Fionnuala Halligan

1 month ago | screendaily.com | Fionnuala Halligan

Chiwetel Ejiofor and Erin Kellyman co-star in this Holocaust-themed story set in New York’s Jewish community Source: Cannes International Film Festival Dir: Scarlett Johansson. US. 2025. 98mins Consolidating her headliner status at the age of 94, June Squibb looks, as a character in Eleanor The Great disparagingly says, like ‘she’s gonna live forever’.

1 month ago | screendaily.com | Fionnuala Halligan

Simon Pegg, Hayley Atwell and Ving Rhames return for a sequel that’s more stunt than substance Source: Cannes International Film Festival Dir. Christopher McQuarrie. US. 2025. 169mins. Lost for the first third in its own lore, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning is only final in that it’s the second part of an MI two-parter made concurrently by star/producer Tom Cruise and director/producer/co-writer Christopher McQuarrie, their fourth collaboration on the franchise.

1 month ago | screendaily.com | Fionnuala Halligan

What to expect when you’re expecting Cannes for the 78th time? This year’s suddenly sprightly looking festival seems to have cumulatively shaken off its legacy obligations and it’s a frisky bunch of hopefuls vying for the Palme d’Or and the Un Certain Regard grand prix (as well as the Directors’ Fortnight and Critics’ Week participants down the Croisette who always feel slightly wild and untamed anyway).

2 months ago | screendaily.com | Fionnuala Halligan

Source: Matt Baron/BEI/Shutterstock Even by the standards of Cannes, the figures reeled off by delegate general Thierry Fremaux at today’s line-up announcement were arresting. He reckons that one-third of the global industry’s output was submitted to the festival, at just under 3,000 titles (2,909). That’s a lot of selection power wielded by just one entity in a single sector, if you were to look at it purely in economic terms. Is it healthy? Cannes, of course, would say yes.

2 months ago | screendaily.com | Fionnuala Halligan

Source: Venice Film Festival Oscar-winning British director Asif Kapadia has spoken of the difficulties of both making and distributing his end-of-days doc/fiction feature 2073. Told from a future perspective after the collapse of society, it utilises real-life footage to point to global tragedy to come. But Kapadia says that the “tipping point into authoritarian rule” has already arrived.