Cannes 2018 - Climax by Gaspar Noé

In Climax, a group of dancers gathers in an isolated building to rehearse then party. A spiked sangria leads to a night of hell.

Gaspar Noé took us by surprise when Climax was announced as being finished and ready for Cannes earlier in the year, even before we knew anything about this project, and we entered the screening without having seen as much as a still still or even a list of the cast, just a vague promise of a new nightmare.

Cannes 2018 - Los Silencios by Beatriz Seigner

Having fled the Colombian conflict, in which her husband was killed, Amparo (Marleyda Soto) moves to La Isla de la Fantasia at the border of Brazil, Colombia and Peru with her two children to start a new life. They soon discover that the spirits of the dead roam around freely in their new surroundings.

There has recently been an epidemic of films that "do" social with no lightness of touch or cinema in them, in which a heavy subject blackmails its audience (and festivals' jury members). No such thing in Los Silencios. This is no social or ethnic tourism, and there is a refreshing lightness of touch despite the subject. Yet we immediately feel invested in the life of the family, their daily struggles, some small but significant, such as when Amparo who, upon registering her son at a new school, finds herself unable to afford the compulsory school uniform Neither her of the film wallow in self-pity, the film approaching these scenes with great dignity.

Cannes 2018 - Cold War by Pawel Pawlikowski

Polish director Pawel Pawlikowski had made a name for himself with a series of gritty, realistic British films (while he was born in Poland, he has lived most of his life in Britain). He returned to his home country to make the stunning Ida (2013) to worldwide acclaim and the film went on to win the Oscar for best Foreign film.

In appearance, Cold War seems similar, a Polish language film shot in black & white. Yet they could not be more different. Ida had a beautiful austerity and restraint to it whereas Cold War lets it all out, even going for a jazzy and boozy vibe as the story moves from Eastern Europe to France.

Cannes 2018 - Arctic by Joe Penna

Survival films are terribly compelling, whether it's the beautiful, wild landscapes they are set in, the man against nature primal theme, or just the soothing schadenfreude of watching somebody exposed to the elements having a terrible time, while in the comfort of a cinema/your own home.

Some directors down the action route, others use the premise as a metaphor about the might and indifference of nature (Werner Herzog!)... In Arctic, Joe Penna chooses the path of realism. The film smartly opens right after the crash of a light aircraft that caused Overgård (Mads Mikkelesen) to find himself alone in the arctic wild, with no other survivors. We are spared the usual introductory scenes, we do not know the first thing about him, giving his plight for survival a raw simplicity.

Cannes 2018 - Gräns by Ali Abbasi

A Scandinavian genre film, with a screenplay written by John Ajvide Lindqvist (author of Let The Right One In) is a salivating prospect, and indeed Gräns shares some similarities with the Swedish horror classic. In it, Tina (Eva Melander), a border inspector with an uncannily developed sense of smell, lives a lonely life due to her unusual appearance, when a stranger enters her life, one she feels a connection with, without quite understanding why at first.

Gräns is immediately captivating thanks to its inspired visuals and pervading sense of oddness. While the interiors are purposefully pictured as drab and depressing, being houses or workplaces, far from the usual stereotypes of Swedish Ikea living, in contrast nature is filmed beautifully, not in an idealised, elegiac way, but in a very earthy and tactile manner, with crawling insects and soil in close-up, a place not so much accepting as indifferent, and where Tina finds some solace.

Cannes 2018 - Everybody Knows by Asghar Farhadi

In Everbody Knows, Laura (Penélope Cruz) returns to a Spanish village for a big family wedding, having made her life in Argentina. The celebration takes a turn for the worst however, as her teenage daughter Irene (Carla Campra) is kidnapped the night of the wedding. Unable to contact the police due to threats from the kidnappers, the family members tear each other apart as they attempt to solve the mystery and rescue her.

When a director travels to a completely different country to its own, and films in a different language, there is an inherent danger that their style will not translate well, that they might have a superficial outlook over a culture they are unfamiliar with. Of course, it can also works beautifully (see Paul Verhoeven recently, with Elle).

Western by Valeska Grisebach

Armed with an Arri Alexa and a cast of non-actors, Valeska Grisebach crafts Western as exactly the kind of film you’d expect to see in the Un Certain Regard sidebar of Cannes. Naturalistic, unaffected acting? Check. Handheld camera? Check.

Socially-relevant/political plot and thematic content? Check. The socially-relevant plot here follows a group of German men travelling to a village in Bulgaria, tasked with building a new hydro-plant. The men make no attempt to integrate into their new residence. One actually raises the German flag atop their construction site, heedless to how a Bulgarian, especially one with a sense of European history, might read such an act. The men may still be in the EU, but they clearly don’t think of this backwater as worthy of courtesy.