Cannes Review: Maksym Nakonechnyi’s ‘Butterfly Vision’

Meghan Markle and Prince Harry are sharing a new photo of their little girl! On Monday, the couple shared a picture of their daughter, Lilibet, which was taken during her first birthday party at Frogmore Cottage.Taken by Misan Harriman, a close family friend of the couple, the candid shot shows the tot smiling as she sits in the grass. Lilibet wore a light blue dress and a white bow in her hair for the special day.A spokesperson for the couple tells ET that Lilibet's parents invited close friends and family to celebrate her first birthday with a casual, intimate backyard picnic at Frogmore Cottage.A source close to the family previously told ET that several relatives were on hand for the occasion, including Princess Anne's children, Zara Tindall and Peter Phillips, along with their spouses and children. The birthday girl's cake was created by Claire Ptak, from East London’s Violet Bakery, the same baker who was responsible for crafting Meghan and Harry's wedding cake in 2018.The party was an opportunity for the young children who are close in age to spend some time together, the source noted, adding that it was low-key and relaxed with birthday cake for all the kids to enjoy.Meghan and Harry are incredibly touched by the birthday wishes for their daughter, and amazed that more than $100,000 was raised for World Central Kitchen in her honor, according to their spokesperson.The organization, the couple's spokesperson explains, is close to Meghan and Harry's hearts as it's first on the frontlines, providing meals in response to humanitarian, climate and community crisis.

Jessica Kiang It’s possible that the very first casualty of war is not truth, but nuance. Since Maksym Nakonechnyi’s grimly disturbing “Butterfly Vision” was conceived and shot, the protracted Donbas conflict during which it is set has flared into all-out war following Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

India’s All That Breathes followed up its victory at the Sundance Film Festival by winning top documentary honors in Cannes.

Though shot and set prior to the Russian invasion, by dint of being a Ukrainian picture detailing the aftermath of a woman soldier’s assault in the Donbas, “Butterfly Vision” lays claim to uniquely wretched timeliness at this year’s Cannes. What is an impressive if formally flawed first film from Maksym Nakonechnyi earns some emotional weight vis-a-vis present events: the Ukrainian flags of blue and white, flown with unsparing pride across Nakonechnyi’s images, bear the immediate frisson of beleaguered resistance, and that women Stateside presently face unprecedented threats to their bodily autonomy only compounds the miserable resonance.

Naman Ramachandran Indian filmmaker Shaunak Sen’s “All That Breathes” has won the Cannes Film Festival’s top documentary award, the Golden Eye.The film won the documentary grand jury prize at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year and was acquired by HBO Documentary Films during Cannes, where it played as a special screening.Set in Indian capital Delhi, where, in an unbreathable atmosphere, the threat of inter-religious massacres floats in the air, the film follows two brothers, Nadeem and Saud, who along with their assistant, dedicate their lives to save the migratory black kites that are destroyed by human madness.The Golden Eye jury, composed of Agnieszka Holland, Iryna Tsilyk, Pierre Deladonchamps, Alex Vicente and Hicham Falah, said: “The Golden Eye goes to a film that, in a world of destruction, reminds us that every life matters, and every small action matters. You can grab your camera, you can save a bird, you can hunt for some moments of stealing beauty, it matters.

Afternoon Insiders, Max Goldbart here. Cannes is wrapping and we have the very latest from the Croisette, plus a hell of a lot more in this week’s deep dive. Read on.

The major prize-winners at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival have yet to be announced, but there is no question about which film is the most important. “Butterfly Vision” doesn’t just have the distinction of being one of the two Ukrainian productions on display (the other being Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk’s “Pamfir”), it also tells a story about the effects of warfare both on Ukraine’s soldiers and the citizens who have waited for them back home. It is almost incredible that Maksym Nakonechnyi was able to finish “Butterfly Vision” and to bring it to Cannes, where he made a touching speech about the risk of Ukrainian culture being extinguished.

Marta Balaga When Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began, director Maksym Nakonechnyi – whose debut feature “Butterfly Vision” world premiered in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard – was developing his next film – a comedy about flat-Earth conspiracy under the working title “The Earth Is Flat – I Flew Around It and Saw It.” But he is putting it on the backburner now, he tells Variety, because “this war has already changed everything.”“I wanted to make something that wouldn’t be directly influenced by the war, but then I understood it would be anyway. When we studied Ukrainian literature back at school, we used to complain about all these depressing, tragic stories.

glitziest film festival is sometimes portrayed as a bubble – and to some extent, that is true. One could easily have spent a week on the Croisette without noticing that the host country has a whole new government, and only the second woman prime minister in its history.

Cannes Film Festival.Members of the production team for “Butterly Vision,” by Ukrainian director Maksym Nakonechni, protested the ongoing war in Ukraine while on the red carpet Wednesday.In front of Salle Debussy, the second-largest theater in Cannes, the team — including producers Darya Bassel and Yelizaveta Smit, plus actress Rita Burkovska — held a banner that read, “Russians kill Ukrainians. Do you find it offensive or disturbing to talk about this genocide?”The sirens heard on the red carpet stairs were meant to symbolize air raids in Ukraine, while the protestors held signs that read “sensitive content” over their faces.Not only were they demonstrating the ongoing devastation in Ukraine, but they were also attempting to show the extent of Russian censorship.The film “Butterfly Vision” explores a similar idea, albeit in a fictional world.

Christopher Vourlias With the Cannes Film Festival abuzz ahead of the world premiere of Baz Luhrmann’s “Elvis,” a mournful air raid siren sounded over the Croisette on Wednesday afternoon, serving as a somber reminder that the war in Ukraine has entered its fourth brutal month.In a solemn protest outside the Salle Debussy, just steps from where Tom Hanks, Austin Butler and other stars of the “King of Rock” biopic were set to hit the red carpet at the Grand Théâtre Lumière, the Ukrainian filmmaking team behind Un Certain Regard player “Butterfly Vision” made an impassioned plea that the world remember their country’s suffering.Standing on the steps of the Palais as the siren wailed – a nod toward the warnings that sound across Ukraine when a Russian attack is imminent – director Maksym Nakonechnyi, producers Darya Bassel and Yelizaveta Smit, and lead actress Rita Burkovska stood side by side with nearly two dozen members of the production team. They held translucent squares over their faces bearing the crossed-eye logo used on social-media platforms when content is considered sensitive or disturbing.

Christopher Vourlias Ukraine’s Film.UA has closed a raft of deals during the Cannes Market, as the production and distribution heavyweight has defiantly continued to do business on the Croisette despite the ongoing war back home.Headlining the company’s Cannes slate is “Mavka. The Forest Song,” an animated feature about a magical spirit who’s responsible for protecting the forest from the outside world but faces her greatest challenge when she falls in love with a human.Manymore Films will be releasing the film in theaters across Scandinavia and has also acquired the rights to other projects in the Film.UA catalog.

In David Cronenberg’s latest genre twister, Crimes of the Future, Viggo Mortensen and Lea Seydoux plays partners who are performance artists, engrossed in performing surgery (largely on the former) for public nightclub spectacle. They’re enthralled with the freedom they can take on each other’s bodies. All of this in a governing society that’s not too fond of it.

Lise Pedersen As the boundaries in cinema become increasingly fluid, emerging filmmakers whose films have been selected at the Cannes Film Festival have been discussing their journey from documentary to fiction at the Cannes Market’s Cannes Docs sidebar.Curated by the Documentary Assn. of Europe, the panel on Sunday brought together Ukrainian director Maksym Nakonechnyi, the director of Un Certain Regard title “Butterfly Vision,” and Erige Sehiri (“Railway Men”), the Tunisian director of “Under the Fig Leaves,” which had its world premiere in the Directors’ Fortnight sidebar.The titles are fiction debuts for Nakonechnyi and Sehiri, who are both experienced documentary filmmakers.Inspired by the conflict in Ukraine’s Eastern Donbas region that has been ongoing since 2014, “Butterfly Vision” is the story of a young Ukrainian soldier who returns home after being held captive for months and discovers she is pregnant after being raped by her Russian warden.

as Gray made clear during his Cannes press conference. “How’d we get here?” he said.

Matt Donnelly Senior Film WriterA group of women protestors staged a dramatic scene at the Cannes Film Festival on Sunday, releasing plumes of smoke from handheld devices and displaying a long banner for the global press.At the premiere of “Holy Spider,” director Ali Abbasi’s female-centered thriller, roughly 12 women in formalwear gathered on the famed stairs of the festival’s Grand Palais with raised fists — filling the space with thick black smoke and holding a long scroll of women’s names.Security seemed unfazed by the event, allowing the protestors to be filmed and photographed. One insider close to the production said the protest was not a coordinated stunt to promote the film, about a journalist who travels to the Iranian holy city of Mashhad to investigate a serial killer murdering sex workers.

Cannes has had another protest on the red-carpet, a couple of days after a naked woman demonstrated against violence towards women in Ukraine.

Here are some of the key talking points from the Cannes Film Festival and market at half-way.

CANNES – We are living in yet another era of European history where old battles over the borders of nation-states are being disputed. Russia has invaded the sovereign nation of Ukraine after already annexing the province of Crimea less than a decade ago.

Christopher Vourlias Ukrainian filmmaker Sergei Loznitsa’s latest documentary, “The Natural History of Destruction,” bows May 23 in the Cannes Premiere section of the Cannes Film Festival. The director returns to the Croisette one year after his last feature, “Babi Yar.