Cannes looks beyond Hollywood as US film-makers mostly fail to make the grade

The 79th edition of the influential festival boasts an auteur-heavy lineup – with one, very big, country conspicuous by its almost total absence Gillian Anderson and Cara Delevingne to hit Cannes as auteur heavyweights dominate festival lineup Has Europe fallen out of love with the US? Has Cannes fallen out of love with Hollywood? Will the festival, like Nato, become a non-American institution? Either way, the annual announcement of the Cannes selection has revealed a list that skews away from Hollywood towards a renewed dominance of world-cinema auteurs and heavy hitters, including Pedro Almodovar, Cristian Mungiu and Asghar Farhadi. There’s certainly nothing to compare with last year’s Tom Cruise Mission: Impossible extravaganza, although there are directorial debuts out of competition for Andy Garcia (also starring) with his crime drama Diamond, and John Travolta directs Propeller One-Way Night Coach, expressing his love of aviation, based on his own novel. There are no Britis...

My Worst Enemy review – Iranian exile recreates torture and interrogation in study of regime power

Mehran Tamadon’s film about autocracy in Iran could have revealed more about methods of control, despite a star turn from Zar Amir Ebrahimi

Film-maker Mehran Tamadon is preoccupied with the question of conscience, especially in contexts of extreme power imbalance. An Iranian exiled in France, he has made documentaries about the most fervent supporters of the Islamic regime, starting with Bassidji in 2009.

In 2012, Tamadon was detained by Iranian authorities for hours of questioning, and though he was subsequently released, he became persona non grata in his home country. Now the director has turned to the tools of film-making to try to lay out a path for a return. He gathered a group of fellow exiles, with whom he re-created the lengthy interrogation sessions they once endured. His hope was that that final film would stir introspection, and even empathy, in the hearts of their former tormenters.

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