CANNES:Hungarian director László Nemes makes a powerful directorial feature film debut with his Holocaust drama Son of Saul set in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in the final days of World War II. 

CANNES: Director Gus Van Sant’s latest Cannes competitor The Sea of Trees is unfortunately one of his weaker films in recent years although it has some striking images and ideas that testify as to why Cannes selectors decided it was worthy of a place in this year’s Cannes line-up.  

CANNES: With boatloads of desperate immigrants bound for Europe in the news daily throughout Cannes French director Jacques Audiard’s drama about a former soldier, a young woman and a little girl who pose as a family to escape the war in Sri Lanka and claim asylum in France could not be more timely.

CANNES: Director Todd Haynes has transformed Patricia Highsmith’s 1952 lesbian love story The Price of Salt, also sometimes published under the title Carol, into a film adaptation that both captures the intensity and the atmosphere novel.  While not a thriller in the vein of Highsmith’s Tom Ripley novels there is still an element of suspense that draws you into the story and an air of moral ambivalence that runs through Highsmith’s novels.

CANNES: Chinese art film director art Hou Hsiao-Hsien successfully combines a beautifully shot historical film of 9th century China with a martial arts genre film in his Cannes competition entry The Assassin with the 15m USD budget showing to advantage in the high production values, and detailed historical costumes and sets.