CANNES DISPATCH Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS Words by JANE CROWTHER
Léa Seydoux and her Blue Is The Warmest Colour co-star Adèle Exarchopoulos were reunited in Cannes as they both arrived at the festival with films this year. The duo shared the Palme d’Or award for their performances as newcomers in 2013, thirteen years later Seydoux in the race for gold again with her role in Marie Kreutzer’s In Competition entry, Gentle Monster. In the Corsage filmmaker’s latest, she plays Lucy, a pianist and mother who is horrified when her husband (played by Laurence Rupp) is investigated by police after child porn is found on his computer. The gentle monster of the title is the seemingly well-adjusted partner Lucy has seen no red flags in, and as the case progresses she experiences rollercoaster emotions of having lived with, and loved, a predator.
The film was initially inspired by a newspaper article Kreutzer read, but gained added resonance when Florian Teichtmeister, the actor who played Emperor Franz-Joseph in Corsage, was found guilty of possessing child porn. Kreutzer told journalists at the press conference in Cannes that she then felt this became more of a reason to create the film and address the subject matter. Seydoux told the conference that the emotionally-charged role was a challenge but a gratifying one. ‘She goes through different states of emotion at the same time as the spectator, you’re totally with her and you feel total empathy,’ she said of her character. ‘You discover the film through her. [In playing her] I tried to live in the spur of the moment and be in the state of total empathy.’ Seydoux was also nervous of singing on camera for the first time in her career, and learnt to play the piano. The film was rapturously received at its premiere, before which Greg Williams shot Seydoux at the Majestic Hotel.
The actor also has Arthur Harari’s body-swap drama The Unknown at the festival, in which she plays a woman who has a one night stand with a man and when she awakes the two have swap consciousnesses. As David, trapped in her body, Seydoux’s character questions identity and gender roles. The two films are vastly different projects but speak to audiences about pertinent themes. As Seydoux told Variety this week; ‘with the fakeness of cinema, you can make the truth appear.’
Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS Words by JANE CROWTHER Gentle Monster and The Unknown premiered at the 79th Cannes Film Festival
CANNES DISPATCH Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS Words by JANE CROWTHER
Javier Bardem’s latest film, El ser querido, is the perfect subject matter for a movie premiering at cinéaste Cannes Film Festival – it charts the making of a film as a father and daughter come together to work on a project and their dysfunctional relationship. Greg Williams captured the actor on his balcony at the JW Marriott on the Croisette, before Bardem stepped on the red carpet. In the film from director Rodrigo Sorogoyen, Bardem plays a famous director going through a personal crisis who offers his estranged actor daughter (Victoria Luengo) a role of his latest opus, only for past hurt to surface and Bardem’s volatile helmer to rage about losing the light and eating on camera. He is coercive, threatening and controlling. The toxic masculinity on display is something Bardem said was widespread and institutionalised in his press conference earlier in the day.
‘The problem comes from the bad education that we had received for many ages, which I’m part of. I’m 57 years old, coming from a very machista country called Spain, where there is an average of two women killed monthly by their ex-husbands or ex-boyfriends, which is horrible,’ he told journalists. ‘And we kind of normalised it. I mean, are we fucking nuts? We are killing women because some men think they own them, they possess them.’ He went on to expand the criticism wider than personal or social, to world politics. ‘That problem also goes to Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin and Mr. Netanyahu, the big balls man saying, ‘my cock is bigger than yours, and I’m gonna bomb the shit out of you.’ It’s a fucking male toxic behavior that is creating thousands of dead people, so yeah, we have to talk about it. And I think we are talking about it… We are more aware of it, thankfully, because maybe 20 years ago [this] was something that nobody will pay attention to as a problem, and, and I think this movie speaks about that…in this movie there are three people that say ‘no’ to [my character]: three women.’
Bardem went on to discuss the war in Gaza and to explain his decision to use his stature in the public eye to prompt debate. ‘I don’t have any other power or more power than you guys, but I use it in the best way I know.’ When asked if he worries about being so outspoken he admitted that ‘the fear does exist, granted, but one has to do things even if you feel a bit scared or afraid. You have to be able to look at yourself in the mirror, look at yourself in the eyes. My mother taught me to be the way I am. There is no plan B. This entails consequences, which I am fully ready to shoulder.’
Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS Words by JANE CROWTHER El ser querido premiered at the 79th Cannes Film Festival
CANNES DISPATCH Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS Interview by JANE CROWTHER
Mexican actor Diego Calva was as thrilled with the film he’s presenting at Cannes as the audience at the premiere who gave Club Kid a rousing seven-minute standing ovation, chanting the name of the child actor in the project as writer-director Jordan Firstman lifted him aloft above the seats. ‘I was in Los Angeles two weeks ago, and the producer called me, and said, ‘We want to do a screening for you, so you can see it before Cannes,’ Calva says over a pick-me-up espresso martini in the bar at the Martinez Hotel when Hollywood Authentic catches up with him. ‘I said, ‘no’. I wanted to see it here. It was my first time watching it, and it just felt really special. Because it’s very specific to this universe of New York, drugs, parties. But it’s also really universal. I love when I do a project that I can show my grandmother, my mum, my junkie friends… and they’re all going to like it!’
A buzzy hit on the Croisette this festival, Club Kid follows Peter, a NY party promoter (played by Firstman) whose drugs/sex/dancing existence is challenged when he discovers he’s father to a young boy (Reggie Absolom). Calva plays a child therapist who epitomes love and tenderness, his warmth extending to a fizzing chemistry with Peter. Firstman first came to prominence via his online presence and has calibrated that into a spiky, funny, heartfelt movie that plays like Chaplin’s The Kid crossed with Trainspotting and Saturday Night Fever. Calva has Instagram and posted footage of the premiere and after-party but, he says, he still likes to think of himself as ‘an outsider’ both in terms of social media and Hollywood – despite having high profile projects under his belt. He’s appeared in Narcos Mexico, made a splash as the lead in Damien Chazelle’s Babylon, appeared opposite Jacob Elordi in On Swift Horses and most recently, joined the award-winning team of The Night Manager for season two.
‘I do belong to movies. Movies are my life. But I don’t want to belong too much to an industry; to feel like, ‘I’m part of this. I control it’. I like the idea of the immigrant, the foreigner who’s visiting this. Nobody owns a movie. The directors, the actors, the producers – we all do the movie. But then the movie is out, and it belongs to everyone. And everyone should be invited to this party called cinema.’ Cannes is certainly a party for cinema and this is Calva’s first time at the event. ‘Being in Cannes for me is really emotional. I was at the party last night, and I called my mom. It was 4am in the morning, but it was 3pm in Mexico. I cried, and I said, ‘Mom, I’m here’. I decided to dedicate my life to movies. Movies saved my life so many times. Now I’m here.’
His writer-director-co-star Jordan Firstman has been equally moved by his experience. He went viral at the premiere by kissing Calva post-credits in a euphoric moment. Calva laughs at the notion that it was wish fulfillment for audience members who’d been so taken with their onscreen relationship, which crackles with want and love. It’s the sort of chemistry that is hard to find. ‘The relationship of a director and an actor is a first date, your first impression,’ he shrugs. ‘Jordan got so open with me. He really told me stories about his life, and why he wanted to do this movie. He told me something really cool: ‘I’m still learning how to be alive’. I love the idea that this movie is a coming of age for a 30-year-old adolescent. When someone is open, and so excited, and has something to say… that’s what all actors want. We really want to be part of someone’s dream – not someone’s job.’ What did the duo discuss on their first ‘date’? ‘ I told him stories about my childhood, living in Mexico City, getting into some situations – I used to be a skateboarder, and I had a record label. And how movies saved my life. You talk about all these things in the first two hours of meeting someone on Zoom, then when I met Jordan in person, he kind of had already built the relationship. When you’re working with someone who has so much love; you want to be part of it. And the chemistry…What is chemistry? First of all, how do you define that?’
When he’s asked to define it, he sips his drink and thinks. ‘Acting is more about silence than talking. Now, I’m talking. This is easy. But being silent… It’s all about the passion of the untold. It’s all about the silence. With Jordan, the silence was so easy. Sometimes, when you act, when you have to cry in a scene, and you’re able to just remember your character’s life, not your own… That’s what I was thinking about in this movie – not acting.’ The movie has the same effect on viewers; though it’s gloriously snarky and funny, the heart is real. At the premiere, tears were flowing amid the fisting gags and vomit scenes. ‘We all have trauma, right?’ Calva says. ‘And trauma is like a hole. We are always trying to fill that hole. What if we realise that that hole makes us more… light. You know? It takes a weight out of us. And also, we can have a party there. That’s Club Kid. It’s a party in the hole of trauma.’
Calva is in town with two movies, he’s also presenting Nicolas Winding Refn’s Her Private Hell in which he has a small, but pivotal role. ‘Her Private Hell is about a completely different story and a completely different situation. Jordan is my fucking friend. Nic is my friend, of course, but it’s different… He likes to play one song during the whole day. One song every day. We were listening to Suicide and Alan Vega, Iggy Pop. He asked me to just look at the lens, and listen to the song one, two, three, four times. And then he’ll say, ‘You did something with your eye. I like it. We have it.’ And what I did… I don’t know. It’s like a mantra. And that’s amazing. Actors are horrible and sensitive, blah blah. But we want to deliver. We want to please. When someone is like, ‘Just be you’ – whoa, we are in fucking trouble. But then he captures you.’
Despite imdb’s claims that he is playing Che Guevara in an upcoming project, he’s not – though he looks just like him. ‘I would love to play Che Guevara – but in a vampire movie. America is the humans. Cuba is the vampires. And we’re conquering the world.’ He is appearing in Danny Ramirez’s football film. Baton, alongside recent Hollywood Authentic subject, Lewis Pullman. ‘I admire Danny so much because as a Latino in Hollywood, he is building a career, and now he is directing and acting and producing. And he invited me to play his best friend in the movie. I play a completely weird character. I’ve never played something like that. I’ve been lead in a movie, right? But I love supporting characters. I love to be part of the universe, and make other people shine in a way that you have more room. For me, the lesson is: Alfred Molina in Boogie Nights – one scene, and you will remember that scene forever. I want to do things like that.’ Based on the love for Club Kid out of Cannes, he’ll be taking his pick…
Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS Interview by JANE CROWTHER Club Kid and Her Private Hell premiered at the 79th Cannes Film Festival
CANNES DISPATCH Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS Interview by JANE CROWTHER
Ron Howard first arrived in Cannes in 1987 with Willow. Since then he’s brought numerous films to the festival and this year he’s debuting his new documentary about the trailblazing photographer, Avedon. As he drinks soothing green tea with honey (he’s been talking too much, he says with a grin) in the Carlton Hotel, he tells Hollywood Authentic how important it is to bring movies to such a tastemaking and illustrious festival. ‘It’s a huge, global stage for cinema. And more than ever – in all the festivals, large and small – it’s important for talent to keep supporting them, because it’s a reminder that it’s fun to gather. It’s stimulating to gather. And it’s community-building if you come together around cinema. You have a shared experience, and then afterwards you talk about it – whether you liked it, or didn’t like it, what it meant to you.’
Audiences will be debating Howard’s documentary this week as it premieres, tracking the career of Richard ‘Dick’ Avedon as he blossomed from an ID card and autopsy snapper in the US navy to a pioneering fashion photographer, ad director and New Yorker lynchpin. Avedon’s work championed under-represented talent, expanded the parameters of beauty and defined visual culture outside of photography. ‘Honestly, I really just knew the name,’ Howard admits of his introduction to the artist. ‘I thought of him as fashion first. I didn’t think of him as any kind of documentarian or journalist. But that’s all my ignorance. What fascinated me most was the range, the creative risk-taking, and yet the success of his work and his career.’ Howard calls this his ‘general, myopic view of my life, which is always kind of what’s right in front of me,’ but he’s been working for decades and also helped define culture with his output as an actor, director and producer. With The Andy Griffiths Show and Happy Days to Splash, Parenthood, Apollo 13, A Beautiful Mind and Frost/Nixon, plus his projects through Imagine Entertainment (24, Friday Night Lights, Arrested Development), he’s helped shape entertainment in the 20th and 21st century.
‘You know, it’s been a lifetime of going from one project to another, and each one demands a lot of focus, whether as a younger guy, when I was a child acting, or as an adult producing and directing,’ he says from under the brim of his trademark baseball hat. Documentary making, he says, is something that comes from being something of a pendant in creating fictional cinemas. He had to get firefighting right in Backdraft, but when he made The Paper, following a group of journalists, he hired consultants to ensure ‘verisimilitude’. And it’s a process that has stuck with each new film he does. ‘I’m a huge baseball fan, so I always say to technical advisors, ‘look, it would really upset me if somebody made a baseball movie, and the centre fielder had a first baseman’s glove on’. The movie I did that was probably the most personal in my entire life was Parenthood, because, at that time, I was right in the middle of raising kids at the age that the kids were in the movie. So until I make a movie about moviemaking, I’m always going to need to educate myself to really understand a subject.’
In researching Avedon he found common ground between his own work and the photographer’s. ‘He really was a director. Sure, he was taking some inspiration from his subjects. But he was also very calculated about the scene he wanted to create, the story he wanted to tell, and the emotion he was looking for. That was very interesting to me.’ In archival footage in the film Avedon says ‘every photograph is accurate and none of them are the truth’. Hollywood Authentic wonders if that’s something Howard relates to in cinema. ‘As Peter Morgan says: you often have to lie on screen in order to get at the greater truth. You have to invent moments; you have to invent scenes that demonstrate what it is you’ve learned about the subject. But in order to get it into the film, it’s going to require some invention.’
Avedon evolved during his career from fashion to cinema (Funny Face was loosely based on him and he consulted on it) to politics. Has Howard’s direction changed in the years he’d been doing it? ‘It hasn’t… The only thing that’s changed is, as monitors have gotten better, I don’t stand next to the camera anymore. But I also don’t go back into some tent that’s far away. Because I do take after take, and in between takes, I want to have a conversation with the actors, so there’s no barrier between me and the key collaborators. I get a lot of steps – a directing day for me 15,000 to 20,000 steps. I pace, and I also hustle from setup to setup. When I was acting, I liked it when we had momentum, and, as a director, I feel the same way. It does mean my staging and camera work does tend to be less technically focused. There are times when a shot needs to be very precise, and we take a long time with it. But I’m more interested in capturing the environment – if that’s outdoors, it’s getting that light, and getting that weather – and what the actors are doing. I want the cutting power of being able to analyse these performances later, and taking people’s best moments, and putting them together. I admire the directors who can do these long, intricate takes, but I don’t quite have the patience for it, and I feel like the greater value proposition for the story and the audience is really more variations from the actors.’
Directing a documentary is a different discipline, he says. ‘That’s about discovering moments in archival footage, or maybe accidents in verité scenes that you’ve been able to shoot, or responses to questions. But you can’t really provoke it.’ The process of making the film also made Howard appreciate anew the art of photography, especially in a world of AI. ‘I did become very interested in him as a creator who was sharing a vision. The novelty of what tech has brought us – the facile nature of it; the speed of it – is kind of exciting and fun. But I think we’re already as a society beginning to recognise how important curation is, and that something filtered through an expert, an artist; someone who lives and breathes whatever discipline they’re engaged in, is elevated.’
Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS Interview by JANE CROWTHER Avedon premiered at the 79th Cannes Film Festival
CANNES DISPATCH Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS Interview by JANE CROWTHER
Camille Cottin calls the particular bewilderment of a film festival ‘the vortex at Cannes,’ when Hollywood Authentic sits down with her at the JW Marriott on the Croisette, which is teeming with delegates and film fans. ‘Here, time is no more!’ she jokes, ‘Everything is completely changed – all perception of reality – when you’re here. You take big cars to go about 10 metres. You no longer talk in distance, it’s just ‘Majestic to Martinez’. Night is day, day is night. You talk about money as if you’re talking about love…’ Cottin has arrived in Cannes ahead of walking the red carpet of the premiere of Guillaume Canet and Marion Cotillard’s Karma alongside her fictional ASK agency team from global TV phenomenon Call My Agent!, to announce that the feature film of the show is arriving on Netflix in September. The show was a success in France before becoming a belated global hit and nearly six years after the final season, will return with George Clooney, Vincent Macaigne and Laetitia Casta playing themselves.
Fans of the show will remember discussion of the Cannes Film Festival in season two, when the whole agency wanted to attend such an important event, so it’s only fitting that the team should kick off their promotion in this storied place. ‘The show is about our industry, so I think it makes sense. And also, there’s going to be something a bit meta, regarding the script, the fact that we’re here. We’ve added a piece to the puzzle, I would say. I don’t want to spoil things…’ she says. What we do know is that Cottin’s spiky character, Andréa Martel, will be directing her own movie in the film, so perhaps Andréa will be climbing the famous red steps herself? ‘Of course, when you direct a film, being at Cannes is something that I suppose every director dreams of,’ she teases.
She’s not giving plot or guest appearances away, but the actor will discuss why the team is returning to the ASK offices after the show finished. ‘I think it came from a deep attachment to the characters and the relationship between them. There’s something quite generous and tender to that show regarding the humour, regarding the perception of our contemporaries in the industry. And I think it was the desire to continue this communication with the fans. The funny thing is that when we stopped filming and COVID happened, that’s when people outside France discovered it. So it’s maybe about bringing it back to the present.’ With its insider, meta comedy the show has spawned international remakes and, some might say, inspired The Studio. Not bad for a project that Cottin admits wasn’t an immediate hit. ‘Even in France, they didn’t want it at the beginning, because they thought it was too niche.’ She hasn’t watched the other versions of the show, but thinks that her character is such an intriguing creation that it translates across language and culture (though Andréa’s queerness was changed to heterosexual in the Turkish version).
‘It was great the way she didn’t try to be loved. I think it’s incredible, not only for the gay community, but as a woman, being completely free from the perception of others, and from the need to seduce or to be loved or to be approved. It’s something that is terribly cathartic and empowering and juicy to watch. And she’s absolutely not nice, which is quite funny. You could hate her, but she has a lot of integrity. That’s why she’s not a toxic person – because she is what she says she is, and she does what she says.’
Though she’d been a success in France, the role gave Cottin access to a wider range of work, and she’s since appeared in Stillwater with Matt Damon, then Allied, A Haunting in Venice and Golda. ‘That was something I dreamed of,’ she says of expanding her canvas. ‘I spent five years in London when I was a teenager, and I’ve spent a lot of time in Spain. I have this desire to work in other cultures. Working in a foreign language with another culture – it really turns me on. It excites me. I find it thrilling and exciting and interesting. I would be sad if I had to stay in one place, in one surrounding, in my four walls.’ She enjoys the discipline of acting in another language, she says. ‘Normally when you act, you really focus on how you feel, rather than how it sounds. When you’re acting you hope to lose your awareness of how it looks and how it sounds, and you’re just going through the beauty of how it feels. That’s the thing we’re all searching for. But in another language you have to have that awareness.You have to be aware of the shape of your tongue, your mouth. There are certain sounds that after some time you will not be able to imitate, because it has a certain shape…’ She smiles. ‘I’ve got the French mouth.’
She will be using her Mother tongue in the upcoming sumptuous French adaptation of Les Misérables.‘I think we have now, in our French industry, lots of appetite for putting on screen some of our best classics. And obviously it’s fun, because when I was cheeky to the director, he said, ‘Victor Hugo, what a showrunner’.’ She’s also filmed Edward Berger’s The Riders with Brad Pitt. ‘I loved working with Edward Berger. He gives you a lot of freedom, and at the same time he’s very precise. And even though he’s focused on what he does, he’s warm. And Brad is so kind.’ Now she’s worked with Pitt, Damon and, with the new Call My Agent! film, Clooney, it feels like she’s working her way through the Ocean’s 11 team. She laughs. ‘I’m desperately in need of Julia,’ she says before she disappears back into the vortex of the Croisette…
Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS Interview by JANE CROWTHER Call My Agent! The Movie arrives on Netflix 10 September 2026
CANNES DISPATCH Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS Words by JANE CROWTHER
2026 TROPHÉE CHOPARD ‘I’ve never been here before and never thought in a million years that this would be happening the first time that I came here,’ Marty Supreme actor Odessa A’zion told the audience at this year’s Chopard Trophy ceremony, presented by French icon Isabelle Huppert. Photographed by Greg Williams at the Martinez Hotel’s Chopard terrace before festivities, the American actor was recognised alongside Connor Swindells as a next generation talent at the jeweller’s annual festival award.
‘Cannes is a place of memory, but it’s also a place of birth. Every year, new faces appear,’ Huppert said in her welcoming address. ‘Tonight, we celebrate two singular presences, two sensibilities, two paths that are only beginning to be written and that we already want to follow’. When she took to the stage to accept her gold and silver film reel trophy, A’zion said, ‘I don’t know why you guys chose me, but I’m so grateful. There are so many actors that I admire who are part of this lineage of this award and this is so crazy. This is really cool.’
A’zion hit big this year as Marty’s childhood sweetheart in Josh Safdie’s award-winning film but has risen to prominence in I Love LA, She Rides Shotgun, Sitting in Bars with Cake and Fresh Kills. She has a packed slate ahead with Justine Triet’s psychological thriller, Fonda opposite Andrew Scott and Mia Goth, as well as Mother Courage with Sarah Paulson and Naomi Watts.
Having awarded new talent since 2001, The Trophée Chopard has a long list of previous recipients who have consolidated their wins with stellar careers including Marion Cotillard, James McAvoy, Léa Seydoux, Diane Kruger, Florence Pugh, Jessie Buckley, Gael García Bernal, Anya Taylor Joy and Naomi Ackie. The celebration, co-hosted by Chopard’s Caroline Scheufele, festival president Iris Knobloch, and general delegate Thierry Frémaux, was attended by a glittering guestlist who ate dinner by Michelin-starred chef, Bruno Oger, and enjoyed a performance from pianist Gina Alice Adlinger at the Carlton Beach Club on Cannes’ golden sands.
Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS Words by JANE CROWTHER Trophée Chopard (Chopard Trophy) is awarded by a jury of professionals to two young actors in order to recognise and encourage their career
CANNES DISPATCH Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS Words by JANE CROWTHER
2026 TROPHÉE CHOPARD ‘This is surreal,’ Sex Education breakout Connor Swindells admitted ahead of being presented with the Chopard Trophy by French icon Isabelle Huppert. Photographed by Greg Williams at the Martinez Hotel’s Chopard terrace pre-ceremony, the British actor was recognised alongside Odessa A’zion as a next generation talent at the jeweller’s annual festival award evening at the Carlton Beach Club attended by many established artists. Huppert said the award ‘recognises a movement, a promise, something that is already there yet still in the process of becoming.’ For Swindells that promise began with Sex Education and gathered pace with turns in Emma, The Vanishing, SAS Rogue Heroes, William Tell and Barbie. His upcoming projects continue that trajectory – he’ll appear in Ruben Östlund’s The Entertainment System Is Down and Kayleigh Llewellyn’s The Dreamlands.
The Trophée Chopard has form in recognising talent destined for the stratosphere: in the past it’s been awarded to to the likes of Marion Cotillard, Léa Seydoux, Diane Kruger, Florence Pugh, Jessie Buckley, Kingsley Ben-Adir, Mike Faist and Gael García Bernal. All have seen their careers soar but Huppert cautioned Swindells and A’zion as they moved forward in their path. ‘Success is uncertain, capricious, and sometimes deceptive. I wish you something else — I wish you freedom. The freedom to choose. The freedom to refuse. The freedom to explore unexpected territories. The freedom to be yourselves. The freedom to dream. And above all, the freedom to remain faithful to that mystery that brought you here, because that mystery is what makes great actors.’
In accepting his award Swindells thanked his late mother, who tragically died of bowel cancer when he was seven years old. ‘My mother’s name is Phoebe. She died when I was very young and sadly, she didn’t get to see any of this, but this definitely would not be possible if not for her. She’s been an amazing spirit that’s been with me all this time.’
The celebration, co-hosted by Chopard’s Caroline Scheufele, festival president Iris Knobloch, and general delegate Thierry Frémaux, is in its 26th year and Swindells took home a gold and silver film reel trophy from the luxury jewellery house after a dinner by Michelin-starred chef, Bruno Oger, a performance from pianist Gina Alice Adlinger and dancing til the small hours.
Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS Words by JANE CROWTHER Trophée Chopard (Chopard Trophy) is awarded by a jury of professionals to two young actors in order to recognise and encourage their career
CANNES DISPATCH Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS Words by JANE CROWTHER
Diego Luna’s return to directing – and his premiere of his fourth film, Ceniza en la Boca, at Cannes Film Festival – became something of an Y Tu Mama Tambien reunion. The film that made him a global star also gave him a lifelong friendship with director Alfonso Cuaron and co-star Gael Garcia Bernal. Both were present when Luna bowed his latest project in the Cannes Palais, Cuaron cheering on his protege and Bernal as executive producer on the film. Greg Williams captured him at the Martinez Hotel before he premiered his project.
A timely character study, his film tracks a pair of Mexican siblings abandoned by their mother (Adriana Paz) when she departs to Spain to escape the violence of her hometown. Eight years later, the children, 21 year-old Lucila (Anna Diaz) and teen Diego (Sergio Bautista), follow her to Madrid where a life of economic hardship and xenophobia awaits. Based on Brenda Navarro’s 2022 novel, the movie follows the numerous low-paid jobs Lucila must take to scrape her rent together, the sly ways in which she is disenfranchised by her employers and how a dream of safety (financially and emotionally) is so often out of reach.
Though it may not be Luna’s own experience of working abroad (he’s appeared in Star Wars films and TV, found success and happiness), the story is somewhat personal. ‘It’s a beautiful story, hard and difficult, about migration from a perspective we don’t see much,’ Luna told Cannes. ‘My mother died when I was two, so the subject of parents not being around hits me profoundly.’ He told Variety that ‘often, we have to grow up to understand what our parents did for us or didn’t do for us’.
The film touches on a hot topic as Spain has become a gateway for Latin Americans into Europe during the Trump administration. It also explores the concept of home, how to mourn or honour a family member and the gig economy. Cannes is a familiar place for Luna to debut his film; he first attended in 2003 as an actor in Soldados de Salamina, and has returned for Mister Lonely in 2007, as director of Abel in 2010 and as a Un Certain Regard jury member in 2016. Ceniza en la Boca has been bought by Netflix for Spanish-speaking territories and will bow in 2027.
Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS Words by JANE CROWTHER Ceniza en la Boca premiered at the 79th Cannes Film Festival and will debut on Netflix in 2027
CANNES DISPATCH Photographs & interview by GREG WILLIAMS As told to JANE CROWTHER
Vincent Cassel admits that his first time visiting Cannes film festival was by hitchhiking. These days the celebrated French actor need not thumb for a lift and he returns to the Croisette with award-winning Asghar Farhadi’s Parallel Tales, premiering at Cannes’ Grand Théâtre Lumière on Thursday night. Farhadi’s exploration of voyeurism is playing in competition at this year’s festival and stars Cassel in a dual role alongside French icons Isabelle Huppert and Catherine Deneuve.
Huppert plays Sylvie, a novelist who starts spying on two men (Cassel and Pierre Niney) and a woman (Virginie Efira) living across the street, hoping for inspiration for her next book. Hiring an assistant (Adam Bessa) to help her sort her thoughts, Sylvie begins to blur reality and fiction as she writes alternative existences she sees through her telescope..
Loosely inspired by the sixth episode of Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Dekalog, Parallel Tales premiered in the famous Lumiere Theatre at the 79th Cannes Film Festival. Cassel told festival press that the dual role he played was ripe for playfulness and that he might have been tempted to act ‘less well’ as the fictional character; ‘but it’s not something I was able to do!’
Greg Williams photographed the actor at the famed Carlton Hotel before the film premiered to a five minute standing ovation.
Photographs & interview by GREG WILLIAMS As told to JANE CROWTHER Parallel Talespremiered at the 79th Cannes Film Festival
CANNES DISPATCH Photographs & interview by GREG WILLIAMS As told to JANE CROWTHER
‘The importance of the festival is not only to celebrate good films,’ says Stellan Skarsgård when Greg Williams meets him in his suite at the Majestic Hotel ahead of his Cannes Festival jury duties. ‘It’s mainly important because it puts the light on these films that don’t have any money for publicity. They don’t have money for billboards. And they get seen by a lot of people at festivals. They get noticed by awards; by festivals in general. I think that cinema needs to be preserved as cinema, in a cinema – so we don’t think that it’s the same experience to watch it on television. Because it’s not. It’s another art form. Cinema is supposing that you’re watching it all the time. That you’re concentrating on it. That you’re following the film in detail. And that means that you have a lot of things that are without words. That are unsaid, because it’s all on the screen. And those things are immensely valuable.’
Skarsgård would know. A veteran of the festival and an actor who has known the industry for years as well as watched his actor sons, Alexander and Bill, chart a course through it, the Swedish artist is thrilled to be spending ten days watching cinema under jury president Park Chan-wook. His own work has previously come under such scrutiny.
‘Breaking the Waves was my first Cannes Film Festival. I’d been to Berlin before. But it was overwhelming because it was also a great success for the film. It was insane. I was totally unprepared for it. Not as unprepared as [co-star] Emily Watson. She was very unprepared. It was her first film. I felt like I had to protect her,’ he laughs. ‘But, of course, it was beautiful. I came with several Lars von Trier films, and ended up with Melancholia. Every film was like reinvented cinema, and every film was something new; something people hadn’t seen before. It was always exciting to be here with a Lars von Trier film.’
Being a jury member is a special privilege, he says.And a very different experience from attending the festival as an actor.‘Nobody’s watching you for what you’ve done, and nobody’s demanding anything of you, except that you watch films. And that’s easy – compared to having the pressure of wanting to win, and having to win for the success of the film. But now, I’m just going to watch films. I’ve never seen a film at Cannes before, except for films that I’ve been in, because I’ve never had time….’
Photographs & interview by GREG WILLIAMS As told to JANE CROWTHER Stellan Skarsgård is a jury member of the 79th Cannes Film Festival
