CANNES: Director Quentin Tarantino is back in Cannes competition with Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood probably one of his best efforts since his 1994 win here with Pulp Fiction which shot him to international fame overnight.  It is also ten years since another highly successful Tarantino film Inglourious Basterds had its premiere in Cannes. The intervening years have not seen much from the director that measures up to this earlier work by then how many directors have ever produced a film like Pulp Fiction that defined a whole era of cinema? Perhaps that is a once in a career event.

CANNES: The 82 year old British director Ken Loach is back in competition again with Sorry We Missed You his first film since his 2016 Cannes Palme d’Or winner I, Daniel Blake.  Loach has won the Palme d’Or twice and if Sorry We Missed You does not win him a third Palme d’Or this film is at least a serious contender for the festival’s main prize.

CANNES: Director Terrance Malick arrives in the Cannes competition with his latest offering and a Malick film is always an event no matter what the final decision of the jury. Malick won the Cannes Palme d’Or with his profound The Tree of Life and since then this unique auteur and given us To the Wonder and other films that have not had the impact of his Tree of Life although he has not moved away one bit from this lack of fear to tackle the most profound questions of morality and of life.

CANNES: Director Ira Sachs has assembled an exquisite cast lead by Isabelle Huppert for this film that owes much Eric Rohmer and that makes Frankie a strong contender in this year’s Cannes competition especially for the prize of Best Actress.

KRAKOW: The 59th Krakow Film Festival of documentary, short and animated film held 26 May - 2 June 2019 awarded its top prize in the International Documentary Competition to Advocate (Israel, Canada, Switzerland)  directed by Rachel Leah Jones and Philippe Bellaiche about Leah Tsemel, an Israeli activist for human rights, who has been a defender of the Palestinians. The film becomes the KFF recommendation to the European Film Awards in the documentary category. In the Short Film Competition the Golden Dragon for Best Film went to Portrait of Suzanne (Poland, Germany, France) directed by Izabela Plucińska.

FNE speaks to Sten Kristian-Saluveer, head of programming at Cannes Marche du Film Next 2019, about what new technologies and new business models are influencing the future of film. Over the coming weeks the heads of 10 of the most innovative projects presented at Cannes Next will be sharing their business models and their insights in the FNE AV Innovation series.

CANNES: The 72nd Cannes Film Festival held 14-25 May 2019 awarded its top prize to Parasite / Gisaengchung (South Korea) directed by Bong Joon-ho. The much anticipated Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood (USA) directed by Quentin Tarantino and starring Brad Pitt and Leonardo Dicaprio went home empty handed but still managed to stir up controversy over the film’s portrayal of Roman Polanski as a character in the film.

CANNES: Forever Hold Your Peace by Ivan Marinović from Montenegro won the Krzysztof Kieślowski ScripTeast Award  2019 for the Best Eastern European Script at Cannes on 21 May 2019.

CANNES: Marketa Santrochova, Deputy Director of the Czech Film Center, has been elected as the new president of European Film Promotion. She replaces Martin Schweighofer, who served in the post for four years.