France’s top film producer says it will blacklist figures who petitioned against rightwing billionaire

Canal+ head says he will not work with hundreds of actors and directors who signed protest against Vincent Bolloré’s political sway The head of France’s biggest film producer, Canal+, has said the group will no longer work with hundreds of cinema figures who signed a petition voicing concern over the growing influence of the rightwing billionaire owner Vincent Bolloré. The open letter, published earlier this week to coincide with the opening of the Cannes film festival, was signed by more than 600 figures , including the actor-director Juliette Binoche, the director and photographer Raymond Depardon, the French-Iranian film-maker Sepideh Farsi and the director Arthur Harari , who co-wrote the Oscar-winning Anatomy of a Fall and is premiering his film The Unknown in the main competition in Cannes. Continue reading... from Film | The Guardian https://ift.tt/y3L0r7x via IFTTT

Young Soul Rebels review – life-giving ode to diversity in silver jubilee London

Part thriller, part drama, part comedy, Isaac Julien’s urban pastoral set in the aftermath of a homophobic murder still feels fresh, buoyant and likable

Isaac Julien’s feature from 1991 is rereleased after more than 30 years and it still feels fresh, buoyant, likable and emotionally open. It is a paean to diversity and intersectionality set in east London during the 1977 Queen’s silver jubilee, with some cheeky jibes about middle-class outlaws and “St Martins” art-school types (St Martins being Julien’s own alma mater). Young Soul Rebels takes the form of an urban pastoral, but is also a kind of romantic comedy, a coming-of-age drama about friendship and a thriller about a brutal homophobic murder – and there’s actually a clever plot twist about the victim’s tape-deck which another type of film might have made much more of, maybe in the manner of Francis Ford Coppola.

A young black man is murdered while cruising in a park and the news has different effects on his friends, Chris (Valentine Nonyela) and Caz (Mo Sesay) who run a pirate radio station called Soul Patrol. Chris is stunned but Caz is all the more determined to throw himself into his music and maybe get them both a job on the local white-owned radio station, Metropolitan, which has a huge patriotic crown in the lobby and a life-sized cutout of the Queen, waving. (I’m surprised no one’s done that for King Charles.) Chris is angry that Caz is not as grief-stricken as he is, and pulls away from him into a relationship with stroppy white punk Billibud (Jason Durr); meanwhile, biracial and bisexual Caz faces bigotry from his black friends and he retreats from Chris into a new relationship with a production assistant at the radio station: this is Tracy, in which role Sophie Okonedo made a terrifically warm debut.

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