Cannes Opens Amid AI Debate and Hollywood Absence

The 2026 edition of the Cannes Film Festival opened on May 12 with international stars gathering on the red carpet, while conversations around artificial intelligence, the absence of major Hollywood studios, and political tensions overshadowed the celebrations. Actors including Demi Moore and Elijah Wood attended the opening ceremony on the French Riviera. Veteran actor and activist Jane Fonda officially declared the festival open alongside Chinese actor Gong Li. During her speech, Fonda described cinema as “an act of resistance” and said: “We tell the stories... that bring empathy to the marginalized,

The Bangladeshi Gangster, the Psycho, and His Beloved Ammajan

I want to tell the story of a Bangladeshi gangster. A feared man. A killer. A man many would call a psychopath. One day his mother asked one of his men to bring “some fruit.” She did not mention apples, bananas, or oranges. So Badsha bought every fruit in the shop and brought them all home. The story is absurd, but it tells us everything we need to know about the world of Ammajan. In this film, love is never simple. It is excessive, possessive, and often destructive. Badsha,

Cannes 2026 Embraces Auteur Cinema with Star-Studded Global Lineup

The 2026 Cannes Film Festival is shaping up as a strong showcase for auteur cinema, with new competition titles from Asghar Farhadi, Pedro Almodóvar, Paweł Pawlikowski, Ira Sachs, Hirokazu Kore-eda, László Nemes and Ryusuke Hamaguchi. Following a 2025 edition marked by major Hollywood titles such as Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning and Highest 2 Lowest, this year’s selection leans heavily toward international and independent filmmaking. Ira Sachs stands as the sole American director in competition with The Man I Love, a musical fantasy set against the AIDS crisis in 1980s

Project Hail Mary: Science, comedy and a touch of pathos

Phil Lord and Chris Miller adapte Andy Weir's bestseller ‘Project Hail Mary’ with Ryan Gosling and Sandra Hüller as a grand science fiction adventure – somewhere between a cosmic Robinsonade and a light-hearted family film. It begins with one of the oldest motifs in literature: A man awakens alone, cut off from the world, forced to make sense of where he is, who he is, and what he must do to survive. In Project Hail Mary, Ryland Grace - played by Ryan Gosling - opens his eyes to find himself

Four Bangladeshi Documentary Projects Selected for Cannes Docs 2026

Four Bangladeshi filmmakers are taking part in Cannes Docs 2026, one of the world’s leading documentary platforms held alongside the Cannes Film Festival 2026 in France. The initiative has been organised by Alliance Française de Chittagong in collaboration with Bisubo Art Organization and supported through the French PICC grant, according to the French Embassy in Dhaka. The selected filmmakers are Kazi Arefin Ahmed with Opekkha, Citto Aanondi with Blue-Collars from the Frontline, S M Kamrul Ahsan with In Search of Her, and Sumon Delwar with My Cousin. The projects were chosen through a ' ...

Mrinal Sen and His Cinema in a Time of Crisis

A young man has a job interview. Everything depends on it. He has the qualifications, the confidence, and the desperation of someone who knows that one opportunity can change a life. But there is a problem: he cannot find a Western suit. He rushes through Calcutta in search of one. Shops are closed. Time is running out. What begins as a simple errand gradually turns into something larger. The suit is no longer just a suit. It becomes a symbol of colonial hangover, middle-class anxiety, and a society still measuring ' ...