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“‘History’ with a Capital ‘H'”: Mascha Schilinski on Cannes 2025 Award-Winner Sound of Falling
Lena Urzendowsky in Sound of Falling
Mascha Schilinski’s Sound of Falling was so rapturously acclaimed upon its premiere on the first full day of Cannes 2025 that some thought they’d already seen a possible Palme d’Or winner. In the end, her film shared the Jury Prize with another adored Competition title, Sirât, whose end-times death-trip might seem to overshadow the ordinary-sounding logline for Sound of Falling: four generations of girls on a farm in Germany. But this film swiftly establishes itself as an equally virtuosic secret history and sustained experiment in female subjectivity in kaleidoscopic form, drawing on scenes and notes from journals and voices from the archives. Though set during World War I, World War II, Soviet-era East Germany and post-reunification, the characters’ lives are grounded… Read more
Practical Magic: DP Aaron McLisky on Bring Her Back
Billy Barratt in Bring Her Back
In A24’s Bring Her Back, a grieving mother (Sally Hawkins) takes a pair of orphaned siblings into her secluded home with nefarious ulterior motives. It’s another slice of southern Australian horror steeped in trauma and grief from Talk to Me twins Mark and Danny Philippou, infused with ample gore and unsettling dental carnage. The brothers’ sophomore directorial effort reteams them with Talk to Me cinematographer Aaron McLisky, who spoke to Filmmaker about their latest venture on the eve of its theatrical release. Filmmaker: I saw Talk to Me in the theater when it came out and loved it, but I didn’t know anything about the Philippou brothers. I only found out they started as YouTubers under the name RackaRacka after seeing Bring Her Back. Their… Read more
“There Was No Going Around Gaza”: Raoul Peck on Cannes 2025 Premiere Orwell: 2+2=5
Orwell: 2+2=5
Raoul Peck's new documentary Orwell: 2+2=5 opens with a credit sequence featuring images of what appear to be microscopic larvae wriggling across the screen. The message seems clear: something nefarious is afoot on this globe, but still in its incipient stages. If we fail to act, it’s going to get much worse. In recent years, the filmmaker has made direct, no-nonsense use of the nonfiction form to address, from various angles, the rot of white supremacy, its historical roots and its unchecked future. Building on I Am Not Your Negro, Silver Dollar Road, the miniseries Exterminate All the Brutes and last year’s Ernest Cole: Lost and Found, Orwell uses the famous writer's letters, essays and novels to illustrate the clear rise… Read more
Cannes 2025: Awards, Young Mothers, Sentimental Value, Resurrection
Resurrection
The cinema world was quick to juxtapose an image from the climax of this year’s award ceremony—where Iranian director Jafar Panahi took home the Palme d’Or for his generously-received It Was Just an Accident—alongside one in which this year’s jury president Juliette Binoche protested Panahi’s 2010 arrest and imprisonment while she accepted her Best Actress prize for Certified Copy. The latter image, one of the most indelible of recent Cannes history, also circulated a bit after the lineup was announced several weeks before the festival began, as many doubted Binoche’s capacity for impartiality. Whether or not Panahi’s film needed only to be at least decent (or, rather, acquired by Neon) in order to secure the Palme, it was hardly the… Read more
“I Was Only Trying to be Objective — That Was My Conflict:” Charles Burnett on Killer of Sheep
Killer of Sheep
With Killer of Sheep entering the Criterion Collection today in a new 4K restoration, we are reposting James Ponsoldt's interview with its director, Charles Burnett, from our Spring, 2007 issue. “When I stumbled across a 16mm print of Killer of Sheep at film school in North Carolina, it was like finding gold. I had never seen an American film quite like it...raw, honest simplicity that left me sitting there in an excited silence. It echoed throughout George Washington, the first film that David Gordon Green and I made together.” — Tim Orr, cinematographer (All the Real Girls, Raising Victor Vargas) What sort of anxiety exists in the influence of a visionary masterpiece that is virtually unknown by a majority of the mainstream… Read more
“To Me All This is the Circus and I Get to Join this Family, This Tribe of People”: Bobby Naderi, Back To One, Episode 343
You know Bobby Naderi from his subtle and sometimes hilarious work in films like Bright and The Beekeeper. Now he brings that same aliveness to the new Amazon series The Better Sister, where he plays Detective Matt Bowen. On this episode, he talks about how his nomadic youth shaped his life and work, how failures paved the way for breakthroughs, why he stopped anticipating how a scene will play out, how his mother’s blunt criticism of his acting work helped him get better, and much more. Back To One can be found wherever you get your podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Google Play, and Spotify. And if you're enjoying what you are hearing, please subscribe and rate us! Follow Back To One… Read more
“We’re On the Cusp of a Real Revolution in Independent Film”: Producer Joe Pirro on Cannes 2025
Caroline Clark and Joe Pirro
Producers Joe Pirro and Caroline Clark attended the 2025 Cannes Film Festival as Gotham Cannes Producer Network Fellows. Pirro is with the New York company Symbolic Exchange, and Clark L.A.'s Kindred Spirit. The two recently collaborated on Andrew Ahn's The Wedding Banquet, and here, in a part one of a two-part conversation, that share their festival debrief. First up, Clark querying Pirro. Clark: You were awarded this year’s Sundance Institute | Amazon MGM Studios Producers Award for Fiction at the Sundance Film Festival. From a decorated producer’s point of view, how do you like to prioritize your time at Cannes, given all of the offerings available to you? Pirro: Cannes is a challenge from a scheduling perspective. You’re in the south of… Read more
Cannes 2025: Entroncamento, The Mastermind
Entroncamento
In a piece about the documentaries at this year’s Cannes, Slate’s Sam Adams noted the existence of Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk but declined to name the section it was in, referring to it only as “a low-profile sidebar devoted to independent productions.” That would be ACID, which—with the possible exception of the CINEF section that shows film school shorts—is, yes, probably the lowest-profile of the Cannes premieres sections. To decide ACID isn’t worth naming is a reminder of the infinite proliferation of hierarchies at Cannes; there are dark rumors that even though the press badges are theoretically tiered by color (yellow at rock bottom, with my humble blue the next step up), there are tiers within… Read more
