Cannes 2019 - The Swallows of Kabul by Zabou Breitman & Eléa Gobbe Mevellec

In Kabul in 1998, Atiq, a former moujahidin reconverted as a prison guard leads a disillusioned life, remaining faithful to his cancer ridden wife who is living her last few weeks. Meanwhile, the young Zunaira and Moshen are in love and trying to live their passion despite the heavy restraints put upon every aspect of their lives by the extremist religious regime in place.

The Swallows of Kabul is adapted and co-directed by French actress turned director Zabou Breitman and Eléa Gobbe Mevellec and this is the kind of cinema that can come across as critic-proof, in the sense that a heavy-going, topical social or political subject can make it difficult to criticise it so there was that concern before getting into this screening.

Cannes 2019 - Deerskin by Quentin Dupieux

French director Quentin Dupieux is a real maverick across several artistic mediums. An electronic musician also known as Mr. Oizo, he has delivered a filmography filled with UFOs (unidentified filmic objects), with various degrees of success but with a go for broke attitude that is commendable. From Steak to Wrong Cops and Reality, not forgetting his best so far in my humble opinion, Rubber (about a killer tyre...), there simply is nothing quite like him and his work so any new films is his is always greeted with a certain, tensed trepidation.

His latest (and starriest) just opened Directors' Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival, and considering the very strange premise, its presence was a fitting companion for this ceremony considering it also saw John Carpenter receive a "Carosse d'Or" for this career. In it, George (Jean Dujardin) has a fetish for deerskin clothes but wearing them is not enough, he also goes on a jackets stealing spree, often obtaining them from unsuspecting victims through some brazen set-ups.

Cannes 2019 - Bull by Annie Silverstein

In Bull, Kris (Amber Havard), a teenager in Texas from very modest social environment, seems to have her life already mapped out in front of her with very few opportunities, until she meets ageing rodeo wrangler Abe (Rob Morgan) and strikes an unlikely friendship with him.

Bull, presented in the Un Certain Regard sidebar selection in Cannes, will most probably suffer from an unfair comparison with Chloe Zhao's arthouse sensation The Rider (2017), because of a somehow similar premise and the fact that both are directed by women, which seems a little easy and unfair.

Cannes 2019 - The Dead Don't Die by Jim Jarmusch

Jim Jarmusch truly is an unmistakably independent director, at a time when the term seems to have been packaged and monetised by certain film studios that offer the same aesthetic and crowd pleasing social themes. It is hard to think of any director with such an incredible run from his early career in the 80's until now and such a unique, timeless style, evidently free from any studio interference yet never self-indulgent. Having recently tackled vampires recently in Only Lovers Left Alive (2013), this time he turns his focus on zombies with horror-comedy The Dead Don't Die.

In The Dead Don't Die, the small town of Centerville, USA is under siege by a hordes of living dead, and it is down to its small police force to try to save the population, with a bit of help from mysterious newcomer Zelda (Tilda Swinton).

Birds of Passage by Cristina Gallego & Ciro Guerra

Corruption can take many forms. From Milton’s Paradise Lost to Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street, characters are corrupted, losing parts of themselves along the way as they continue to descend into the depths of their own darkness. This kind of corruption runs through the veins of Birds of Passage, a film about the drug trade that shows the destructive nature that evil can have on individuals and communities.

Vox Lux by Brady Corbet - review

The transitional months between 2018 and 2019 have seen a significant number of formidable female-led musical films, and Brady Corbet’s much touted follow-up to his feature directorial debut The Childhood of a Leader has already earned a great number of fans over in the States. Finally, Vox Lux makes its way into British cinemas and on demand.

Vox Lux, unlike Corbet’s debut, is set much closer to modern times, and begins with a young man carrying out a school shooting. From there, we follow Celeste, a survivor of this shooting, who decides to perform an original song at a local memorial to articulate her response to the atrocity. With a sense of what feels almost like inevitability, Celeste’s performance becomes a national sensation, and she’s set on an inexorable path of musical megastardom.

Under The Silver Lake by - review

“There’s nothing to solve you know. It’s silly wasting your energy on something that doesn’t matter.” a girl casually says to Andrew Garfield’s Sam after he suggests there’s a hidden message in a song that will help him find a missing woman. He doesn’t listen to her lol. David Robert Mitchell’s Under the Silver Lake is an odyssey of pop culture that dives headfirst into Hollywood’s secrets, but it’s not really about that.