World News
The Un Certain Regard Jury of the 74th Festival de Cannes
The Opening Ceremony of Un Certain Regard will take place on Wednesday, July 7th and the list of prize-winners will be revealed on Friday, July 16th. The 2021 Un Certain Regard Selection presents 20 feature films.
Meet the jury:
Andrea Arnold – Director, screenwriter (United Kingdom)
Internationally acclaimed filmmaker Andrea Arnold was born in England. Her early short films included Milk (1998), Dog (2001), and Wasp for which she won an Academy Award in 2005. Her first feature film Red Road (2006) and second film Fish Tank (2009) competed at the Festival de Cannes and both won the Jury Prize, before being awarded at the BAFTA’s. In 2011 she completed shooting the adaptation of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights which premiered at the Venice Mostra. That same year, she was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire for services to the film industry. Andrea Arnold returned to Cannes in 2016 to present her film American Honey in Competition where she won her third Jury Prize. Arnold has also directed several episodes of the series Transparentand I Love Dick, as well the second season of the series Big Little Lies. She’s currently working on her new project, Bird.
Mounia Meddour – Director, screenwriter, producer (Algeria)
Born in Moscow, Mounia Meddour grew up in Algeria and later in France, where she studied journalism and then trained in cinema. After making several documentaries, Elementary Particles (2007), La Cuisine en héritage (2009) and Algerian Cinema: A New Breath (2011), she directed her first short fiction film Edwige (2011), which received a special mention at the Journées Cinématographiques in Algiers. In 2019, she created a sensation with her first feature film Papicha, which was presented in the Official Selection at the Festival de Cannes 2019 as part of Un Certain Regard. Acclaimed by the critic, the film received the César for Best First Feature, in 2020, while Lyna Khoudri was awarded Best Female Newcomer. Papicha also represented Algeria on the list of submissions for the Oscars. Mounia Meddour is currently working on her next feature film Houria.
Elsa Zylberstein – Actress (France)
After her breakthrough performance in Van Gogh by Maurice Pialat, Elsa Zylberstein received the Michel-Simon Award in 1992 and a César nomination for Best Female Newcomer. After winning the Romy-Schneider Award (1993) for Mina Tannenbaum by Martine Dugowson, she starred in Farinelli by Gérard Corbiau (1994), Man Is a Woman by Jean-Jacques Zilbermann, Lautrec by Roger Planchon (1998), Modigliani by Mick Davis (2004), four films with Raoul Ruiz, including That Day, selected in Competition (2003). In 2009, she received the César for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for I’ve Loved You so Long by Philippe Claudel which received Golden Globes nominations and a BAFTA award for best foreign film. She goes on with Un + Une (2015) and Everyone’s Life (2017) by Claude Lelouch. She has just finished filming Big Bug by Jean-Pierre Jeunet and playing the role of Simone Veil in Simone Veil, A Woman of the Century by Olivier Dahan (to be released in 2022).
Daniel Burman – Director, producer, screenwriter (Argentina)
Director, producer and screenwriter, Daniel Burman is considered one of the most important Argentinian filmmakers of his generation. He has directed 11 films and produced over 25. In 2004, he won critical and international acclaim with El Abrazo Partido (Silver Bear, Berlinale). His award-winning films also include Todas las Azafatas Van al Cielo (Sundance NHK Award) and La Suerte en tus Manos (Best Screenplay, Tribeca Film Festival). In 2008, at the Venice Film Festival, he received the Robert-Bresson Award from the Vatican State, in recognition of his humanitarian vision. He stands as CEO of the Oficina Burman, a Mediapro Studio Company as well as, Head of Content for The Mediapro Studio US, since 2018. He co-created and produced Victoria Small (International Emmy Award Nominee) and he’s currently working on the new Amazon series Iosi, the Repentant Spy.
Michael Covino – Director, producer, actor (United States)
Filmmaker and actor, Michael Covino sees his first feature film The Climb, premiering at Un Certain Regard in 2019, where he won the Coup de Coeur of the Jury Award. The film is adapted from the eponymous short, presented at the Sundance Film Festival in 2018. We recently saw him as an actor alongside Tom Hanks in News of the World. Prior to that, he produced Hunter Gatherer, awarded of a Special Jury Prize at the South by Southwest Film Festival and was nominated for the John Cassavetes Award in 2017. His career as a producer was also marked by movies like Kicks, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and released by Focus World in 2016, Keep in Touch, which he co-wrote, and Babysitter which premiered at SXSW in 2015. In 2016, he was added to the Moviemaker Magazine’s 25 Screenwriters to Watch list.
World News
The 77th Festival de Cannes winners’ list
After 11 days of an exceptional edition, the Jury of the 77th Festival de Cannes, chaired by American director, screenwriter and actress Greta Gerwig, surrounded by Turkish screenwriter and photographer Ebru Ceylan, American actress Lily Gladstone, French actress Eva Green, Lebanese director and screenwriter Nadine Labaki, as well as Spanish director and screenwriter Juan Antonio Bayona, Italian actor Pierfrancesco Favino, Japanese director Kore-eda Hirokazu and French actor and producer Omar Sy, presented its winners’ list among the 22 films presented in Competition this year.
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World News
Sean Kingston, mother arrested after singer’s Florida mansion raided
Singer Sean Kingston has been arrested in California, hours after a police raid of his Florida mansion, during which his mother was also arrested. (more…)
World News
The winners of the 27th La Cinef Selection
The Short Films and La Cinef Jury presided by Lubna Azabal and comprised of Marie-Castille Mention-Schaar, Paolo Moretti, Claudine Nougaret and Vladimir Perišić has awarded the 2024 La Cinef Prizes today during a ceremony held in the Buñuel Theatre, followed by the screening of the winning films. La Cinef consisted of 18 student films, chosen out of 2 263 entries coming from 555 film schools around the world.
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World News
Award for Best Immersive Work of the 77th Festival de Cannes
Today at the Plage des Palmes, the Jury of the Immersive Competition of the 77th Festival de Cannes awarded the prize for Best Immersive Work, presenting one winner among the 8 in-competition virtual reality, augmented reality, video projection and holographic works.
The Jury, chaired by French filmmaker and screenwriter Marie Amachoukeli, included French writer, director and producer Mathias Chelebourg, American producer, writer, and director Vassiliki Khonsari, Israeli filmmaker Uri Kranot, and New Zealand and American filmmaker Raqi Syed.
The Award was presented to Colored created by Tania de Montaigne, Stéphane Foenkinos, Pierre-Alain Giraud.
For its inaugural year, more than 3000 tickets were booked by Festival attendees to experience this new movement taking place at the 77th Festival de Cannes.
The selected works – En amour, Evolver, Human Violins: Prelude, Maya: the Birth of a superhero, Noire, TELOS I, The Roaming and Traversing the Mist – each used a variety of technologies and techniques to pave the way for new methods of storytelling.
“With the Immersive Competition, the Festival de Cannes is showcasing a new art form that draws in part on the heritage of cinema. This approach is in line with our desire to explore new stories and new experiences. This is not the first time the Festival de Cannes has exhibited an immersive work. In 2017, Alejandro González Iñárritu‘s Carne y Arena was presented in the Official Selection, and it was a great success. Today the medium is more mature and we’re once again pioneering our approach, offering immersive art pride of place at the Festival, with a selection of 8 works in competition and an awards ceremony hosted by an international jury,’ says Thierry Frémaux, General Delegate of the Festival de Cannes.
“The Immersive Competition is a continuation of the original values of the Festival, exploring new stories with the new tools available,” says Elie Levasseur, Immersive Competition Project Director.
World News
The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill takes No. 1 spot on Apple Music’s 100 Best list
Apple Music’s 100 Best Albums list culminates today with the much-anticipated reveal of the top 10 albums of all time and The Miseducation of Lauryn Hillcrowned No. 1.
Upon receiving the news, Lauryn Hill told Apple Music, “This is my award, but it’s a rich, deep narrative, and involves so many people, and so much sacrifice, and so much time, and so much collective love.”
10. Lemonade (2016), Beyoncé
Beyoncé’s genre-obliterating blockbuster sixth album is furious, defiant, anguished, vulnerable, experimental, muscular, triumphant, humorous, and brave — a vivid personal statement, released without warning in a time of public scrutiny and private suffering. Every second of Lemonade deserves to be studied and celebrated.
9. Nevermind (1991), Nirvana
Nevermind and its opening salvo “Smells Like Teen Spirit” didn’t just mark an unlikely breakthrough for the Seattle trio, it upended popular culture in ways never before and never since. Punk became pop, grunge became global vernacular, industry walls broke into rubble, and lead vocalist Kurt Cobain was anointed the reluctant voice of a generation in need of catharsis — all seemingly overnight.
8. Back to Black (2006), Amy Winehouse
Amy Winehouse’s presentation and otherworldly, timeless vocals make her music feel different — not so much an attempt to re-create the past as to honor the music she loved while still being true to the trash-talking, self-effacing millennial she was. The sound of Back to Black might appeal to retro-soul fans and jazz classicists, but the attitude is closer to rap. Yes, she was funny. But she wasn’t kidding.
7. good kid, m.A.A.d city (2012), Kendrick Lamar
Kendrick Lamar’s sophomore album good kid, m.A.A.d city is one of the defining hip-hop records of the 21st century. West Coast hip-hop elders like Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre anointed Lamar to carry on the legacy of gangsta rap, and the legacy of this album is a crucial example of American storytelling that established the future Pulitzer Prize winner as perhaps his generation’s most accomplished writer.
6. Songs in the Key of Life (1976), Stevie Wonder
In 1974, Stevie Wonder was the most critically revered pop star in the world; he was also considering leaving the music industry altogether. So when Songs in the Key of Life was released two years later, demand was so high that it became, at the time, the fastest-selling album in history. The album, which runs nearly 90 minutes, is effortlessly melodic, broad in scope, and deeply personal. Sonically, culturally, and emotionally, Songs in the Key of Life is much more than a gigantic collection of songs — it forms an entire worldview.
5. Blonde (2016), Frank Ocean
Though Blonde packs 17 tracks into one quick hour, it’s a sprawling palette of ideas, a testament to the intelligence of flying one’s own artistic freak flag and trusting that audiences will meet them where they’re at. They did. And Ocean established himself as a generational artist uniquely suited to the complexities and convulsive changes of the second decade of the 21st century.
4. Purple Rain (1984), Prince & The Revolution
With half its track list comprising top 10 singles, this soundtrack is what truly turned Prince Rogers Nelson into one of the most instantly recognizable and distinctive pop artists ever. Prince often drew comparisons to Jimi Hendrix for the way he mixed music that felt Black and white, sacred and profane. The reality is that he had no precedent then and no comparison now.
3. Abbey Road (1969), The Beatles
The Beatles’ Abbey Road is an ageless, unmatched collection of songs by a world-changing band at their creative peak. The band’s 11th and penultimate album sounds like nothing more or less than four extremely gifted humans playing one indelible song after another in the same room together.
2. Thriller (1982), Michael Jackson
There are few pop albums, or even works of art, that denote a wholesale shift in time and space the way Michael Jackson’s Thriller did in 1982. It did nothing less than define the modern pop blockbuster and redefine the scope and reach of music. Seven of its nine original cuts were top 10 singles, and it became one of the bestselling albums ever made.
1. The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill (1998), Lauryn Hill
Lauryn Hill’s debut — and only — solo studio album was a seismic event in 1998: a stunningly raw, profound look into the spiritual landscape not just of one of the era’s biggest stars, but of the era itself. She was, and remains, a once-in-a-generation talent whose inspiration and innovation can be heard through the decades. Artists exhaust long discographies hoping for a cohesive piece of work resonant enough to reshape culture and inscribe its creator into the pantheon; Lauryn Hill did it in one.
World News
Iran’s president and foreign minister killed in helicopter crash
Iran’s President, Ebrahim Raisi, has been killed in a helicopter crash in a mountainous area of north-western Iran, the country’s state media has said.
He was travelling with Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian who also died after the aircraft came down on Sunday.
It was initially reported that the helicopter carrying the men and their entourage had made a rough landing in foggy conditions.
Mr Raisi, 63, was tipped as a potential successor to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
The helicopter came down in a remote area of north-western Iran on the way back from Azerbaijan where Mr Raisi had been meeting President Ilham Aliyev.
On Monday, the Iranian Red Crescent confirmed the bodies of the president and others who died in the crash had been recovered and search operations had ended.
“We are in the process of transferring the bodies of the martyrs to Tabriz [in Iran’s northwest],” the organisation’s chief said on state television.
According to local media he had been in the area to open the Qiz Qalasi and Khodaafarin dams.
Ahead of the confirmation of the death, vigils had taken place in the capital, Tehran, with pictures showing people kneeling in prayer.
Mr Raisi, 63, was a hard-line cleric close to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and was considered to be a potential successor to the 85-year-old.
His election as president in 2021 consolidated the control of conservatives over every part of the Islamic Republic.
In a statement following his death, the Iranian government said it would continue to operate “without disruption”.
A number of countries have expressed their condolences following President Raisi’s death.
In Pakistan, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif announced a national day of mourning and described the Mr Raisi and Mr Amir-Abdollahian as “good friends of Iran”.
Writing on social media, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi said he was “deeply saddened and shocked” by the deaths.
Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said his government was “in full contact and co-ordination with the Iranian authorities” and was ready to “provide any necessary support”.
Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov expressed his condolences and said the president and foreign minister were “true, reliable friends of our country”.
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