Dispatches

May 23, 2026

Cillian Murphy, I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning, Peaky Blinders: Immortal Man, Titans

CANNES DISPATCH
Photographs & interview by GREG WILLIAMS
As told to JANE CROWTHER

‘This is beautiful, man,’ Jay Lycurgo sighs as he looks across the water from the Hyde Beach Club on the Cannes Croisette. He’s in town with his cast, including Anthony Boyle, Joe Cole, Daryl McCormack and Lola Petticrew, to premiere Clio Barnard’s latest, I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning. Based on Keiran Goddard’s novel, the film follows a gang of working-class Birmingham friends as they turn 30 and evaluate their lives. Jay plays Oli, the clown of the group who deals drugs and samples his own stock. Though he’s arguably in the worst position of the friends, he’s also a ray of sunshine and a bright spot in the film. ‘He’s the most optimistic addict,’ Jay tells me. ‘He’s a little puppy. He’s the glue for the whole team. He’s one of those friends that everyone wants. He’s someone that you can ask for help, and ask for reassurance. If you need a little love, you go around his house, and he’ll make you a nice, little cup of tea. And everything will be alright. And he’s a good dancer, too.’

I ask if there’s aspects of him in the character. ‘ The dancing? Yeah, I learned that from my dad,’ he grins and does a Dad dance on the sand. ‘But I always try and be a good person. I don’t want to sound wanky, but that’s the truth. I just feel like, at this time, it’s a waste to not be nice.’ He’s recently played Elijah, Duke Shelby’s right-hand man, in Peaky Blinders: Immortal Man and even there gave a gang member heart. Before that, he came to attention as Tim Drake in Titans, and alongside his Peaky co-star Cillian Murphy as the troubled teen the titular character helps in Steve. I ask what the Croydon-born actor wants from his career.

‘A yacht,’ he laughs, pointing at the vessels moored in the bay. ‘No, I feel like everything that is supposed to happen, is going to happen. And I’ve worked with some great people, man. I do love collaboration. I have a big football background, with my dad being a footballer in the ‘80s [David Johnson]. I look at acting as a team sport. We’re all in one scene. We’re all trying to create that goal, and create a good scene. That’s what it is. You never know if you’re going to win or lose the game. But in acting, you get to go again.’

His fatalism came to play in his early days of wanting to be an actor. He dreamt of going to the BRIT School but failed to get in and flunked drama at school. Later he landed the course at the ArtsEd drama school. ‘I was always good at the performing. ‘A’ for performance. But the writing, I was dreadful. I remember being in class, and for two hours just having a test in front of me, having no idea what to write about. And at the end, one of my teachers, she took my paper, and she was like, ‘You’re never going to get into drama school’. She ripped it up…’

Though that particular teacher didn’t champion him, he puts his success down to mentorship. ‘When I wanted to go to drama school, one of my teachers said, ‘You should go. You’re pretty good at acting’. But I wouldn’t have done that off my own back. I was 17. I had no idea. So, it’s having those people to push you in the right direction.’ He counts his Peaky co-star Barry Keoghan as an inspiration. ‘That dude, he’s different, man. He’s so brilliant. I’ve never seen a guy just be so free-flowing in a scene. I just feel like in acting, all we’re trying to do is be as immersed as possible, and I can see Barry workshopping the scene, and it always just turns out extraordinary. He’s got balls. He’s very brave in front of the camera.’

Jay’s performance in Steve could also be called brave, and gained awards traction. For him, playing a volatile teen at a residential reform school had a personal link. ‘My dad works in alternative educational units, and it was such an incredible moment to be able to do a film that was about his work. I love things that are really visceral. The one thing I will not be nonchalant about is going for it. And that’s the one advice I’d give to anyone. Don’t be scared. Be brave. That’s what I want to do in a scene – just let everything out. Because you can’t do that in everyday life.’

Filming I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning in Birmingham was a thrilling experience because of director Barnard’s workshopping and embedding process. ‘It was so immersive. We were in a small town in Birmingham. All the locals signed up to be in the film. One of the first scenes we did was Oli’s birthday. All the extras are there, and all the actors, and we just let loose, man. We just danced. I’m really excited for everyone to see the intro of the film, because that was real. That was authentic. That was the first day of the second week of filming, and you can see that that’s when everything started to come together.’

Jay also likes to use music to find his character and motivation. ‘Music is my stimulant. And then it’s just about letting go. And trust is really important. Back to that collaboration: I need to be able to talk to you to feel safe, because I’m about to do something really vulnerable. That’s really important. And then there’s the other side, when the director will be like, ‘You’re not getting it.’ And then you get into the competitive side. And you’re like, ‘Alright. I’ll show you’. But it’s all trial and error. Just keep going. You’ll find the truth, hopefully.’

Born and bred in Croydon, and still living there, Jay tells me that the area has a bad reputation but he loves it and considers that his happiness there and in his career has been all about having the right people surrounding him. ‘I have a great family. I’ve got two sisters and my brother. When in doubt, they’re going to keep me grounded. But my dad will always say; ease is a greater threat to progress than hardship. It’s all about working hard. This stuff can go at any moment, man. I’m grateful for it, and that’s genuine. I love creative people. I like doing this. Until I don’t want to do it anymore, then I stop. But I’m still curious about it. I can’t help myself. It’s a great team sport. Fail at what you love.’

Photographs & interview by GREG WILLIAMS
As told to JANE CROWTHER
I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning premiered at the 79th Cannes Film Festival

ANTHONY BOYLE

May 23, 2026

I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning, Manhunt, Masters of the Air, The House of Guinness

CANNES DISPATCH
Photographs & interview by GREG WILLIAMS
As told to JANE CROWTHER

‘It’s a bit of heaven here,’ says Anthony Boyle as looks around the craggy coastline of the Cap Antibes, at the Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc, a few miles away from Cannes. The Belfast actor is in town for his first Cannes Film Festival with Clio Barnard’s latest, I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning. Based on the book by Keiran Goddard, the film traces the fortunes of a group of five working-class Birmingham friends as they try to gain a foothold on adulthood as they turn 30. Like the social housing constantly being razed around them, late-stage capitalism has brought their individual dreams crashing down. Anthony plays Patrick, a father and food delivery driver whose marriage to Shiv is tested, his Socialism ideals seemingly a pipe dream in a financially polarised world where opportunity doesn’t knock. ‘It’s about austerity. It’s a bit like a Ken Loach or a Mike Leigh film. Clio directs in this way where she looks at the working class in England, and gives a voice to the voiceless. It’s the kind of film that I would have watched on Film 4 late at night, like a Quadrophenia or This Is England, when I was a kid going, ‘I want to be in that. That looks like a world that I recognise.’ I never wanted to be a movie star or in one of these big Marvel films. It was this kind of social realism that I always looked at, and thought, ‘God, I’d love to be a part of those films’. I’m just so buzzed to be in it.’

To achieve the Brummie accent, Anthony embedded in the Midlands before shooting started and can still swap his Irish lilt when I ask him. ‘I was working with a dialect coach, and I couldn’t really get it down. I Googled the place in Birmingham where it was from, and I found a video of this guy going, ‘I’m Fucking Ginge from Brum.’ And I was like, ‘I need to find this guy.’ So I get him on Instagram, and I message him; ‘Lad, I’m an actor. I’m trying to get your accent. If I fly to Birmingham, can we go for a pint?’.’ Ginge agreed and Boyle went for a ‘wee pint’ at the local boozer, got drunk and ended up hanging out with him for a couple of days. ‘He gets his mates down – graffiti artists, bareknuckle boxers – and I get embedded into the community. That’s how I got the accent. I just stayed in that community. And that bar, The Crown, we ended up using that as our production office. We based our whole film out of that bar. And we get the people in the bar in the film.’

As someone who’s nailed accents for Masters of the Air, Manhunt and The House of Guinness, Anthony finds the process of living the role before he films helpful. ‘I go to wherever we’re filming, and I try to get there a couple of weeks early and just find people. People on the street. Bars are good. Football matches. Wherever you go, just strike up a conversation. It’s funny, when you go into places, people are really open and willing to talk if you show an interest in their story. If I come in there with care, and I usually do have a lot of care, and I show the people off in a good light – they’re usually really open.’

The irony is not lost on him that he’s talking about social realism while looking out at a bay filled with super-yachts. He laughs. ‘There is a beautiful thing about premiering this movie in Cannes to this audience in this bourgeois and moneyed place. People are going to see it. We’ve already had people from France and Italy say, ‘Oh, this area of Birmingham feels like a place in Greece. It feels like a place in France. It can be somewhere in America.’ So I’m really happy to be premiering it here.’

He has his eye on the water and decides to go for a swim. But in the suit he’s wearing. He clambers up to the diving platform jutting out of the cliff and removes his jacket and shoes, sits on the edge looking down. ‘We’ll get naked afterwards, Greg!’ he jokes, before standing and jumping into the sea. He returns to the surface, gasping. As he treads water I ask about his producing career and what he’s currently producing. ‘I’m producing hypothermia right now,’ he laughs. ‘I produced a TV show called Close to Home, written by Michael Magee, a lad that used to sit beside my brother at school. It’s about Belfast, and this young guy who goes off to Liverpool uni. He comes back to Belfast. He was promised that something would be different for him, and it’s not. It’s all the same old shit. It’s my favourite novel. I’m so buzzing that we got to make it. I called the writer, and was like, ‘Lad, I’ll give you £50 if you let me play you in your movie’. He said, ‘We’ve got a picture of you up on the wall. We want it to be you’. It’s just one of those serendipity fate moments, you know?’

He’s just finished shooting The Altruists with Julie Garner, an eight-part drama for Netflix about real-like Crypto dealers Sam Bankman-Fried and Caroline Ellison, who were accused of stealing $8 billion. Anthony plays Bankman-Fried and found common ground as both of them are dyslexic. As usual, Anthony approached the role by spending time marinating in the world he’d be playing in. ‘He was doing something really interesting. He was transferring funds on his PlayStation while also playing World of Warcraft. So he would be more upset at his XP points dropping in his game than he was losing $500 million. We were emailing each other while he was in jail. He was in the same cell block as P Diddy. What I thought was really interesting is, like, even through the emails, I felt just how intelligent he was. I felt like he was almost profiling me. The things that he was giving me, the examples he was giving me, were so intelligent and so clever. I was really taken by him.’

He clambers out of the sea, his suit pooling water at his feet and a happy expression on his face. ‘That was heaven,’ he says again as he grabs a towel to dry off. Luckily he has another suit for his premiere…

Photographs & interview by GREG WILLIAMS
As told to JANE CROWTHER
I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning premiered at the 79th Cannes Film Festival
The Altruists will be on Netflix tba

Dispatches

MARION COTILLARD

May 23, 2026

Guillaume Canet, Karma, Leonardo Sbaraglia, Roma Elastica

CANNES DISPATCH
Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS
Interview by JANE CROWTHER

Marion Cotillard has brought movies to Cannes numerous times – it’s not her first rodeo – but this year she arrives with two, both special to her for different reasons. ‘These are two movies that I love so much, that were amazing experiences for me as an actress,’ she tells Hollywood Authentic as we catch up with her at The Majestic Hotel on the Croisette just before the premiere for her second film of the fest, Bertrand Mandico’s Roma Elastica. The French actor had debuted Karma days before, her film with her longtime collaborator and former partner, Guillaume Canet (who writes and directs). In it she plays Jeanne, a woman with unspoken trauma who is blamed when her godson goes missing in her care. Jeanne drinks to forget her past, is messy and mysterious; and though the police assume she might be the prime suspect in the boy’s disappearance, her husband (played by Leonardo Sbaraglia) refuses to believe that she could harm a child. When Jeanne disappears, her husband attempts to find her and Karma unwinds the dual stories of each spouse. To say more would be to spoil, but it’s a role that demands a great deal from Cotillard, emotionally and physically, as she fights abuse and cruelty.

‘Guillaume had wanted to write a movie for me for a long time. We worked together on several movies, but he wanted to write a movie that would be, from the beginning to the end, all about my character,’ Cotillard says of the juicy project. ‘For a few years, I was not very happy with the projects that came my way. I was never totally taken by all the propositions that I had. I really wanted something strong and intense, and he knew that.’ Canet came across an article about a religious community and began to write a story for Cotillard. ‘I strongly responded to this idea,’ Cotillard enthuses. ‘It really got into my blood, and that’s what I need when I get involved in a project. I need to be passionate right away. I felt that I would want to give everything to this character and this film. It’s one of the most beautiful presents that I’ve had as an actress, and especially from him.’

Jeanne is fragile but also strong, cowed but also determined, a treat for an actor to play. ‘What I love about this character is that she doesn’t fit into the world she lives in. Her rebellious soul is turned into craziness. Her nature is stronger than this box we want to put her in. It creates a lot of pain, a lot of anger, a lot of misunderstanding – even from herself.’ The role demands that Cotillard put herself in some dark situations and mindset. How does she protect herself as an actor from being mentally and emotionally hurt by her work? ‘I have to say: I love experiencing very dark and complex characters. And Guillaume knows it,’ she laughs. ‘He really pushed everything to this intensity, because he knew that that is where I find my power as an actress. That was a very, very intense role for me, and I wanted to dive in 100%. I knew that it would be hard sometimes to go through all of this. But when you trust a director that much; when you know that he’s going to take care of you, and he’s going to be there when emotionally it’s that intense… On a set, he is such a powerhouse, pushing people to give their best.’

This is an actor who has essayed Lady Macbeth, a paraplegic in Rust & Bone, Edith Piaf. That said, she admits some days were particularly difficult as Jeanne is punished physically and mentally. ‘But I knew that when I would go back to my room after a very intense scene, all the people around would support me and every day was magical because of this. You know that you’re totally free to give everything you have, because you have the support of Guillaume and all the people that he put together to achieve something that is great. I would go back to my room and cry all the tears that I had to cry out, and scream to get those feelings out… because, yes, you’re acting, but your body is really experiencing it. At the end of the day, you need to have this energetic cleaning, so you can start the next day not being in pain because of the character.’On the flipside, Cotillard also has Bertrand Mandico’s Roma Elastica at Cannes. In it she plays a fading eighties film star with a brain tumour who is trying to complete a shoot on a sci-fi set in 2026 and filming in the Italian capital. ‘I didn’t know the work of Bertrand Mandico,’ Cotillard admits. ‘When I received the script and a mood board, it was very peculiar. From the first pages I was taken by the story of this woman, by this world that is so specific to Bertrand Mandico. I loved this very weird project and I was like, ‘OK, I’m going there’. I love working with artists that have a very strong world and something that you don’t see every day in movies. Artistic projects like Little Girl Blue or The Ice Tower. These are the kinds of movies that I want to be a part of, with these kinds of artists. I want their cinema to exist.’

Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS
Interview by JANE CROWTHER
Karma and Roma Elastica premiered at the 79th Cannes Film Festival

Dispatches

BOYD HOLBROOK

May 22, 2026

Atonement, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, Milk, Run All Night

CANNES DISPATCH
Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS
Interview by GREG WILLIAMS/JANE CROWTHER

The last time Boyd Holbrook was at Cannes Film Festival he was on the Croisette with Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, a huge operation on a big budget Hollywood film directed by James Mangold. ‘Yeah, they let me tag along on that one,’ he chuckles when I meet him in his modest Airbnb apartment in the centre of Cannes ahead of his premiere. This year, he arrives with a much smaller film (the first feature by Reed Van Dyk), Atonement – a pertinent tale based on a New Yorker article about a US marine who feels compelled to connect to the family who lost all their men during a firefight in the 2003 Iraq war. ‘I’m a small cog in the wheel of a giant film like Indiana Jones. I’m very grateful to be in that. It was such a great experience. But this is obviously such a richer experience in terms of why I got into making movies, and what, to me, cinema is really about.’

Filmed in Jordan and chronologically, Atonement follows Lou (Holbrook) as he engages with his enemy using a 40-cal machine gun during a visceral and terrifying opener where a local family, the Khachaturians, inadvertently get caught in the crossfire. Ten years later, broken and suffering from PTSD like many of his unit, Lou discovers an article written by war reporter Michael Reid (Kenneth Branagh) about the incident and he reaches out to the journalist in the hope of brokering a meeting with the family, now living in California. What follows is a study in the inhumanity of war, the trauma suffered by so many (as a character says ‘when a gun is shot, the bullet goes both ways’) and the hope of reconciliation. ‘Having a mother wave her own baby’s white shirt to surrender is soul-crushing. It’s a reminder of how important life is,’ Boyd tells me as we hang out on his sunny balcony and he considers how pertinent the subject matter has become in light of today’s news headlines. ‘When I found out about this film, I thought it was incredible but maybe not really relevant right now – this happened 23 years ago. And strangely enough, here we are…’

Boyd found the experience of channeling PTSD an overwhelming one. ‘Living in guilt and shame, that’s where Lou’s resonating in life. It’s wreaking so much havoc in his life. There’s the scene outside the club where he literally breaks and has a panic attack. I did so much preparation that I literally had a panic attack. It was so real for me, that I’d taken this woman’s children and husband. I was inconsolable.’ The challenge and investigation that goes into his process as an actor is what he thrives on, he says. ‘I love projects like these where I have no idea how I’m going to crack this. Before this, I did Johnny Cash [in A Complete Unknown]. I knew that Joaquin Phoenix had done it. It’s going to happen, whether you’re ready or not. I love that pressure. It’s so exciting to me, having to figure things out, and to really push myself, and to get scared, and fuck up, and fail, fail, fail, fail, and fail until you get it right; until you start figuring it out. You can’t use any tricks that you used on the last one. You have to start from square one. Every actor is probably going to blow a little bit of smoke and say that they figured it out. You try to do as much prep as you can. But that is also part of it. When you’re there on the day, you’re discovering it. I love being so prepared that I’m free to do whatever I want, and you have new discoveries.’

Acting is also something he doesn’t take for granted. When I mention that I loved his work in Narcos, he smiles. ‘You know, I was about to stop acting, right before Narcos. I’d been in a bunch of films, and filmmakers… I’d done a lot of cool projects, but I just wasn’t making a living. And then Narcos happened, and basically opened up the whole world for me.’ Having gone to a place of almost quitting and then found success has been good for him, he thinks. ‘Some actors have – I won’t use names – come out of the gate really hot. But I think there’s a birth, life, and death to everything. There’s not another man in the world that I would want to be, or have another life than what I have now. I love my journey. I’ve learned so much. I’m an incredibly flawed person, but I found identity and self and so much through trying to portray humanity. I know how pretentious that might sound, but I really care.’ I ask if he stays in character during his process. ‘ No, I genuinely enjoy being on set, and the vibe of the people and everyone there. I love the kind of switching back and forth, and dropping in and dropping out. I only think I can do that because I do a lot of prep work. Do I remember my takes? Yeah. I know exactly how it should be done by the second or third take, because I can’t stand going home and having 20/20 hindsight. I had that early on in my career, and I couldn’t stand that. So now I try to edit that as we go.’

A Kentucky native (‘I’m from a very, very small town in the Appalachia’), he’s the son of a coal miner and real estate agent. Acting wasn’t something that was in his family. ‘I saw a film called Slam by Saul Williams when I was 16. I just knew that that’s what I wanted to do. I was in some programmes for art when I was a kid, because I used to love to draw, and that was up until sixth or eighth grade. In high school, they cut the art programmes. There was no acting in school plays. I had no idea how to do it, but I knew that one day I was going to be an actor.’ An artistic kid, Boyd was a poet in his younger years. ‘Like all poetry, mine was about… everything. I think especially in that pivotal age, our teenage years to your early 20s – it’s all about Rumi and all those poets. ‘Don’t go back to sleep. The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.’ I was really interested in that. And now it’s more about expression and performance. ’ I wonder what he might have done for work had acting not worked out. ‘Good question,’ he laughs. ‘I don’t think I can do anything else. I don’t know, man…’

Atonement premiered at the 79th Cannes Film Festival
Boyd wears Loewe
Stylist Chloe Hartstein at The Wall Group
Grooming Charlie Cullen at Forward Artists

Dispatches

CATE BLANCHETT

May 21, 2026

Cate Blanchett, Displacement Film Fund, UNHCR’s Global Refugee Forum, Earthshot Prize

CANNES DISPATCH
Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS
Words by JANE CROWTHER

Cate Blanchett has been to Cannes many times; both with her films and as a jury president. But she returns to the festival this year on a more personal mission. She conducted one of the festival’s ‘A Rendez Vous with…’ career Q&As reserved for icons of the film industry as well as appearing on a panel as chair to announce the five filmmakers who will receive a short film grant from the Displacement Film Fund. Initiated at UNHCR’s Global Refugee Forum and now in its second year, the fund champions and funds filmmakers who concentrate their storytelling on displaced people, or have experienced it themselves. Blanchett has worked tirelessly to bring the Fund to life, combining financial support with access to industry networks, and enlisting the help of Hubert Bals Fund and IFFR as Managing Partners. Generous contributions from Master Mind, Uniqlo, Droom en Daad, the Tamer Family Foundation, Amahoro Coalition, and most recently the SP Lohia Foundation made the Fund possible.

This year Blanchett announced that Mohammed Amer, Annemarie Jacir, Akuol de Mabior, Bao Nguyen and Rithy Panh would be allocated at €100,000 budget to tell their stories, with their completed film premiering at the International Film Festival Rotterdam which runs from the 28 January to 7 February 2027. Last year’s shorts were hailed by The Guardian as ‘an anthology of five brilliant miniature artworks – shocking, funny, confessional, and deeply mysterious… a tremendous collection’. The reception cemented the Fund as a vital platform for displaced filmmakers to share voices too often silenced. Those films will also be shown at Tokyo International Film Festival and the New York’s Film Forum in the autumn.

Displacement Film Fund, UNHCR’s Global Refugee Forum, Earthshot Prize — Annemarie Jacir, Bao Nguyen, Cate Blanchett, Akuol de Mabior, Mohammed Amer

Blanchett is a UNHCR Global Goodwill Ambassador and a member of the Earthshot Prize Council as well as an actor and producer, and is passionate about putting a spotlight on unrepresented voices. ‘Our first round of DFF shorts have been met with huge enthusiasm from both the industry and our partners, while challenging expectations about what stories of displacement can look like on screen. The short form is a fantastic medium for these narratives and the way audiences are connecting with the first five films is extraordinary. I’m heartened by the success of our first cohort and thrilled to be revealing the next group of artists to be supported. We’re grateful to be hosted by Thierry Frémaux and the Cannes Film Festival who continue to champion our cause and make space for us in this most celebrated annual gathering of cinema.’

Greg Williams caught her ahead of the premiere of Garance on the roof terrace at the Palais du Festival where her Sarah Burton for Givenchy gown was as dramatic as the tales being told on screen in the theatres downstairs…

Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS
Words by JANE CROWTHER
The Displacement Film Fund is now taking submissions at
www./iffr.com/en/iffr-pro-submissions/film-entry

Dispatches

LÉA SEYDOUX

May 21, 2026

Corsage, Gentle Monster, Adèle Exarchopoulos, The Unknown

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

Dispatches

JAVIER BARDEM

May 20, 2026

Javier Bardem, Marina Sylvie Foïs, Melina Matthews, Victoria Luengo

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

Dispatches

DIEGO CALVA

May 20, 2026

Babylon, Club Kid, Narcos Mexico, On Swift Horses

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

Dispatches

RON HOWARD

May 19, 2026

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

Dispatches

CAMILLE COTTIN

May 19, 2026

A Haunting in Venice, Allied, Call My Agent!, Golda, Stillwater

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

Dispatches

JAY LYCURGO

May 23, 2026

Dispatches

ANTHONY BOYLE

May 23, 2026

Dispatches

MARION COTILLARD

May 23, 2026

Dispatches

BOYD HOLBROOK

May 22, 2026

Dispatches

CATE BLANCHETT

May 21, 2026

Dispatches

LÉA SEYDOUX

May 21, 2026

Dispatches

JAVIER BARDEM

May 20, 2026

Dispatches

DIEGO CALVA

May 20, 2026

Dispatches

RON HOWARD

May 19, 2026

Dispatches

CAMILLE COTTIN

May 19, 2026

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