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Interview: Abinash Bikram Shah – Elephants in the Fog | 2026 Cannes Film Festival

Eric Lavallée — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 14:00:15 +0000

Making his second splash in Cannes after seeing his short Lori land a Special Mention in 2022, Nepali filmmaker Abinash Bikram Shah looks towards balancing realism with spirituality in a text that is an intersection between politics, faith, gender identity, and communal survival in Elephants in the Fog. A feature debut that is anchored in the Kinnar community, the film exposes the precarity of acceptance and the fragile protections afforded to those living on society’s margins with the morally complex matriarch character of Pirati at its center. Following the film’s premiere, I sat down with Abinash Bikram Shah to discuss his journey in how the Sundance and Oxbelly labs helped in developing the project, his collaboration with cinematographer Noé Bach, and navigating the film’s shift from political drama to spiritual odyssey.… Read the rest

Interview: Rakan Mayasi – Yesterday the Eye Didn’t Sleep | 2026 Cannes Film Festival

Eric Lavallée — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 14:00:22 +0000

Set within a tightly knit Bedouin community in Lebanon, Yesterday the Eye Didn’t Sleep unfolds less as a traditional drama than as a sensory experience, gradually revealing the constrained realities faced by women navigating systems of patriarchy, family obligation, and communal expectations. With its slow intimate cinema of Nuri Bilge Ceylan and Abbas Kiarostami vibes, Palestinian filmmaker Rakan Mayasi looks at conflict and confrontations through everyday routines and rituals. Working extensively with non-professional actors, the film questions free will, resistance, female autonomy, and survival. Following the film’s premiere, I sat down with Rakan Mayasi to discuss the relationship between cinema and resistance, the film’s intricate visual grammar, and the role of humor within tragedy.… Read the rest

Felix van Groeningen’s ‘Let Love In’ – Everything We Know So Far … Felix van Groeningen’s ‘Let Love In’

Eric Lavallée — Sat, 06 Jun 2026 14:00:18 +0000

Gent, Belgium born filmmaker Felix van Groeningen has steadily offered cinema that explores intimate relationship dramas, family sagas, addiction narratives, and coming-of-age stories, and it all began back in 2004 with Steve + Sky. With an output that includes The Misfortunates (2009), The Broken Circle Breakdown (2012 – read review), Belgica (2016 – read ★★★ review), Beautiful Boy (2018) and 2022’s The Eight Mountains (Jury Prize at Cannes), for his eighth feature, the Belgium-Italy co-production returns to fragility and resilience of human relationships with the focus being reconnection after crisis.

Shot in Belgium back in August of last year, the five week shoot was filmed in
Antwerp, Ghent, and Ostend.… Read the rest

La petite dernière (The Little Sister) | Review

Nicholas Bell — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 22:15:15 +0000

The Lost Daughter: Herzi Passes Up Potency in Standard Adaptation

“My name is Fatima,” is one of the constant refrains utilized in Fatima Daas’ celebrated first novel The Last One (2020), a fragmented piece of auto-fiction which parallels the author’s own life experiences growing up as a French Muslim woman in the Paris suburbs while discovering her sexuality. This constant attempt to establish herself as the woman she’s expected to be versus the woman she wants to be is evident in every passage of a poetic inferno, something lost in translation with Hafsia Herzl’s adaptation, La petite dernière aka The Little Sister.… Read the rest

Interview: Théodore Pellerin – Unifrance 10 to Watch 2026 | 2026 Cannes Film Festival

Eric Lavallée — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 14:00:26 +0000

At the 2026 Cannes Film Festival, we got to chat with actor Théodore Pellerin, one of the most quietly adventurous thesps ping-ponging between films by establihsed auteurs and as witnessed last year emerging filmmakers such as Alex Russell (Lurker) and Pauline Loquès (Nino) – for which he won the Cesar for Best Male Newcomer. Selected as one of Unifrance’s “10 to Watch” rising French talents and serving as a Critics’ Week jury member this year, Pellerin continues to occupy a rare space between American independent film, Quebecois cinema, and contemporary French production, moving fluidly between each ecosystem while maintaining a distinct artistic sensibility.… Read the rest

Interview: Marjane Satrapi & Vincent Paronnaud – Persepolis

Laura Newman — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 14:15:00 +0000

The thrill of meeting Marjane Satrapi reminded me of being 6 years-old at Disney Land when I met the living, breathing Cinderella. Except Cinderella was an actress with a blond wig and Marjane is the real woman behind her autobiographical graphic novel, turned movie, Persepolis. The distinctive mole on her nose and her dark sultry eyes rose off the page and appeared in front of me, smoking and speaking with a French accent. Marjane is based in France though she originally from Tehran, Iran.

The film centers around her childhood years, a tumultuous time for Iran as a new, repressive regime took power and engaged in a war with neighboring Iraq.… Read the rest

Interview: Eivind Landsvik – Low Expectations | 2026 Cannes Film Festival

Eric Lavallée — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 14:00:02 +0000

Exploring themes of mental health, emotional recovery, companionship, and the uncomfortable stillness of contemporary existence, one of the most assured feature debuts to emerge from this year’s Directors’ Fortnight was Low Expectations. What Norwegian filmmaker Eivind Landsvik gets right is that it is through fragile everyday interactions, small acts of care, and the communal bonds that individuals are able to slowly rebuild themselves. Anchored by a first-time lead actress girl in red (Marie Ulven), this feature debut rejects familiar mythology of the tortured creative genius, instead its boredom, routine, or the plain act of just existing that gives the film its dramatic weight.… Read the rest

Interview: Sandra Wollner – Everytime | 2026 Cannes Film Festival

Eric Lavallée — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 16:00:54 +0000

One of the discoveries of this year’s Cannes Film Festival was the Un Certain Regard selected (should have been in competition for the Palme) Everytime, the latest feature from Austrian filmmaker Sandra Wollner would go onto win Un Certain Regard Prize. Best known for her provocative and unsettling The Trouble with Being Born, Wollner returns with a film that feels at once more intimate and emotionally accessible while remaining every bit as formally daring. Everytime is a work that throws its audience into catastrophe almost immediately, refusing the comforts of gradual exposition as it follows a family navigating the aftermath of unimaginable loss.… Read the rest

Interview: Lukas Dhont – Coward | 2026 Cannes Film Festival

Eric Lavallée — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 14:00:48 +0000

Following the Grand Prix–winning Close, Belgian filmmaker Lukas Dhont returned to the Cannes competition with a film that explores how war reshapes identity, intimacy, and the very idea of courage. In Coward, set during World War I, Dhont uses the backdrop of trench warfare not only to depict fear as a natural response to institutionalized slaughter, but also to examine repressed emotional and sexual intimacy among soldiers, where bonds formed under extreme conditions become both lifelines and sources of danger within rigid military hierarchies. Through Pierre and Francis, the film interrogates what it means to be labeled a “lâche,” suggesting that masculinity itself can function as a performance—both literal, through staged theatrical acts within the war setting, and social, through the expectations imposed on soldiers.… Read the rest

Interview: Zou Jing – A Girl Unknown | 2026 Cannes Film Festival

Eric Lavallée — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 15:00:38 +0000

A film project we’ve been tracking when the Critics’ Week had launched her short Lili Alone, and then invited her feature debut to Next Step workshop, with her deeply moving A Girl Unknown (La Deuxième fille), Chinese filmmaker Zou Jing crafts a deeply affecting portrait of a young woman shaped by loss, instability, and a lifelong quest for belonging against the backdrop of China’s one-child era. Tracing more than a decade in the life of Wang Juan, the film follows her journey through a succession of homes and identities as she navigates a world where many girls were treated as disposable.… Read the rest