The Film Stage

Diciannove Trailer: Luca Guadagnino-Produced Venice Selection Comes to U.S. This July 
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While he stays prolific on the directing side with this year’s After the Hunt, after last year’s double offering of Challengers and Queer, Luca Guadagnino is also lending his producing expertise to a number of projects. Along with Dea Kulumbegashvili’s...
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Cannes Review: A Poet is a Darkly Humorous Tale of Failed Creative Pursuits
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Far removed from the mournful yearnings of A Quiet Passion––much less the quotidian, calming rhythms of Paterson––Simón Mesa Soto’s Medellín-set second feature finds unexpected poetry in the jagged, pained misery of dashed dreams and misinterpreted, career-ending good intentions. A Poet’s...
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Ghost Trail Review: An Engrossing Surveillance Thriller Haunted by the Syrian War 
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Note: This review was originally published as part of our 2024 Cannes coverage. Ghost Trailer opens in theaters on May 30. The wars in Gaza and Ukraine have dominated headlines for the past several years, yet receiving relatively little coverage...
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The Best Films of the 2025 Cannes Film Festival
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The 78th edition of the Cannes Film Festival has now concluded, with Jafar Panahi’s It Was Just an Accident taking home the Palme d’Or (see all jury winners here). While our coverage will continue with a few more reviews this...
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Cannes Review: The Chronology of Water is Kristen Stewart’s Elemental Calling Card for Directorial Greatness
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Book adaptations yield two kinds of films: those that transliterate and those that translate. While the former insist on keeping the source material’s spirit at the cost of a rendition so faithful it comes to stage things rigidly, like a...
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Cannes Review: Koji Fukada’s Love on Trial Gracefully Unpacks Idol and Agency
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What is love? For some, it is mutuality––a chemistry, care, and concern that blossoms into an equally supportive relationship. For others, it is devotion––a one-sided, obsessional affection that the lover finds selfless. Japanese idol group Happy Fanfare sing about love,...
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Cannes Review: In Kelly Reichardt’s The Mastermind, Crime is a Losing Game
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For the second time in three years, Cannes’ competition ends with a film in which Josh O’Connor plays a scruffy, late-20th-century man with some knack for pinching masterpieces. Following (spiritually or otherwise) Alice Rohrwacher’s La Chimera is Kelly Reichardt’s The...
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Cannes Review: Sylvain Chomet’s A Magnificent Life is a Saccharine Tribute to Marcel Pagnol
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It’s common for a successful artist to be asked about advice they’d give their younger self; one film from this year’s Cannes Specials selection does the opposite. In Sylvain Chomet’s animation A Magnificent Life, French playwright, filmmaker, and inventor Marcel...
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Jafar Panahi’s It Was Just an Accident Wins Palme d’Or; See Full List of Cannes 2025 Winners
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Juliette Binoche’s Cannes jury has unveiled their winners for this year’s edition, awarding the Palme d’Or to Jafar Panahi’s It Was Just an Accident, marking NEON’s sixth Palme in a row. Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value picked up the Grand Prize...
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The B-Side Ep. 162 – Clint Eastwood (with Mitchell Beaupre)
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Welcome to The B-Side! Here we talk about movie stars! Not the movies that made them famous or kept them famous, but the ones that they made in between.  Today we discuss Clint Eastwood, the director and the movie star....
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