30 DAYS OF CINEMA

In this seductively twisted, modern romantic thriller, obsession is taken to wondrous and vertiginous extremes. Without a doubt one of the most electrifying minds working in cinema today, Park Chan-wook won the Best Director award at Cannes for his sumptuous, Hitchcockian masterwork.

Director Levan Akin centers the vital spirit of Istanbul’s trans community in this poignant story of unlikely connection. With three exquisite performances that vividly transcend generational divides, Crossing is a defiant city symphony and a compassionate tale of hope, identity, and forgiveness.

Following a celebrated performance piece about creative evolution, Zia Anger turns narrative cinema inside out with this meta-fiction, starring Odessa Young and Devon Ross. Transforming failure into rituals of rebirth, this poignant film captures the zeitgeist and comes straight from the heart.

Vibrant with the ecstasies of being young and fleetingly free, this Cannes prizewinner from British filmmaker Molly Manning Walker is an honest take on female friendship and first sexual experiences. Buzzing with the excitement of new horizons, Mia McKenna-Bruce shines in a star-making performance.

Wild with the elemental powers of water, fire, and air, Léa Mysius’s witchy second feature inventively folds a queer love story—featuring a magnetic Adèle Exarchopoulos—in a girl’s time-hopping coming-of-age fantasy. Magic is afoot in this genre-defying family tale of desire, prejudice, and revenge.

Reimagining the road movie with the next generation of misfits, celebrated directorial duo the Ross Brothers make a coming-of-age film that runs on free-flowing feeling. Alive with friendship and the promise of the moment, Gasoline Rainbow is a beautiful reminder of what matters and what’s real.

Three lovers spin in a vortex of pent-up desire and resentment in Ira Sachs’ fresh, honest and acerbically funny take on messy, modern relationships. Just like its dynamic leads—Franz Rogowski, Adèle Exarchopoulos and Ben Whishaw—this refreshingly fluid relationship drama simply oozes sex appeal.

Moviegoing dreamers, there is hope for us still in this timeless, tender romance from living legend Aki Kaurismäki. Imbued with the filmmaker’s idiosyncratic playfulness and deadpan humor, this bittersweet comedy charmed even the most dour of critics and, delightfully, won the Jury Prize at Cannes.

Rebelling against the banality of work, Rodrigo Moreno’s playful and restorative Cannes highlight reinvents the heist film as a free-flowing adventure in which love and epiphanies bloom. A beguiling and defiant quest for personal freedom that dares to embrace the strangeness of life with open arms.