The new Cannes selection has been unveiled in one of the most tense and fraught geopolitical situations for years, giving even more of a frisson to the traditional rune-reading activity of scrutinising the festival’s list, and scrutinising cinema itself, for contemporary meaning. There is a very prominent Russian director in competition, Kirill Serebrennikov, with his film Limonov: The Ballad, starring Ben Whishaw as Russian opposition leader and poet Eduard Limonov, based on the novel by the veteran French author and public intellectual Emmanuel Carrère. Of course, the point is that Serebrennikov is a notable anti-government figure.
As far as the Gaza situation goes, there is an intriguing title in the Special Screenings sidebar: The Beauty of Gaza by French film-maker Yolande Zauberman, about a trans woman who travels from Gaza to Tel Aviv.
