As you read this, I will be packing my tuxedo, linen shirts and several packets of ibuprofen for the Cannes film festival, which kicks off on Tuesday – back where it belongs in the calendar, in the springy blush of May. At last year’s pandemic-delayed July edition, a wildcard Palme d’Or win for Julia Ducournau’s genderqueer cars-and-carnality freakout Titane seemed an apt response to the humid conditions.
For viewers at home, Mubi’s Cannes takeover season offers some highlights from festivals past, from little-seen finds such as Mauritanian director Med Hondo’s powerful 1967 immigrant portrait Oh, Sun to more recent successes such as Laurent Cantet’s impassioned schoolroom debate The Class. Three of Mubi’s selections are from last year’s festivals, not yet seen in the UK: Arnaud Desplechin’s airless Philip Roth adaptation Deception was a disappointment, but Nadav Lapid’s jury prize winner Ahed’s Knee is exhilarating stuff, a scorching, incensed attack on what it perceives as the cultural complacency of contemporary Israel. A more gentle must-see is Mariner of the Mountains, Brazilian director Karim Aïnouz’s wistful, lyrical documentary on his own mixed heritage and sense of not-belonging, tracing his first ever trip to his father’s homeland of Algeria in his mid-50s.
