The FAB UK team is hard at work running around from event to event getting the best coverage of the film festival online and in the next issue of FAB UK Magazine.
Of course, this is a festival of the film – and day 3 was a day just for that. It was good to be indoors as the outside temperatures hit 27 degrees and were very muggy!
The highly anticipated French film ‘November’ was screened for the press at the early time of 9:00 a.m. ‘November’ is about the aftermath and police investigation five days after the Paris terrorist attacks where 130 people were killed all across the city, including at the Bataclan Theatre, on a November evening. Oscar-winning actor Jean Dujardin (‘The Artist) plays a police investigator, who, along with his team, is tasked with looking for, and chasing, the suspected terrorists before they attack again.
‘November’ is gripping, tense, taut, and an important film chronicle about the attack. The direction of Cedric Jiminez is spot on. At the press conference later in the day, FAB UK asked the director if he came up against any negativity or protests in making the film.
He said that the characters are composites of the investigators and that the film does not at all touch upon the victims and who they were, so permission was not needed to film such a delicate topic still fresh in the minds of the French people.
Tahar Rahim and Virginie Efira star in director Serge Bozon’s latest film “Don Juan.” It’s a take-off on the famous story of the lothario who tries to woo women of all shapes and sizes everywhere he goes. In this one, Rahim plays a stage actor who is playing Don Juan and sees his ex-fiancée in every woman he sees, and he attempts to seduce each and every one. ‘Don Juan’ is quirky but not quite believable.
‘Joyland’ was such a joy to watch.
It’s the first Pakistani feature film (in 75 years) to be shown at Cannes, and what a film it is. It took director Saim Saddiq seven years to bring his film to the big screen. A married man (excellently played by Ali Junjo) falls for a trans-woman (Alina Khan – a real find) who hires him to be a backup dancer in her erotic show. Meanwhile, he’s got an expectant wife at home who suspects her husband is not the man he says he is. Controversial subject matter for a Pakistani film where homosexuality is still illegal. Kudos to the cast and crew for pulling this superb film off. At the screening, Director Saddiq said that the film was his for seven years, and now it belongs to the rest of us. FAB UK met up with the producer Oliver Ridge later in the day and the interview will be in the next issue of FAB UK Magazine.