Ukrainian Docmaker Sergei Loznitsa Drops Trailer for Cannes Premiere ‘Natural History of Destruction’ (EXCLUSIVE)

John Cena has met a Ukrainian teenager with Down's syndrome who used him as inspiration while fleeing the country. The WWE legend travelled to the Netherlands to meet 19-year-old fan Misha Rohozhyn, who fled from Mariupol in March with his family amid the Russian invasion. During their journey, Misha's mother Liana motivated her son with a "motivational fantasy" that the Hollywood star would greet them at the end of their travels, and he was upset Cena wasn't there when they arrived in May.

Ukrainian soldiers are wearing their pride on their chest with a unicorn patch as an act of defiance against Russia and the country’s attempted erasure of LGBTQ+ people.Out LGBTQ soldiers currently fighting for Ukraine’s sovereignty from Russia have been donning unicorn patches to signal to Russian President Vladimir Putin, and Russia as a whole, that they won’t be silenced. Back in 2014, Russia invaded Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula. During that invasion, there was an overwhelming push by the Russian military to remove anyone from its ranks who identified as a part of the LGBTQ community.The Crimean Peninsula has historically been one of the few safe spots in Eastern Europe to be LGBTQ.

Ben Croll Ukrainian producers Anna Eliseeva, Egor Olesov, and Iryna Kostyuk – who had just left the car after driving the two-day drive between Kyiv and Cannes — kicked off this year’s Annecy Goes to Cannes Animation Day with a call to arms.“While Ukraine is fighting with Russia we need to keep fighting on a cultural level,” said Olesov, whose project “Mavka, The Forest Song” (pictured) was one of five works-in-progress presented at a May 22 morning session. “Culture is our strongest weapon right now, and we need to show ours to the whole world.

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.

NEON earned bragging rights tonight with the third consecutive Palme d’Or Cannes winner in a row, that being Ruben Östlund’s satirical comedy Triangle of Sadness, which was a huge crowd pleaser during the fest.

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.

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.

here. Earlier in the festival, an unplanned demonstration disrupted the red carpet for George Miller’s film “Three Thousand Years of Longing” when a topless, screaming woman wearing body paint of the Ukraine flag was escorted off the red carpet.

The Cannes Film Festival has had its third red carpet protest in the space of a week.

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.

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.

Ukrainian filmmakers are here in Cannes and, in the words of poet Dylan Thomas, they will not go gentle. While some are here to promote films screening here in Cannes, many are here to drum up support for their country and ensure that their voices are not forgotten as media headlines about the Russian invasion begin to diminish.

Three Thousand Years of Longing” at the Cannes Festival on Friday.Wearing only panties drenched with blood-red paint, the screaming woman had the Ukrainian flag sprayed across her chest with the words “Stop raping us.” The word “scum” was also written on her lower back. Video posted to Twitter shows security personnel covering up the woman and escorting her off the carpet.

Christopher Vourlias In the days after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, organizers of the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival quickly shifted gears to offer whatever support they could.

Marta Balaga Butterfly Vision (completed) Director: Maksym Nakonechnyi Producers: Darya Bassel, Yelizaveta Smith Production: Tabor Productions, 4 Film, Masterfilm, Sisyfos Sales: Wild Bunch Lilia, held as a prisoner of war for months, finally returns home. But she is struggling to resume her life as a soldier and wife, while discovering she is pregnant.Chrysanthemum Day Director: Simon Mozgovyi Producers: Alex Chepiga, Artem Koliubaiev Production: Mainstream Pictures Young doctor encounters an old woman, known as a healer, who mysteriously survives a nuclear explosion.

Christopher Vourlias One day after dissident Russian filmmaker Kirill Serebrennikov’s “Tchaikovsky’s Wife” premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, members of the Ukrainian film industry took to the Croisette to call for a total boycott of Russian movie. Meanwhile, just steps away in the Palais des Festivals, the director’s long-awaited return to cinema’s grandest stage was overshadowed by questions about the festival’s controversial selection and over the film’s financial ties to Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich.Speaking at a politically charged press conference on Thursday, Serebrennikov described Russia’s war in Ukraine as a “total catastrophe” but rejected calls for a boycott of Russian film.

The International Film Festival Rotterdam has appointed its new team line up and structure as the festival revamps.

Christopher Vourlias Ukrainian director Olha Zhurba and producer Darya Bassel are teaming up on a documentary about Ukraine’s refugee crisis after their last collaboration, “Outside,” premiered at Copenhagen’s CPH:DOX festival this year.The project, with a working title “Displaced,” is being produced by Bassel’s Kyiv-based Moon Man production outfit in co-production with Germany’s Koberstein Film and Denmark’s Final Cut for Real.Zhurba began filming not long after the Russian invasion on Feb. 24, capturing footage of the thousands of Kyiv residents who had flocked to the capital’s railway station for safety.

Returning to Cannes a year after his feverish drama “Petrov’s Flu” hit the Croisette, Kirill Serebrennikov can finally attend the festival in person after recently being free from years of house arrest. Debuting in competition, his latest offering, “Tchaikovsky’s Wife,” is a slow-burn historical drama that never manages to escape from being a bore despite its seemingly intriguing premise.