Urgency and ambi­tion in Cannes Acid 2025

On April 15 of this year, ACID, the youngest and small­est of the par­al­lel selec­tions at Cannes, announced its line­up, which includ­ed Sepi­deh Farsi’s Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk, a por­trait of the 25-year-old Pales­tin­ian pho­tog­ra­ph­er Fati­ma Has­souna and her work doc­u­ment­ing the ongo­ing atroc­i­ties in her native Gaza. The next day, Has­souna was killed, along with 10 mem­bers of her fam­i­ly, when an Israeli airstrike tar­get­ed her home. Both ACID and Cannes released state­ments in response to her death; the dif­fer­ence between the two is illu­mi­nat­ing. Cannes said that Has­souna and her fam­i­ly ​“were killed by a mis­sile that hit their home,” and num­bered among ​“the far too many vic­tims of the vio­lence that has engulfed the region.

The Pro­gramme Com­mit­tee of ACID 2025, mean­while, said that ​“an Israeli mis­sile had tar­get­ed her home, killing Fatem and sev­er­al mem­bers of her fam­i­ly,” mak­ing her ​“one more death added to the list of tar­get­ed jour­nal­ists and pho­to­jour­nal­ists in Gaza, and at the time of writ­ing, to the dai­ly litany of vic­tims who die under bombs, out of hunger, and because of pol­i­tics of geno­cide that must be stopped and for which the Israeli far-right gov­ern­ment must be held responsible.”

Cannes is, for bet­ter or worse, one of the defin­ing bod­ies of con­tem­po­rary insti­tu­tion­al film cul­ture, and let­ting indi­vid­ual film­mak­ers make polit­i­cal state­ments while assid­u­ous­ly pre­tend­ing not to know what they’re say­ing is about the best we can hope for from insti­tu­tion­al film cul­ture at the moment. ACID’s tick­ets are avail­able for book­ing through the Cannes web­site, but it is very much its own thing, even if, by pro­gram­ming Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk, it made Fati­ma Has­souna the festival’s busi­ness, and moti­vat­ed Palme d’or jury pres­i­dent Juli­ette Binoche to devote a cou­ple min­utes of her remarks at the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny to the mar­tyred journalist.

Found­ed in the ear­ly 1990s, ​“L’Association du ciné­ma indépen­dant pour sa dif­fu­sion,” the inde­pen­dent film asso­ci­a­tion for its dis­tri­b­u­tion, sup­ports inde­pen­dent film in France and inter­na­tion­al­ly through a num­ber of fes­ti­val and the­atri­cal exhi­bi­tion ini­tia­tives. Its selec­tion at Cannes every year is select­ed by a pro­gram­ming com­mit­tee of asso­ci­a­tion mem­bers, and its selec­tion, this year as every year, reflects the affir­ma­tive pri­or­i­ties of the film artists who make up the asso­ci­a­tion. This year, that seems to mean films whose pol­i­tics are embod­ied in their urgency and ambi­tion, as well as indie-uni­ver­sal­ist human­ism from film­mak­ers from dif­fer­ent backgrounds.

Anoth­er doc­u­men­tary, Syl­vain George’s Obscure Night – ​“Ain’t I a Child,” reg­is­ters among of the for­mer cat­e­go­ry. George embeds with migrant boys in Paris as they hang out all at night in large throngs late night below the Eif­fel Tow­er, sleep­ing rough, scav­eng­ing for coins and cig­a­rette butts, com­par­ing tra­jec­to­ries through Europe’s bureau­cra­cies and cus­to­di­al sys­tems, plans for papers and arrest his­to­ries. Two and three quar­ter hours long and the cul­mi­na­tion of a three-part series, the film uses dura­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly with­in dis­tend­ed bull ses­sions and pea­cock­ing fights, sim­i­lar to the ear­li­er works of Pedro Cos­ta, and the frames are clas­si­cal as Costa’s are, too, but dif­fer­ent­ly so: the film is in mag­a­zine-glossy black and white, full of strik­ing angles on famous land­marks and unfa­mous, acne-scarred faces, both made equal­ly heroic. 

Like Lance Oppen­heim, George finds reveal­ing moments all the more strik­ing for being con­veyed in a con­spic­u­ous­ly cin­e­mat­ic lan­guage of con­ti­nu­ity edit­ing and strik­ing com­po­si­tions. Giv­en the film’s rap­port with youth explor­ing an urban envi­ron­ment, com­par­isons could also be made to author-sub­ject col­lab­o­ra­tive films like Bill and Turn­er Ross’ Tchoupi­toulas or Michal Marczak’s All These Sleep­less Nights, here achieved in the ser­vice of mov­ing lives from the mar­gins of Europe to the loom­ing foreground.

Of the fic­tion films, the open­ing night selec­tion, L’Aventura, is like After­sun, seem­ing­ly inspired by auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal home movies of the filmmaker’s child­hood fam­i­ly vaca­tion. In Sophie Letourneur’s film, 11-year-old Clau­dine, her har­ried moth­er, her feck­less step­fa­ther, and her not-yet-pot­ty-trained 3‑year-old half-broth­er trav­el around Sar­dinia on their sum­mer hol­i­days. The film jumps back and forth, its chronol­o­gy occa­sion­al­ly gar­bling as mem­o­ry does, as the fam­i­ly re-nar­rates their trip as voice mem­os for Claudine’s cell­phone. A rare acknowl­edge­ment of the low­er-main­te­nance old­er sib­ling (but not so old that she’s for­got­ten the pow­er of a sulk), these recaps, tak­ing place at restau­rants and reca­pit­u­lat­ing the bick­er­ing, lost wal­lets, missed turns, impro­vised itin­er­aries, dis­ap­point­ing meals, gor­geous sun­sets, and all-ages tantrums, are a clas­sic mem­o­ry-mak­ing exer­cise as well as a rare moment of calm in a fam­i­ly fraz­zled by meet­ing the very dif­fer­ent demands of a tween and a tod­dler, and by the rival­ries of a mixed fam­i­ly. Any film which fea­tures a 3‑year-old boy in every scene is nec­es­sar­i­ly a doc­u­men­tary; Letourneur’s is relat­ably live­ly (if it’s not your fam­i­ly) and tense (if it is).

Drift­ing Lau­rent is a sto­ry of quar­ter­life male malaise, in which the epony­mous fail­ure to launch crash­es for the off­sea­son in a fam­i­ly friend’s emp­ty ski con­do in the foothills of a not-so-mag­ic moun­tain. Then he stays, orbit­ing an inevitably quirky con­stel­la­tion of lost souls, among them a dying woman, hip­pie care­tak­er Béa­trice Dalle, and her large adult son, a Viking reen­ac­tor and vlog­ger. The tone estab­lished by film­mak­ers Anton Balekd­jian, Léo Cou­ture and Mat­téo Eusta­chon is ten­der, almost morose at times, but enlivened by com­ic moments of frankly con­fronta­tion­al social awk­ward­ness, and a few gags depen­dent upon drol­ly spe­cif­ic cam­era positioning.

Anoth­er twen­tysome­thing malaise movie, Lau­ri-Mat­ti Parppei’s debut A Light That Nev­er Goes Out, is more pun­gent with tex­tures of Braff. A clas­si­cal flautist retreats to his child­hood home in provin­cial Finland’s Rau­ma after a break­down, and thaws under the watch­ful and antic min­is­tra­tions of a man­ic pix­ie dream per­for­mance artist — a type that real­ly does tend to thrive in the indul­gent DIY cul­ture of the Nordic wel­fare state. It helps that the direc­tor is also an exper­i­men­tal musi­cian, and that the avant-punk band the way­ward pro­tag­o­nist sort-of forms, which mix­es ambi­ent drone with d.i.y. effects like the sound of a hand mix­er immersed in a gal­lon of water, is actu­al­ly pret­ty good; also that the film­mak­ing is atten­tive to the sub­tleties of a nov­el loca­tion. (Atten­tion to the mas­cu­line pos­tures of the rougher urban areas out­side of Lis­bon is also the high point of Pedro Cabeleira’s Entron­ca­men­to, an over­long neon-night/in­ter­lock­ing char­ac­ter crime thriller that strikes its pos­es unconvincingly.)

One more young man in lim­bo is at the cen­ter of the best film I saw in ACID, and one of my high­lights of the fes­ti­val. A young stu­dent in New York City to cat­sit in a vacant apart­ment, sit idly at the front desk in a most­ly emp­ty art gallery, and cruise the most­ly emp­ty week­night res­i­den­tial streets and dark park for sex is the sub­ject of Drunk­en Noo­dles, from Lucio Cas­tro. Castro’s End of the Cen­tu­ry, a mod­u­lar melo­dra­ma about box­es with­in box­es (apps on home screens of phones of peo­ple pass­ing through Airbnbs and look­ing for sex on Grindr). His third film — the sec­ond, After This Death, just pre­miered at the Berli­nale ear­li­er this year to mixed reviews — fol­lows End of the Cen­tu­ry, one of the last great films of the 2010s, in tak­ing abrupt leaps for­wards and back­wards in time, and maybe into and out of alter­nate real­i­ties, open­ing and fore­clos­ing alter­nate human con­nec­tions and life paths. Castro’s sooth­ing­ly paced, exquis­ite­ly poised vision of queer life and city life defined by con­tin­gency and pos­si­bil­i­ty is both rad­i­cal and bittersweet.