2 h. ago Jafar Panahi wins Cannes Palme d’Or for revenge thriller It Was Just an Accident

‘Cinema is society. Nobody is entitled to tell what we should or refrain from doing,’ Panahi said

Politics

5 h. ago Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi wins Cannes Palme d’Or for revenge thriller It Was Just an Accident

‘Cinema is society. Nobody is entitled to tell what we should or refrain from doing,’ Panahi says

Politics

14 h. ago Jafar Panahi’s Cannes victory is a wonderful moment for an amazingly courageous film

Panahi has endured years of harassment from the Iranian authorities but has created a tremendous body of work; his Palme d’Or is richly deservedIranian director Jafar Panahi wins Palme d’Or at Cannes for It Was Just an AccidentIn the end, the Cannes Palme d’Or went to the most courageous film director in the world. It was a very satisfying grownup decision, favouring a remarkable and utterly individual film-maker: the director and democracy campaigner Jafar Panahi, an artist who unlike any other director in the Cannes competition really has suffered, taken real risks for cinema and spoken truth to power – and endured arrest and imprisonment for his pains.He has created a rich canon of work which has told the world about Iranian society and the Iranian mind with a subtlety and depth that we are never going to get from the TV news. Continue reading...

Politics

15 h. ago Iranian director Jafar Panahi wins Palme d’Or at Cannes for It Was Just an Accident

Panahi, long censored and previously imprisoned in his home country, took top prize as Sentimental Value and The Secret Agent also honouredThe dissident Iranian film-maker Jafar Panahi has won the top prize at the Cannes film festival for his drama It Was Just an Accident, inspired by his stints of imprisonment at the hands of the Iranian government.The film was the first made by the director after a ban on film-making was lifted – although he has continued to direct despite being expressly forbidden to do so. In 2011, a year after his first arrest, a copy of his drama This Is Not a Film was snuck into Cannes on a USB stick hidden in a cake. Continue reading...

Politics

44 h. ago Falling palm trees and a faltering Palme d’Or director: how Cannes 2025 went – and who will win

In a Cannes film festival where the greatest movies were about dictatorships and political cruelty, our chief critic shares his picks for the prixCannes this year had a lot to live up to after last year’s award-winners, headline-grabbers and social media meltdowners Anora, The Substance and Emilia Pérez. It makes reading the signs now that bit more difficult: the bizarre event on the Croisette boulevard this year was a palm tree falling over. If it happened in a film, the metaphor would be unbearable.Whether 2025’s Cannes movies are going to spark a new burst of overwhelming excitement remains to be seen, though this year’s vintage feels good – often excellent, although even the biggest names can get it wrong: former Palme d’Or winner Julia Ducournau presented an incoherent drama called Alpha. Continue reading...

Politics

66 h. ago Woman and Child review – drama of rage and pain in the Iranian marriage market

Cannes film festivalSaeed Roustaee’s new film takes aim at a slippery, entitled male who thinks he can lord it over a widow he plans to marryA strange, sad, sombre movie from Iranian director Saeed Roustaee whose last entry at Cannes was the family drama Leila’s Brothers in 2022. This is a story about the randomness of life in the big city, a melodramatic convulsion of grief, rage and pain which has a TV soap feel to its succession of escalating crises. Like Leila’s Brothers, it is about the entitlement of Iran’s menfolk, and how a man – however shiftless, casual and low-status – can somehow pull rank on a woman in the marriage market.Payman Maadi (from Asghar Farhadi’s A Separation) plays Hamid, an ambulance driver in his late 40s with a certain roguish ladies-man charm whose unmarried status raises eyebrows among some of his acquaintances, but who is now engaged to Mahnaz (Parinaz Izadyar). She is a smart, hardworking hospital nurse who is widowed and lives with her sister Mehri (...

Events

66 h. ago Dissident Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi's presence in Cannes speaks volumes

Before this week, the dissident Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi hasn’t attended the premiere of one of his films in more than 15 years

Politics

4 d. ago A Simple Accident review – Jafar Panahi takes us on a nightmare trip into a land of bribes and brutality

Cannes film festival An unfortunate encounter with a dog sets off a chain of surreal, grotesque events that expose the corruption and tyranny at the heart of IranJafar Panahi is the veteran Iranian auteur and democracy campaigner who continues to get arrested and imprisoned, to endure film-making bans and defy the law, finding loopholes through which his movies can be made and shown abroad. And the Iranian authorities, tensely and hypocritically aware of world scrutiny and indeed the soft-power prestige still to be accrued from Panahi’s eminence, appear (almost) to tolerate it.Now Panahi has come to Cannes with what might be his most emotionally explicit film yet: a film about state violence and revenge, about the pain of tyranny that co-exists with ostensible everyday normality. There are macabre stabs of satire, black comedy and horror-farce, and the movie almost looks like an Iranian dissident tribute to Weekend at Bernie’s or even Hitchcock’s The Trouble With Harry. Continue rea...

Politics

4 d. ago ‘I think of those I left behind in prison’: Iran’s Jafar Panahi on life as a banned film

He’s been jailed, gone on hunger strike and been forced to sell his house for bail. In his first newspaper interview for 15 years, the great director explains why every film is worth the consequencesIn February 2023 Jafar Panahi walked free from Iran’s Evin prison after nearly seven months behind bars. Friends and supporters had gathered to greet him, but the moment of release felt bittersweet and he struggled to adjust back to civilian life afterwards. In the weeks that followed he developed a habit. He’d drive his car back and forth on the road that paralleled the high prison walls, pining for those who were still inside. “These people had become my people,” he says. “I thought, ‘How could I go and leave them behind?’”Panahi makes humane, heartfelt pictures about life in Iran. He refers to these as “social films”, although this definition cuts no ice with the Iranian government, which has ruled them to be “propaganda against the system” and therefore hazardous, offensive material....

Events

5 d. ago Alpha review – Julia Ducournau’s disjointed body horror is an absolute gamma

Cannes film festivalThe winner of the Palme d’Or for Titane delivers Cannes’ first true turkey: the tonally inept tale of a girl with a dodgy tattoo and a disease that turns people to marbleStrident, oppressive, incoherent and weirdly pointless from first to last Julia Ducournau’s new film Alpha has to be the most bewildering disappointment of this year’s Cannes competition; even an honest lead performance from Mélissa Boros can’t retrieve it.I admit I was agnostic about her much-acclaimed Palme d’Or winner Titane from 2021 but that had an energised purpose lacking in Alpha and Ducournau’s excellent 2016 debut Raw is still easily her best work. Continue reading...

Events

5 d. ago Denzel Washington surprised with honorary Palme d'Or award at Cannes Film Festival

The legendary actor, 70, attended the premiere of his latest film Highest 2 Lowest during the event in which director Spike Lee presented him with the award.

Events

2 w. ago 'He's a machine': Cole Palmer reveals Chelsea's best player after vital Liverpool win

England star earns man-of-the-match honours after finally ending long goal drought, but he lavishes praise on ‘dream’ team-mate

Sport

2 w. ago Cole Palmer takes aim at ‘idiots and trolls’ as Enzo Maresca lauds star man

‘If we want top five, we need Cole,’ says Chelsea managerLiverpool’s Arne Slot on defeat: ‘The margins are small’“The kind of player who can do things that no one expects,” Enzo Maresca said of Cole Palmer after this game. Still, pretty much the last thing anyone expected Palmer to do in mid-January was to go 18 games without a goal in all competitions.Now, with the drought finally at an end courtesy of a late penalty against Liverpool in a 3-1 win for Chelsea, Maresca said that Palmer was “not happy” with his lack of goals in the last few months, and backed him to help the side “reach something important” in the crucial last few games of their season. Continue reading...

Politics

2 w. ago Chelsea vs Liverpool LIVE: Cole Palmer ends goal drought to wrap up win over Premier League champions

A win is vital for the hosts with the top-five race heating up as they welcome the champions to Stamford Bridge

Sport

3 w. ago Cole Palmer has made feelings clear on Chelsea's latest transfer talks as 'review' planned

Chelsea may have found a solution to their ongoing goalkeeper dilemma ahead of the summer transfer window, with Cole Palmer describing one rumoured target as a future "world-class" player

Sport

3 w. ago Cannes unveils jury including Juliette Binoche, Halle Berry and Jeremy Strong

Halle Berry, Jeremy Strong and Indian filmmaker Payal Kapadia will be among the jury members at this year’s Cannes Film Festival deciding the Palme d’Or winner

Politics

4 w. ago Celebrity Big Brother winner 'sealed' as Patsy Palmer drops massive clue

Six celebrities remain in the Celebrity Big Brother house, with the winner of the 2025 series due to be unveiled on Friday evening

Politics