Ioncinema

2025 Cannes Film Festival – Checklist of Our Reviews
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IONCINEMA.com’s Chief Film Critic Nicholas Bell reviewed the entire competition and more. Here is a comprehensive guide to all the feature films across all sections, including logged reviews and forthcoming ones. Our Cannes coverage continues well beyond the festival dates....
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2025 Cannes Critics’ Panel – Laxe, Mendonça Filho, Panahi & Trier Reign Supreme
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The final grades trickled in and finally, our top three has slightly changed. Instead of a firm trio, we now have a foursome as the Norwegian film added itself to the mix. All four films are Neon releases in North...
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The Mastermind | 2025 Cannes Film Festival Review
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Thieves Like Us: Reichardt Wanders with an Inscrutable Slacker Abstract paintings are not the only undefined objects in The Mastermind, the latest from Kelly Reichardt, who has become a master herself at creating quiet, emotionally resonant characterizations of lonely, isolated...
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2025 Cannes Film Festival: Jafar Panahi’s ‘It Was Just an Accident’ Wins the Palme d’Or
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He won Venice. He won the Berlinale. He now wins the Palme. With strong competition from the likes of Kleber Mendonça Filho, Oliver Laxe and Joachim Trier, it was finally Jafar Panahi’s It Was Just an Accident landing the top...
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Jeunes mères (Young Mothers) | 2025 Cannes Film Festival Review
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Bonjour Tristesse: The Dardenne Bros. Explore Teenage Pregnancy In their latest neo-realist exercise on plights of the disenfranchised, the Dardenne Bros. return to gentler themes with Young Mothers. A coterie of teen mothers living in a shelter find themselves confronted...
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2025 Cannes Critics’ Panel: ‘Sirat’ ‘The Secret Agent’ & ‘It Was Just an Accident’ Finish 1-2-3!
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Tomorrow is the big day. There were twenty-two films in competition and only one will take home the big daddy prize. If it were according to our Cannes Critics’ Panel – it would be a Spanish film that would be...
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2025 Cannes Critics’ Panel: Day 11 – Kelly Reichardt’s ‘The Mastermind’
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While she has dropped world premieres at Sundance and Venice (plus Telluride), Kelly Reichardt has been flirting with Cannes on three occasions total (plus when she was feted by the Quinzaine folks with the Carrosse d’Or award). It began with...
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2025 Cannes Critics’ Panel: Day 11 – Dardenne Bros.’ ‘Jeunes mères’
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Winner of the Palme d’Or for 1999’s Rosetta (which also took Best Actress for the recently departed Émilie Dequenne) and 2005’s The Child, Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne have been Cannes mainstays landing accolades for almost their entire filmography. Jeunes mères...
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2025 Cannes Critics’ Panel: Day 10 – Bi Gan’s ‘Resurrection’
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An already acclaimed filmmaker in his own right after 2015’s Kaili Blues won the Golden Leopard at the Locarno Film Festival and 2018’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night was selected for the Cannes Film Festival – the Un Certain Regard...
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2025 Cannes Critics’ Panel: Day 10 – Saeed Roustayi’s ‘Woman and Child’
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Iranian filmmaker Saeed Roustaee (also spelled Saeed Roustayi – I know its annoying) became part of the Cannes family when he gave us the competition title Leila’s Brothers back in 2022 (read ★★ review). For his fourth feature film, we...
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