Dissident Iranian film professionals have reiterated calls to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) to reconsider its relationship with Iran’s government-controlled Farabi cinema org which currently oversees the country’s Oscar submission process.

“In a world where Iranian artists and filmmakers suffer under the oppression of the Islamic Republic government, it is alarming that Farabi, a state-controlled entity known for censorship and repression, is still permitted to select the representative of Iranian cinema for the Oscars,” the Independent Iranian Filmmakers Association (Iifma) said in a statement.

The org, which made the same request last year, issued the statement in the wake of Farabi’s announcement on Sunday that it had selected In The Arms of The Tree to represent Iran in the best international feature film category at the 97th Academy Awards.

Iifma was created in 2023 in response to the Woman Life Freedom movement which grew...

Saudi Arabian film industry pioneer Faisal Baltyuor is opening the first arthouse cinema in Riyadh in what amounts to a milestone in the kingdom’s moviegoing trajectory ever since Saudi lifted its 35-year ban on cinema in late 2017.

The plush state-of-the-art 80-seat venue, called Cinehouse, is set to open in the Saudi capital later this month. The symbolic opening film will be a 1975 documentary titled “Development of Riyadh City” by Saudi helmer Abdullah Al-Muheisen. Before the religion-related Saudi ban on cinema went into effect, Al-Muheisen had been instrumental in laying the groundwork for the embryonic Saudi film industry. His vast body of work delved into social and humanitarian issues.

A curated program comprising local and international films at Cinehouse will follow after the “Development of Riyadh City” doc.

“For our opening film we actually went back to our Saudi film industry legacy,” said Baltyuor, a former CEO of the Saudi...

Iranian authorities have prohibited actors and crew from Mohammed Rasoulof’s The Seed Of The Sacred Fig from leaving the country to attend the Cannes Film Festival, where the feature is set to play in Competition.

The unnamed actors and producers were summoned and questioned by authorities over the past week, according to lawyer Babak Paknia, who posted details on social media platform X. He said they were also pressured to convince Rasoulof to withdraw the film from the festival.

“Some of the film’s actors have been banned from leaving, and according to their statements, after several hours of interrogation,...

Actor Noah Centineo touched down at the Toronto International Film Festival this weekend to rally support for Saeed Roustaee, an Iranian filmmaker sentenced to prison by his government over the latter’s film “Leila’s Brothers.”

Over Friday cocktails at festival headquarters, the TIFF Bell Lightbox, the “Black Adam” star appealed to top representatives from film festivals around the world on behalf of Roustaee, who was sentenced to six months in prison after screening his feature at the Cannes Film Festival without authorization from Iran’s culture ministry. Furthermore, he would not amend the film after the ministry requested corrections. He was formally charged with “anti-regime propaganda activity” and will be banned from directing for five years.

“I am here for a friend. A friend who knows viscerally that freedom of expression is a gift and that it is not free, as much as it should be a basic human right,...

Venice Film Festival’s red carpet swapped glamour for politics on Saturday, hosting a flash mob in solidarity with the Iranian people, fighting against repression, as well as filmmakers who are being oppressed – and arrested – because of their work.

Such as “Leila’s Brothers” director Saeed Roustaee, recently sentenced to six months in prison for showing the film in Cannes. He has also been banned from making movies.

“Born in 1989, Roustaee represents a new generation of Iranian auteurs, and one who’s sly enough to embed his complex social critiques so deep into the fabric of sprawling modern stories that he hasn’t upset the regime. Not yet, at least,” ominously wrote Variety’s Peter Debruge following its premiere at the French fest.

Roustaee also made “Life and a Day” and thriller “Just 6.5,” which was shown in Venice.

Elham Erfani, Zahra Amir Ebrahimi and guests attend the Flash Mob in Solidarity With Iranian People.

Iranian filmmaker Ali Asgari, whose latest film “Terrestrial Verses” (co-directed by Alireza Khatami) world premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, has been banned by the Iranian authorities from leaving the country and directing movies until further notice.

The sole Iranian movie to play in Cannes Official Selection this year, “Terrestrial Verses” earned a warm critical response at the festival, where it played in Un Certain Regard, and was sold by Films Boutique around the world. But when Asgari returned to Iran after the premiere, he had his passport confiscated by the local authorities to prevent him from attending further international festivals. In an attempt to silence him, the Iranian regime also threatened to send him to prison as has happened to other outspoken Iranian directors. Just a couple weeks ago, Saeed Roustaee and his producer were sentenced to six months to prison for showing their film “Leila’s Brothers” at last...

New York-based sales company Visit Films has boarded “Achilles,” the Iran-set feature debut of Farhad Delaram, a promising filmmaker whose short “Tattoo” won the Crystal Bear in the Generation 14plus at Berlin in 2019.

“Achilles” is set to world premiere at the Toronto Film Festival, followed by a European premiere at San Sebastian. The film follows Farid –nicknamed Achilles– a former filmmaker turned orthotic doctor, who works nights in Iran’s capital. One night, he is led to the hospital’s restricted psychiatric ward where he meets Hedieh, a political prisoner who has been institutionalized for years. Their unexpected connection sparks a daring escape, setting the stage for a transformative journey across Iran. The pair forge bonds with fellow citizens who share adversities, all while evading the relentless pursuit of government authorities.

The movie is headlined by Mirsaeed Molavian (“Tooman”) and Behdokht Valian (“Tattoo”). It’s produced by Saeed Shahsavari, Frieda Oberlin,...

The upcoming Venice Film Festival has announced it will hold a flash mob on the red carpet in solidarity with the women and men of Iran “who are fighting for their freedom and against the ongoing repression” and also “the filmmakers and artists who have been arrested or imprisoned,” the fest said in a statement on Friday.

Festival organizers specified that the flash mob is partly in reaction to the conviction earlier this month in Iran of director Saeed Roustaee (pictured), who was sentenced to six months in prison for showing his latest film “Leila’s Brothers” at last year’s Cannes Film Festival and banned from making movies. Roustaee had been in the Venice Horizons section in 2019 with the film “Just 6.5.”

Venice also held a red carpet flash mob last year in solidarity with then incarcerated auteur Jafar Panahi.

Directors, artists and other personalities present at the Lido on Sept.

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSAggro Dr1ft.NYFF have announced a few new lineups, including their adventurous-looking Spotlight section, with new work by Harmony Korine, Hayao Miyazaki, Nathan Fielder & Benny Safdie, and more. They've also shared the experimental program for Currents, which opens with Eduardo Williams’s The Human Surge 3 and features James Benning, Deborah Stratman, and Pham Thien An. And finally, their Revivals section includes restorations of Jean Renoir’s “almost ghostly last film in Hollywood,” The Woman on the Beach (1947); Niki de Saint Phalle's first solo feature Un rêve plus long que la nuit (1976); and a 4K restoration of Horace Ové’s Pressure (1976), world-premiering in conjunction with the London Film Festival. Following news last week that Leila’s Brothers (2022) filmmakers Saeed Roustayi and Javad Noruzbegi have been sentenced to six months in prison, suspended over five years,...

Iranian documentary filmmaker and female rights activist Mojgan Ilanlou was arrested in Tehran on Sunday and then held for 24 hours, to be freed late Monday.

The detention follows news last week that Leila’s Brothers filmmakers Saeed Roustayi and Javad Noruzbegi had been sentenced to six months in prison on charges of “anti-regime propaganda activity” for screening the family drama in Cannes in 2022.

Ilanlou’s detention and the sentence for the Leila’s Brothers filmmakers are seen as signs that Iran’s Islamic Regime is upping its efforts to smother the “Woman Life Freedom” uprising as it approaches its one-year anniversary.

The protests were originally prompted by the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody last September, after she was arrested for not wearing her veil correctly.

Ilanlou was previously arrested in October 2022 for removing her veil and sharing the photos on social media in the early days of the protests.

Kohn’s Corner is a weekly column about the challenges and opportunities of sustaining American film culture.

Cinema is a global industry, but Hollywood struggles to see beyond its own reflection. This past week, much was made about the international impact of “Barbie,” a mass-market takedown of the patriarchy that somehow has been able to screen in Saudi Arabia but not in Kuwait, and got banned in Algeria for “homosexuality and other Western deviances” a month after its release, presumably because censors decided to see “Oppenheimer” first.

Yet far less attention in the West has been paid to Iran, which did not screen “Barbie” or any other American movie this month, and shows no sign of doing that anytime soon. The Middle Eastern country banned the theatrical release of most foreign films years ago, which means that most Iranian audiences for Hollywood blockbusters come from the industry’s greatest foe: piracy sites.

An Iranian filmmaker and his producer reportedly face prison time and being barred from filmmaking after they showcased a movie at the Cannes Film Festival without government approval, drawing immediate criticism internationally from leading American director Martin Scorsese and others.

Director Saeed Roustayi and producer Javad Norouzbeigi traveled to Cannes last year to show “Leila’s Brothers,” competing for the festival’s grand Palme d’Or prize. The film focuses on a family struggling to make ends meet as Iran faces international sanctions and includes sequences showing protests in the Islamic Republic as a series of nationwide demonstrations shook the nation.

The film also depicts security forces beating demonstrators protesting Iran’s ailing economy, which has already sparked mass protests and bloody security force crackdowns killing hundreds. The family in it loses all its savings over the rapid depreciation of Iran’s rial currency, something Iranians across the country have lived with for years.

Updated, 8:47 Am: Following the arrest in Iran of Leila’s Brothers filmmakers Saeed Roustayi and Javad Noruzbegi, who screened their family drama at Cannes last year without government approval, Martin Scorsese has shared a petition on social with hopes to “bring justice” to the duo.

“Please sign and share the petition in my bio seeking justice for Roustayi and Noruzbegi, so they can continue to be a force of good in the world,” said the Killers of the Flower Moon helmer. “Their voices needs to be heard.” Read more about the circumstances surrounding the pair’s arrest below.

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Previous, August 16: Saeed Roustayi and Javad Noruzbegi, the director-producer duo behind family drama Leila’s Brothers, will see jail time in Iran after premiering the film at last year’s Cannes Film Festival without government approval, according to local media reports.

Ever since Abbas Kiarostami’s And Life Goes On premiered back in 1992, movies set in cars have become the modus operandi of some of Iranian cinema’s greatest works.

Kiarostami followed Life with Through the Olive Trees, where driving is also a major part of the narrative, and then made his masterly Palme d’Or winner Taste of Cherry, where the main character is at the wheel for nearly the entire film. Director Jafar Panahi, who was once Kiarostami’s assistant, won Berlin’s Golden Bear in 2015 for Taxi, in which he pretended to be a cab driver in order to scrutinize his country’s dire social situation. In 2021, Panahi’s son, Panah, made his debut with the exuberant and crowd-pleasing Hit the Road, about a family taking one last road trip together toward the Turkish border.

There are reasons for this phenomenon. First off, driving scenes are essentially cinematic,...

Iranian director Saeed Roustaee has been sentenced to six months to prison for showing his latest film, “Leila’s Brothers,” at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, according to an Iranian report.

The Islamic Revolutionary Court convicted both Roustaee and Javad Noruzbegi for “contributing to the propaganda of the opposition against the Islamic system,” according to the Iranian daily Etemad.

The nearly three-hour saga, which marked Roustaee’s debut in competition at the Cannes Film Festival, stars “The Salesman” actor Taraneh Alidoosti as one of five siblings fighting to find a way out of poverty in Tehran. The socially-minded movie was banned in Iran last year for “breaking the rules by being entered at international film festivals without authorisation,” according to the Afp, which quoted Iranian authorities.

Roustaee and Noruzbegi will serve about nine days in prison, while the remainder of the sentence will be suspended over five years, during which...

Officials said 2.67 million admissions were over-counted.

Police in South Korea allege that the box office figures have been inflated for 323 local films over the past five years.

According to a report by local news outlet Yonhap, the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency has referred 69 officials from cinema chains and 24 film distributors to prosecutors as part of the investigation.

It is alleged that between March 2018 and June 2023, cinema officials colluded with distributors to enter inflated ticket sales information into the Korean Film Council’s box office information system, with the aim of boosting box office rankings.

Officials said 2.67 million admissions were over-counted.

Iranian director and screenwriter Saeed Roustayi has been sentenced to six months in prison for screening his film Leila’s Brothers at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival without necessary authorization, according to local reports.

The filmmaker — alongside his producer Javad Noruzbegi — were on Tuesday found guilty of “contributing to propaganda of the opposition against the Islamic system” by Tehran’s Islamic Revolutionary Court, as per reports in the Iranian daily Etemad and Radio Free Europe.

The court ruled that the two will serve about nine days in jail, while the remainder of the sentence will be suspended over five years, during which time they have effectively been banned from making films. The requirements say that they “refrain from activities related to the committed crime or using tools effective in it,” “avoid contact and association with individuals active in the film industry” and “attend a filmmaking course at the Qom Sound and Vision Academy.

He has been sentenced to six months along with the film’s producer Javad Noruzbegi.

The Iranian director of Cannes 2022 title Leila’s Brothers, Saeed Roustaee, has been sentenced to six months in prison for screening his film at the festival, according to local media reports.

Leila’s Brothers played in competition, where it won the Fipresci prize. It explores a family grappling with financial struggles in Tehran, with themes of gender and succession.

The family drama was banned in Iran after it supposedly entered the Cannes festival without authorisation, with the director refusing to “correct it” as requested by the culture minister at the time.

Sentence of the Leila’s Brothers maker, along with producer Javad Noruzbegi, was for ‘propaganda of the opposition against the Islamic system’

A court in Iran has sentenced prominent film director Saeed Roustayi to six months’ prison for the screening of his film Leila’s Brothers at the Cannes film festival in 2022, local media reported.

Leila’s Brothers, a rich and complex tale of a family struggling with economic hardship in Tehran, has been banned in Iran since its release last year. The film was in competition for the Palme d’Or at last year’s Cannes festival, winning the International Federation of Film Critics award.

Natacha Kaganski has joined Luxbox as festivals and acquisitions manager and Solène Colomer has been named sales & marketing coordinator.

Previously, Kaganski spent four years as acquisitions manager at Wild Bunch, where she handled deals for the French and international market as well as coordination for multi-territories deals with the Wild Bunch group, such as Germany, Spain and Italy.

She was involved in films likeVenice winner “Happening” by Audrey Diwan, Gaspar Noé’s “Vortex” or “Leila’s Brothers,” also taking part in first Wild Bunch productions.

Solène Colomer has one year of experience assisting the sales and production teams at Urban Group under her belt. She was involved in “Plan 75” by Chie Hayakawa and “If Only I Could Hibernate” by Zoljargal Purevdash which, as reported by Variety, has already made history in Cannes.

They complete the already existing team with president Fiorella Moretti and Jennyfer Gautier, head of international sales.

“Personally,...

A barnstorming – and ultimately gruesome – opening sequence sets the grisly action-packed tone, as a morally ambiguous cop takes on a powerful drug lord

If Michael Mann made a movie in Iran it might look like this: a ferocious drama-thriller in which a haunted, morally ambiguous cop faces off with a despairing drug lord. We begin with a barnstorming chase sequence in which an officer runs after a drug dealer holding a bag of heroin; the scene climaxes with a shockingly nasty end for the dealer, setting a gruesome tone for the rest of the film.

The director is Saeed Roustayi, whose Leila’s Brothers was in competition at Cannes last year; this is in fact his previous film. Payman Maadi (from Asghar Farhadi’s A Separation) is police officer Samad, who is losing the “war on drugs”; gangsters have murdered the son of his subordinate, so his team’s dedication to...

For writers of hardboiled fiction, the private eye could act as a conduit, an unmoored guide moving freely across social ranks and situations. For director Nima Javidi – whose new series “The Actor” is the first Iranian production to premiere in competition at Series Mania – the thespian might play a similar role.

“Shakespeare said that all the world’s a stage,” Javidi tells Variety. “And that all the men and women are merely players, assuming different roles depending on their situations and what they want to achieve. I thought it was fascinating [to put performers in those private detective roles and have them], overcome obstacles, solve problems, and save themselves and others from difficulties by using their acting abilities.”

Led by Venice best actor winner Navid Mohammadzadeh (who recently anchored Saeed Roustayi’s Cannes-acclaimed “Leila’s Brothers”), “The Actor” follows Ali (Mohammadzadeh) and Morteza (Ahmad Mehranfar), two down-and-out performers with little to their names but a derelict theater for which they can barely make rent.

Films Boutique has closed a flurry of deals on “Subtraction,” Mani Haghighi’s Iranian noir thriller which world premiered at Toronto in the competition Platform section.

The Berlin-based company has closed deals in France (Diaphana in association with Kinovista), Russia and Cis (A One), Canada (Films We Like), Ex-Yugoslavia (McF Megacom), Middle East (Fron Row), Poland (Mayfly), Taiwan (Proview Ent.), Australia and New Zealand (Vendetta), Switzerland (Trigon) and Benelux (September Films).

The movie is headlined by Taraneh Alidoosti, the Iranian star of “The Salesman” and “Leila’s Brothers” and Navid Mohammadzadeh (“Leila’s Brothers”). Both Haghighi and Alidoosti have recently been targeted by Iranian authorities. Alidoosti was temporarily arrested, while Haghighi had his passport confiscated as he was about to board a flight to attend the BFI London Film Festival.

Set in downtown Tehran, the movie stars Farzaneh as a young driving instructor who spots her husband, Jalal, walking into a woman’s apartment.

The Miami Film Festival will celebrate its 40th anniversary this year. The festival, which runs from March 3 to March 12, includes 12 world premieres. The event will open with Ray Romano’s “Somewhere in Queens” and close with Stephen Frears’ “The Lost King.” The festival will screen a total of 140 films from more than 30 countries.

Director of programming Lauren Cohen said, “In our fourth decade of programming, we’re proud to continue bringing a diversity of top-quality films to increasingly sophisticated audiences.”

Four centerpiece presentations will take place during the festival, spotlighting key films with directors in attendance for post-screening Q&As. Included in that slate are Stephen Williams’ “Chevalier,” starring Kelvin Harrison, Samara Weaving, Lucy Boynton and Minnie Driver; Benjamin Millepied’s “Carmen,” starring Melissa Barrera, Paul Mescal and Rossy De Palma; Dani de la Orden and Àlex Murull’s “The Final Game (42 Segundo)”; and Davina Pardo and Leah Wolchok’s “Judy Blume Forever.

Click here to read the full article.

Iranian director Vahid Jalilvand’s second film No Date, No Signature became Iran’s submission in 2019 for the Oscars’ Best Film Not in the English Language category. It would be a miracle if his latest, Venice competition entrant Beyond the Wall, gleaned the same honor, not because it wouldn’t be a worthy choice — it’s a ravaging, powerful work. It’s just that it’s impossible to imagine the Iranian authorities would approve submitting it.

Overtly critical of the repressive state apparatus, especially its capriciously cruel and violent police forces and merciless justice system, this feature played in Venice without Iranian government support and no doubt places Jalilvand in the ranks of audacious cinema dissidents, along with currently imprisoned filmmakers Jafar Panahi (whose latest No Bears also plays Venice this year), Mohammad Rasoulof and Mostafa Aleahmad.

For this twisty study of guilt and self-sacrifice,...

Armageddon Time – James Gray [Review]

Boy from Heaven – Tarik Saleh [Review]

Broker – Hirokazu Kore-eda [Review]

Frère et sœur – Arnaud Desplechin [Review]

Close – Lukas Dhont [Review]

Crimes of the Future – David Cronenberg [Review]

Decision to Leave – Park Chan-wook [Review]

The Eight Mountains – Charlotte Vandermeersch, Felix van Groeningen [Review]

Eo – Jerzy Skolimowski [Review]

Les Amandiers – Valeria Bruni Tedeschi [Review]

Holy Spider – Ali Abbasi [Review]

Leila’s Brothers – Saeed Roustayi [Review]

Un petit frère – Léonor Serraille [Review]

Nostalgia – Mario Martone [Review]

Pacifiction – Albert Serra [Review]

R.M.N.…...

The 39th edition of the Munich Film Festival, which runs June 23-July 2, will screen 120 films from 52 countries, including 35 world premieres, such as “Paloma” by Marcelo Gomes, one of several films in the festival that tackles the subject of trans identities.

The three international competition sections will feature numerous highlights from the Cannes Film Festival, including “Corsage,” which opens the event. Vicky Krieps was honored in Cannes with the best actress award in the Un Certain Regard section for her performance as Empress Elisabeth of Austria, also known as “Sissi.”

Four films come to Munich fresh from Cannes’ main competition: “Leila’s Brothers” by Iranian director Saeed Roustayi, about a family’s struggle for survival in an Iran economically weakened by Western sanctions and consumed by corruption; “Pacifiction” by Albert Serra, in which Benoît Magimel excels as a conflicted police commissioner; “The Eight Mountains,” directed by Charlotte Vandermeersch and Felix van Groeningen,...

Festival has programmed 120 films from 52 countries

The Munich Film Festival (June 23 – July 2) is showcasing many of the highlights from last month’s Cannes Film Festival when it returns with a full programme of features for the first time since 2019.

Munich pivoted online in 2020 due to the pandemic, and programmed a reduced number of films in 2021, mainly in open-air locations.

Munich is opening this year with Marie Kreutzer’s Corsage, which saw Vicky Krieps win the Un Certain Regard best performance award for her portrayal of Empress Elisabeth of Austria.

Corsage will play in Munich’s main Cinemasters Competition, alongside Cannes...

Festival has programmed 120 films from 52 countries

The Munich Film Festival (June 23 – July 2) is showcasing many of the highlights from last month’s Cannes Film Festival when it returns with a full programme of features for the first time since 2019.

Munich pivoted online in 2020 due to the pandemic, and programmed a reduced number of films in 2021, mainly in open-air locations.

Munich is opening this year with Marie Kreutzer’s Corsage, which saw Vicky Krieps win the Un Certain Regard best performance award for her portrayal of Empress Elisabeth of Austria.

Corsage will play in Munich’s main Cinemasters Competition, alongside Cannes...

Global arthouse movie streamer, producer and distributor Mubi has acquired all Turkish rights to Iranian director Saeed Roustaee’s timely Cannes title “Leila’s Brothers.”

A female empowerment drama set against the backdrop of a family crushed by debts linked to international economic sanctions, “Leila’s Brothers” won the International Federation of Film Critics (Fipresci) prize for best film in Cannes’ main competition.

The film, which is Roustaee’s third feature, follows from his tense actioner “Just 6.5,” about a cop trying to pin down a drug lord. This hit film, which exposed Iran’s heroin addiction plague, made an international splash and this year was nominated for France’s César Award for best foreign film.

“Leila’s Brothers” sees the 40-year-old Leila, played by Taraneh Alidoosti (“The Salesman”), as the titular character who has spent her whole life taking care of her parents and her four brothers. She has a plan to...

Just hours before this year’s Cannes Palme d’Or prize announcement, the International Federation of Film Critics (Fipresci) has awarded “Leila’s Brothers” its International Critics’ Prize for best film inCannes main competition.

The title is pointed. Leila has four brothers, but it is Leila, played by Iranian star Taraneh Alidoosti (“The Salesman), who dominates proceedings, battling to save her family from ruin, to tragic consequences.

“Dense with overlapping dialogue, suffocating social situations and shifting point-of-view, Roustaee’s style is a stark departure from the straightforward, focused Iranian movies that have found their way into the world so far, whether the fable-like tales of Majidi or the intimate dramas of Farhadi, whose relative simplicity makes them uniquely suited to international consumption,” Variety’s Peter Debruge wrote in a review of the first film Cannes from Roustace, best known for 2019’s cop-thriller “Just 6.5.”

The Fipresci jury, led by Egypt’s Ahmed Shawky,...

by Cláudio Alves

The 75th Cannes Film Festival is almost over! If there's any hope of finishing Cannes at Home before the closing ceremony, it's critical to pick up speed. So, here go two days' worth of auteurs in one go.

The Dardennes showed their latest, Tori and Lokita, to some acclaim. However, after The Unknown Girl and Young Ahmed, I'm skeptical about the Belgian duo's tackling of immigrant stories. Mario Martone also returned to the competition, and his Nostalgia could see Perfrancesco Favino winning the festival's Best Actor trophy. In contrast, Saeed Roustayi is competing for the Palme for the first time with Leila's Brothers. All that being said, the big story from these latest festival days was surely Claire Denis' Stars at Noon. Most critics seem to hate it – some even jokingly calling for the director's retirement – while a scattering of ardent fans provides a contrarian takes. For sure,...

IndieWire reached out to the directors of photography whose feature films are premiering at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival to find out which cameras and lenses they used and, more importantly, why these were the right tools to create the look and visual language of these highly anticipated films.

Page 1: Competition (Palme d’Or Contenders)

Page 2: Out of Competition, Premieres, and Special Screenings

Page 3: Un Certain Regard, Critics’ Week, and Acid

Page 4: Directors’ Fortnight and Marché du Film

(Films are in alphabetical order by title.)

Competition (Palme d’Or Contenders)

“Boy from Heaven”

Dir: Tarik Saleh, DoP: Pierre Aim

Format: 4K Arriraw

Camera: Arri Lf

Lens: Scorpio 40mm

Aim: “Boy from Heaven” is the third film I made with Tarik after “The Nile Hilton Incident” and “The Contractor.” To shoot Tarik’s latest film, we only used one lens: the 40mm scope Scorpio. The general idea of...

This year’s dark horse in competition at Cannes is easily “Leila’s Brothers,” Iranian writer-director Saeed Roustaee’s third feature and worthy follow-up to his intense 2019 cop thriller “Just 6.5.” With hints of “The Godfather” and Arthur Miller evident throughout, the drama is a sprawling tale exploring dysfunctional family dynamics, economic hardships, and generational wealth.

Read More: Cannes Film Festival 2022 Preview: 25 Must-See Films To Watch

“Leila’s Brothers” follows the lives of a Tehran family as they struggle to stay afloat amidst financial hardships and complicated familial relationships.

Continue reading ‘Leila’s Brothers’ Review: A Beautiful Drama About Family Ties [Cannes] at The Playlist.

One of the two Iranian entries at this year’s Cannes competition, this is Saeed Roustayi‘s first time. Starring Taraneh Alidoosti, Saeed Poursamimi, Navid Mohammadzadeh, Payman Maadi — Leila’s Brothers is the filmmaker first trip to Cannes. Previously he directed Life and a Day (2016) and Just 6.5 (2019).

With a 2h45 runtime, this centers around Leila — the young matriarch having to juggle many agendas – excluding her own. Caring for her parents and four brothers — this is at once a parable about debt, being indebted and a patriarchal overreach.

Currently with fifteen of our twenty critics having graded the film, despite some support Leila’s Brothers enters the grid at a paltry 2.7 — which places this almost at the bottom.…...

Saeed Roustaee and Claire Denis titles land on the grid.

Saeed Roustaee’s Leila’s Brothers and Claire Denis’ Stars At Noon landed near the bottom on Screen’s Cannes jury grid with middling scores from our jurors.

Iranian filmmaker Roustaee’s Cannes debut Leila’s Brothers received a 2.3 average. The film follows a woman who has spent her life caring for her impoverished parents and brothers. When she discovers her father is in secret possession of a valuable heirloom, the sale of which could change their fortunes, the family’s fragile bonds start to implode.

Click here to expand

Four jurors...

How to Beat the High Cost of Living: Roustayi Ponders Poverty in Familial Melodrama

“Anyone who has struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor,” wrote James Baldwin, as succinct a statement as any about the iron grip of being economically disadvantaged. Director Saeed Roustayi takes an extensive approach on the subject in modern day Iran with his third feature, Leila’s Brothers, a commendable case study which ends up belaboring its point in Iran’s entrenched patriarchy.

Although named for the sole daughter in a struggling, resignedly miserable family, Roustayi crafts more of an ensemble piece, pulling focus on two of the siblings who seem most capable of clawing their way out of cyclical disenfranchisement.…...

In “Leila’s Brothers,” a once proud, now pathetic Persian family teeters on the brink of ruin, held together by the assertive sister who’s tired of relying on men to decide her fortune. Taking matters into her own hands may be empowering to watch — there’s no question that “The Salesman” alum Taraneh Alidoosti, who plays Leila, towers over this male-dominated ensemble — but it’s also a recipe for potential tragedy in Iranian writer-director Saeed Roustaee’s novelistic, nearly-three-hour saga, his first to be selected for Cannes.

Some audiences may recognize Roustaee from another turbulent family portrait, “Life and a Day” (2016), whereas it was his terrific cop thriller “Just 6.5” (2019) — the closest thing Iran has produced to “The French Connection,” still unreleased in the U.S. — that put the helmer on my radar. Born in 1989, Roustaee represents a new generation of Iranian auteurs, and one who’s sly enough to...

“Holy Spider,” a gritty drama about a real-life Iranian serial killer, stunned the Cannes Film Festival at its premiere on Sunday afternoon, earning a thunderous seven-minute standing ovation and bringing a jolt of electricity to what’s been a sleepy festival so far.

The film, from Iranian-Danish director Ali Abbasi (“Border”), chronicles a killing spree in the streets of the religious city of Mashhad, where 16 prostitutes were found dead from 2000 to 2001. A local journalist, Rahimi (Zar Amir-Ebrahimi), is trying to crack the case as she grows frustrated by the police’s apathy toward finding the murderer. But in one of many twists in this drama, the identity of the serial killer is revealed early on — he’s a war veteran named Saeed (Mehdi Bajestani), a seemingly normal family man who spends his nights picking up women on his motorcycle and brutally strangling them in his home as a religious cleansing ritual.

Though Iran is in the throes of a deep economic crisis, battered by hard-line politics and a mismanaged pandemic, it’a shaping up to be a great year for Iranian cinema.

Paradoxically, Iran’s cinematic landscape is bursting with powerful, fresh films likely to make an international splash just as talks between Tehran and world powers continue to be deadlocked on reviving the nuclear deal that could lift the country’s crippling sanctions that block exports.

This filmmaking fervor is reflected in the fact that Iranian pics have scored two Cannes competition berths, plus one in the Cannes Critics’ Week, which marks Iran’s first presence in this section dedicated to first and second works in almost two decades.

“What everybody is so pleased about is that Cannes, fortunately, is now representing the young generation of Iranian filmmakers,” said international distributor Mohammad Attebai, who heads Tehran-based company Iranian Independents.

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Speaking about the matter for the first time in public, Asghar Farhadi forcefully denied that he plagiarized his 2021 film “A Hero.”

“My film was not based on the documentary,” the Iranian Oscar-winning directed said on Tuesday afternoon at the Cannes Film Festival. “I think the matter will no doubt be cleared up. And I’m sorry it has created so much ill feeling.”

An Iranian court is hearing a case involving a former student, Azadeh Masihzadeh, who has accused Farhadi of copying the idea for his movie from a documentary that she showed him in a 2014 workshop in Tehran.

“A Hero,” which won the Grand Prize in Cannes last year, tells the story of a man who finds and returns a bag filled with gold coins while he’s been temporarily released from prison. But once his deed as a good samaritan receives media attention, police suspect he could be lying.

The 2022 Cannes Film Festival has revealed its competition jury, with “Titane” and “Fire” star Vincent Lindon presiding as President of the Jury to mark the 75th anniversary of the festival.

Lindon is the first French actor to be Jury President in over a decade, since Isabelle Huppert helmed the jury in 2009. In the history of the Festival, French celebrities have often held this role in an anniversary year, such as Yves Montand in 1987 for the 40th Festival, Gérard Depardieu in 1993 for the 45th Festival, and Isabelle Adjani in 1997 for the 50th.

The festival is set to take place May 17 through May 28, resuming in-person festivities for the second year in a row after last year’s return to normal (albeit two months later than usual).

Rebecca Hall, Deepika Padukone, Noomi Rapace, Asghar Farhadi, Ladj Ly, Jeff Nichols, and Joachim Trier also serve as jury members.

Jury President Lindon starred in the...