Taking On Cannes With Unifrance’s Inaugural French-American Critics Lab

Cinema has always been a transforming force in my life. Though I grew up in a household without cable and was only allowed to watch TV on weekends, movies were ever-present. My father, born in Lagos, Nigeria in the years following the second world war was enamored with film. He introduced my sister and me to films like My Fair Lady, The Sound Of Music, and Pride and Prejudice. A forever student and curious about the world, he used cinema as a window into different cultures and periods. His love of the moving picture was transferred to me and I made a career out of it. 

Though I’ve had the opportunity to attend several North American film festivals over the years including Sundance, Toronto, Tribeca, Urbanworld, American Black Film Festival, and New York Film Festival -- Cannes has always been a dream of mine. Earlier this year, after being nominated by Indiewire’s Executive Editor and VP of Editorial Strategy Eric Kohn, I was invited to participate in Unifrance’s Inaugural French-American Critics Lab program.

Unifrance’s Critics Lab was set in place to strengthen the ties between U.S. and U.K. film critics and the French film industry. For the first time, I ventured to Cannes to cover a plethora of French films coming from up-and-coming directors who were presenting their first or second features at the festival. 

While I had festival experience, Cannes is THE festival. I arrived in the South of France on a blissfully warm Tuesday just as the festival was beginning. After settling into my apartment space, I headed to the infamous, Palace of Festivals and Congresses of Cannes to grab my credentials. Though it all looked intimating with long lines and robust security, it was a seamless process.

In the days leading up to the festival, I had been slowly selecting tickets for the screenings that I wanted to attend. Since the tickets opened up online at 7 am GMT and only opened one day ahead of time, that was a bit of a harrowing experience at first. However, the festival was able to modify the experience for the press so that became more seamless as the festival pressed forward. Still, I must say that waking up extremely early every day, even if you didn't have an event or screening to attend was a bit much after a while. 

With my schedule set and a pen in hand, I began embarking on my screenings catching some sensational films including the quippy, Everybody Loves Jeanne the stunning Love According to Dalva, and the majestic, The Five Devils. 

In addition to my 10 written reviews, Unifrance allowed me the opportunity to also take part in video reviews. Since I’m used to speaking through my writings, it was a bit of a learning curve for me, but after a couple of tries I got the hang of it, and it became a new skill set that I’ve been able to flex. 

My critic colleagues and I also were heavily supported by Unifrance while we attended the festival. There was a centrally located hub where we were able to work and record our reviews. We also attended several dinners and lunches where we were introduced to French directors, actors, producers, and distributors enabling us to make long-lasting connections after returning home. 

With a focus on French films, I was able to see more than 20 films that I would not have normally been able to see at any of the previously listed festivals. Moreover, the warm days and beautiful sand beaches of Cannes made it the perfect backdrop. 

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Overall, Cannes was a dream experience, and I am so thankful to both Unifrance and Eric for enabling one of my career goals to come true. 

'The Silent Twins' Starring Letitia Wright Is Fascinating Despite One Glaring Misstep [CANNES REVIEW]

Nearly 60 years after their birth, the story of June and Jennifer Gibbons is still as compelling as it ever was. In her intriguing new film, The Silent Twins, Polish filmmaker Agnieszka Smoczynska brings the heartbreaking and fascinating real-life story to the big screen. Smoczynska used journalist Marjorie Wallace’s 1986 book of the same name as the foundation for her film.

We meet the girls first during their formative years in Wales, England, portrayed by Leah Mondesir Simmons and Eva-Arianna Baxter. In their bedroom, they are transfixed with one another, locked in their own world where they have long and fascinating conversations. They are vibrant and loud —delighted to be with one another. Smoczynska uses stop-motion animation to display the twins' daydreams and their playtimes. In reality, the pair sit in their room all day, heads hung, whispering quickly and quietly to one another. When their mother enters their space, and when they encounter anyone else, there is a defining and eery silence. 

'The Dam' Leaves So Much Unsaid [CANNES REVIEW]

For Lebanese visual artist and filmmaker Ali Cherri, the violence of war, chaos, and displacement find its way into the soil under our feet. In his feature film The Dam, set in northern Sudan, Cherri follows Maher (Maher El Khair), a quiet brick worker who spends his days toiling under the blazing sun. Day after day, Maher builds bricks with mud and water, born out of the Nile River. The work is backbreaking, and Maher and the other men who work with him are cheated out of fair wages. Yet, despite the presence of a painful wound on his back, shaky cellphone service that leaves him adrift from his loved ones, and news of the bloody civil uprisings in the central city, Maher toils on.

At night while the other men rest, Maher's laboring continues. He slips away on a borrowed motorbike into a desert clearing. There, he constructs a mysterious structure made from mud. Though the structure is never explicitly named, the audience immediately recognizes Maher's reverence for it and the diligent way he works on it. The structure is the key to his freedom. It is a symbol of a different kind of life he might have.

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In ‘El Agua’ One Young Woman Decides Her Own Fate [CANNES REVIEW]

Elena López Riera’s debut feature El Agua is a mystical blend of fiction and documentary-style filmmaking. Set in Orihuela, a small Spanish town outside of Madrid, the film follows 17-year-old Ana (Luna Pamiés), who comes from a long line of “cursed” women. Her mother, Isabella (Barbara Lennie), and grandmother, Angela (Nieve de Medina), have lived in Orihuela all of their lives. Now that school is complete, Ana has become increasingly fearful that she, too, will be stuck in the village forever. Though she has a close-knit group of girlfriends, there is little more to do in Orihuela than smoke, party, race pigeons, drink and find work picking fruit in the citrus groves.

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‘Summer Scars’ Is Too Ambitious for Its Own Good [CANNES REVIEW]

Summer Scars (Nos Cérémonies) opens with two young brothers playing a game of chicken. They sprint furiously across a large cliff overlooking the sea in Southwest France. The eldest brother Tony (Gregory Lu), taunts Noé (Benjamin Lu) to run faster. The lighthearted game ends abruptly in the next round. Tony fails to break his acceleration and skids forward, tumbling down the side of the rock. When a frightened Noé reaches the bottom of the cliff, he finds his older brother’s body sprawled out with blood pouring from his head. Weeping and pleading with Tony to stay with him, Noé kisses his brother in what the audience assumes is a final farewell. 

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‘Falcon Lake’ Captures the Vulnerability and Terror of Teenhood [CANNES REVIEW]

Those few years that stand between adolescence and the teen years are an awakening. They are consumed with overwhelming discovery and loss, as is depicted in Falcon Lake. For 13-year-old Bastien (Joseph Engal), the summer he travels to Quebec from France with his family changes everything. Tall and lean and with no cell phone access until he turns 14, Bas seems excited about his summer vacation. 

He spends his days entertaining his toddler-age brother Titi (Thomas Laperriere), playing with his Nintendo Switch, and avoiding the waters of Falcon Lake. A scary incident from his younger years makes swimming an activity he actively avoids. While Bas seems content at first to spend his days lounging under the near-constant overcast sky, he finds himself the unlikely companion of 16-year-old Chloé (Sara Montpetit), the daughter of his parents’ friend with whom they are staying. Bas and Titi are also sharing a bunkbed in Chloé’s bedroom. 

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‘Everybody Loves Jeanne’ Is Witty Melancholy Perfection [CANNES REVIEW]

Romantic comedies aren’t exactly hitting the nail on the head for women over 30. Therefore, when a film gets it right, it sits with you for quite some time. As is the case with Céline Devaux’s debut feature, Everybody Loves Jeanne. Jeanne Mayar’s (Blanche Gardin) life isn’t exactly going to plan. Just as her career as an environmentalist is set to launch to the next level, a mishap with her self-powered sea cleaning machine causes all of her investors to pull out at the last minute, effectively bankrupting her. 

Now swimming in debt, she has no choice but to take her brother Simon’s (Maxence Tual) advice and travel to Lisbon, clean out their deceased mother’s massive apartment, and put it up for sale. Jeanne has been actively avoiding her childhood home and the tragic circumstances surrounding her mother’s death for the past year. Returning there is the very last thing she wants to do. 

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'Rodeo' Is An Unexpected and Sometimes Bewildering Ride [CANNES REVIEW]

From the moment Julie (Julie Ledru) is introduced in Rodeo, it's made clear that the only thing she cares about is motocross. However, the expensive sport doesn't exactly fit into the twenty-something's current lifestyle and financial plan. Living in a housing project apartment with her mother and brother, every day of Julie's life has been a fight. Still, first-time director Lola Quivoron never presents Julie as a waif. Though her slender frame and wild mass of hair could have certainly had her walking runways in another life, in this one, she spends her days stealing motorbikes from unsuspecting eBay sellers after she cons her way into getting test drives.

As a loner, companionship -- romantic or otherwise -- doesn't seem to be high on Julie's list until a faithful encounter with the B-Moore bike gang changes everything. Riding solo, Julie happens upon one of the all-male group's illegal rides. Enamored, she watches them as they thrust their bikes in the air, twisting and turning their bodies over the seats and handles with elegance and style. The scenes are some of the most mesmerizing of the film. Quivoron worked with acclaimed stuntman Mathieu Lardot of Mission: Impossible fame to capture the shots on-screen.

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‘Love According to Dalva’ Won’t Let You Look Away [CANNES REVIEW]

It’s not clear how old Dalva (Zelda Sampson) is when her face first appears on screen, but the audience soon learns the 12-year-old is made to look much older than she is for a reason. Emmanuelle Nicot’s debut film, Love According to Dalva, opens in a frenzy of screams and shouts as Dalva, with her red hair placed perfectly into a chignon, bangs her fists on a door screaming for a man named Jacques (Jean-Louis Coulloc’h) as the police take him away. Shortly after that, Dalva is seen being quietly examined by a calm but concerned doctor. The girl focuses on the woman’s eyes, brown skin, and necklace as the examination occurs. As Nicot’s camera zooms in on Dalva’s face, her youth is immediately apparent, and it’s clear that something horrible has happened to her, even if she doesn’t realize it just yet. 

Sexual abuse and trauma are always challenging to unpack, especially when the survivors are children and have dealt with incest. They are also narratives that are nearly unbearable to watch on screen. However, by turning the story over to Dalva, instead of centering it on one of the adults surrounding her, Nicot never allows her audience to look away. Instead, in Love According to Dalava, we walk through Dalva’s journey with her as she struggles to understand the grooming and the abuse she’s endured while trying to recapture some of the childhood that has been snatched away from her. 

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A Bright-Eyed Young Girl Gives ‘Alma Viva’ Its Magic [CANNES REVIEW]

For precocious and bright-eyed Salomé (Lua Michel), her grandmother, Avo (Ester Catalao), is magic. In Alma Viva, the French-born young girl spends her summers under the muggy heat of her family’s Portuguese village, where she tends to her beloved Avo, who is known in town as the village sorceress. Though her aunt and uncle buzz around them in the background, Avo is the center of Salomé’s world. She tends to her grandmother, brushing her hair, bringing her fish, and praying at her side as she calls on spirits and communicates with the dead.

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‘Scarlet’ (‘L’Envol’) Never Becomes the Fairytale It Seeks to Be [CANNES REVIEW]

Italian director Pietro Marcello’s French-set film Scarlet (L’Envol) is ambitious. Adapted from Russian writer Alexandre Grin’s 1923 novel Scalet Sails, the film centers on a young woman, Juliette (newcomer Juliette Jouan), through her childhood and into her early adult years. Juliette is raised in the French countryside of Normandy by her father, Raphaël (Raphaël Thiéry), and a caring widow Adeline (Noémie Lvovsky), who houses the father/daughter duo on her farm. Adeline steps into the role of a surrogate mother following the death of Raphaël’s wife.

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