite yet again with Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons. The trio are here in Cannes with their Competition title Kinds of Kindness, which had its world premiere Friday.

Focus will release Bugonia in the U.S., with Universal Pictures distributing the title internationally (excluding South Korea). It’s the second deal for Focus Features announced in Cannes this week (Focus picked up Woody Harrelson starrer Last Breath a few days ago), but this one will be a notable coup for the studio given that Lanthimos’ previous Oscar-winning titles The Favourite and Poor Things as well as Cannes contender Kinds of Kindness were all handled by Searchlight for distribution.

Bugonia follows two conspiracy-obsessed young men who kidnap the high-powered CEO of a major company,...

Ireland’s screen industry is having a moment. With the Cannes Film Festival well underway, there’s a notable strong Irish presence in this year’s line-up including Element Pictures’ three entrants – Competition title Kinds of Kindness from Yorgos Lanthimos, Rungano Nyoni’s sophomore feature On Becoming A Guinea Fowl and Ariane Labed’s directorial debut September Says (both in Un Certain Regard). There’s also Competition title The Apprentice, which is co-produced with Irish outfit Tailored Films and Lorcan Finnegan’s Nicolas Cage starrer The Surfer premiering in the Midnight Screenings strand. Even Andrea Arnold’s Competition title Bird is rich with Irish talent with star Barry Keoghan and Oscar-nominated cinematographer Robbie Ryan both having worked on the film.

Irish actors continue to earn international acclaim – from Cillian Murphy’s Oscar win earlier this year for Best Actor in Oppenheimer and talent such as Paul Mescal, Jessie Buckley Keoghan...

The world premiere of Agathe Riedinger’s Wild Diamond in Cannes Competition is the only one by a first-time filmmaker and heralds Riedinger as part of a new wave of French female directors to arrive en force on the Croisette.

The film explores western society’s obsession with beauty and fame and the omnipresence of social media through the story of a 19 year-old girl who sets out to earn a spot on a reality TV show.

Also in Competitoin is France-born Coralie Fargeat’s second feature The Substance. The body horror is produced by the UK’s Working Title Films and stars Demi Moore,...

Andrea Scrosati, Fremantle’s group COO and CEO for continental Europe, is understandably proud that the company has landed five titles in the Cannes official selection, three of which – “Kinds of Kindness,” by Yorgos Lanthimos, Paolo Sorrentino’s “Parthenope” and Russian director Kirill Serebrennikov’s “Limonov” — are in competition.

The other two are Rungano Nyoni’s “On becoming a Guinea Fowl” and Ariane Labed’s “September Says,” both in Un Certain Regard.

“The incredible diversity of these titles – even in terms of the geographies and cultures they’re based on – is exactly the result of our strategy,” he tells Variety.

Scrosati, who is the architect of Fremantle’s expansion under a business model comprising a cluster of companies across Europe and beyond, discussed how he’s navigating a changing marketplace ahead of Cannes.

It looks like you’re scaling up on the film side. Why?

I think this comes from...

Irish production company Element Pictures is firing on all cylinders, as company partners Ed Guiney and Andrew Lowe bring three very different pictures to Cannes.

The Yorgos Lanthimos producers are still smiling after a nail-biter Oscar night that yielded four wins for “Poor Things,” including Best Actress for Emma Stone. She also stars in all three episodes in Lanthimos’ follow-up, the $15-million black comedy “Kinds of Kindness” along with returning co-stars Willem Dafoe and Margaret Qualley and Lanthimos newbie Jesse Plemons, who leads the first two episodes. He gets to show what he can do throughout; Stone delivers an emotional performance in the ultimate story.

Each of the stories features the same actors, but with different emphasis. Lanthimos had his eye on Plemons for a while, said Lowe on Zoom, and finally found a film for him: “When the right thing comes along, Yorgos pounces. He’s specific about casting.

It is a great year for Ireland at Cannes, with five Irish films world premiering at the festival. Among the crop are Yorgos Lanthimos’ highly-anticipated “Kinds of Kindness,” Ariane Labed’s feature debut “September Says” and Ali Abbasi’s Trump biopic “The Apprentice.”

Not only does Ireland have a slew of high-profile talent like actors Cillian Murphy and Ruth Negga, cinematographer Robbie Ryan and director Lenny Abrahamson, but the country also boasts locations that have attracted recent productions such as “Cocaine Bear” and “Abigail.” “We are a small country to get around but very diverse,” head of U.S. production and partnerships Steven Davenport told Variety.

“We can double as the U.K. and U.S.,” Davenport added. “We have modern locations now since the headquarters of Google, Facebook, Twitter and Apple are all based in Ireland. You get this modern look with a futuristic feel to it and five...

A year removed from the start of the WGA strike, we’re just starting to see what recovery looks like. It’s rough: TIFF and AFM were disappointing, and Berlin didn’t offer many appealing talent packages. Projects are taking a long time to come together, if they’re happening at all.

However, Cannes may offer a silver lining: The post-strike market may mean a decline in the annual onslaught of trade announcements for movie projects that go nowhere.

“There’s still a lag in the marketplace where stuff isn’t filming; that’s going to affect what’s going on in production right now,” said one domestic sales agent. “During the WGA strike, a lot of talent had taken a seat and said, ‘What is it we really want from the marketplace? We want a different kind of quality.’ You hear it a lot from actors: ‘We want better movies.

Getting a feature into Cannes’ official selection is among the pinnacles of filmmaking achievements for most production companies. Ireland’s Element Pictures clearly isn’t most production companies — this year, it has three.

According to co-founder Ed Guiney, who set up Element with Andrew Lowe in 2001, while his company’s triple-headed festival visit may be “wonderful”, it’s simply down to good fortune and timing. “You know, some years you have nothing for Cannes,” he says, speaking from Element’s breezy, white-walled Dublin headquarters, located above an outdoor clothing shop and a jeweler on the Irish capital’s busy O’Connell Street, where it also runs its distribution arm Volta Pictures and the programming for the popular arthouse Light House Cinema, which it has operated since 2012.

But for anyone who has been keeping an eye on Element over the last decade, this edition of Cannes is merely another unprecedented milestone...

Nearly 300 film professionals from across Europe and the world have thrown their support behind a group calling for strike action to disrupt the upcoming Cannes film festival.

They have signed a petition backing the demands of a collective representing the interests of French film festival workers who claim changes to labor laws have put freelance workers in Cannes and other festivals in a “precarious” position, threatening their livelihood.

French actor Louis Garrell, who stars in Quentin Dupieux’s The Second Act, this year’s opening night film in Cannes, Portuguese director Miguel Gomes, whose latest feature, Grand Tour, will premiere in Cannes competition this year, actor/director Ariane Labed, whose directorial debut, September Says, is set to premiere in the festival’s Un Certain Regard section, and Japan’s Koji Yamamaura, whose new short film Extremely Short was picked for this year’s Directors’ Fortnight lineup, are among the signatories...

Exclusive: Element Pictures is coming off the back of yet another buzzy awards season with its absurdist comedy Poor Things, directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, notching 11 Oscar nominations and coming home with four wins, including Best Actress for Emma Stone. But just when it feels like the company’s trajectory can’t get higher, the Irish-Anglo production, distribution and exhibition banner is hitting the Croisette this year with no less than three films in the Cannes official selection. Lanthimos’s Kinds of Kindness, which reunites him with his long-term writing partner Efthimis Fillipou and Poor Things stars Stone and Willem Dafoe, will compete for the Palme d’Or, while French actor Ariane Labed’s directorial debut September Says and I Am Not a Witch director Rungano Nyoni’s sophomore feature On Becoming A Guinea Fowl are both screening in the Un Certain Regard section.

It’s especially significant to Element co-founders...

Sydney Film Festival (June 5-16) has unveiled the 12 titles that will play in competition at its 71st edition, including six features that are set to premiere at Cannes this month.

Fresh from playing in Competition at Cannes will be Kinds of Kindness, starring Emma Stone and directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, who won the Sydney Film Prize in 2012 with Alps. Further Palme d’Or contenders selected for Sydney include Grand Tour from Portugal’s Miguel Gomes, whose Arabian Nights won the Sydney Film Prize in 2015; Christophe Honoré’s French-Italian comedy Marcello Mio; and Payal Kapadia’s Indian romantic drama All We Imagine As Light.

Updated On April 22, 2024: With the addition of two new films to this year’s competition section, both directed by men, this year’s competition slate now includes 21 films, only four of which are directed by women. That tallies to just 19 percent of this year’s competition titles being helmed by women.

Our original story from April 11, 2024 follows.

Hot off last year’s record-breaking competition lineup — including seven films directed by women, plus an eventual Palme d’Or win for Justine Triet (only the third woman to win the festival’s top prize) — this year’s Cannes Film Festival has returned to old habits. The 77th edition will include (as of today’s announcement) just four films directed by women in the competition section, bringing representation down to 2021 levels (and returning the festival’s female-directed entries to a number that was only hit in 2011).

Among the competition titles announced today:...

Updated: The Cannes Film Festival will have an admirable UK and Irish presence in 2024, including three films from Dublin, London and Belfast-based production company Element Pictures, Andrea Arnold’s Bird in Competition and features from fresh talents Sandhya Suri and Rungano Nyoni, as well as Sister Midnight in Directors’ Fortnight.

Competition is still proving a tricky spot to land for UK or Irish directors. In 2022, none made the cut, while in 2023, UK filmmakers Ken Loach and Jonathan Glazer made it through with The Old Oak and The Zone Of Interest respectively.

This year, Arnold is flying the flag with her...

Ali Abbasi’s Donald Trump drama The Apprentice, Anora, the latest from The Florida Project and Red Rocket director Sean Baker, and Andrea Arnold’s Bird, starring Barry Keoghan and Franz Rogowski, are among the highlights of this year’s Cannes Film Festival competition.

Abbasi, the Iran-born, Sweden-based director, whose Holy Spider was a sensation of the 2022 Cannes festival, returns with his story of how a young Donald Trump and the notorious lawyer Roy Cohn built up Trump’s real estate business in New York in the 1970s and 1980s. Sebastian Stan stars as Trump, Succession‘s Jeremy Strong plays Cohn and Maria Bakalova (Borat Subsequent Moviefilm) is wife Ivana.

Yorgos Lanthimos’ Poor Things follow-up Kinds of Kindness will also premiere in the Cannes competition. The film, featuring the Oscar-winning Poor Things star Emma Stone, will be high on every Cannes attendee’s must-see list. The Greek auteur has again...