Austrian director Michael Haneke claimed the coveted Palme d’Or, the top prize of the Cannes film festival, for “Das Weisse Band” (The White Ribbon”), instantly catapulting the movie on the top of the list of this year’s must see films around the globe. Cannes, of course, is the world’s top film festival where cinematic art precedes the showbusiness commerce of Hollywood. For the full story, click here.

The win comes as somewhat of a surprise because heading into the final weekend of the festival , Cannes watchers had said French prison drama “Un Prophete” (”A Prophet”) had the upper hand at grasping the Palme d’Or (Golden Palm). But Cannes awards are given by a jury, and jurors can be a fickle bunch.

This year’s group of nine jury members was headed  by French actress Isabelle Huppert and included Italian actress Asia Argento, U.S. director James Gray and U.S. actress Robin Wright Penn, and rumors had spread that debate among the group had been spirited — or perhaps passionate is a better word here on the French Riviera. For a full list of winners, click here. In any case, Haneke pulled off an upset.

“The White Ribbon” takes place in a small town in northern Germany just ahead of World War I. It tells of a village of families, parents, kids, a pastor, doctor and tenant farmers in which something is amiss. A series of sinister crimes take place for which a group of children – cruelly disciplined by their parents – emerge as the prime suspects. And the eerie, black-and-white film becomes an exploration of the roots of Nazi terror.

There is little doubt that, with the Golden Palm tucked under it’s arm, Haneke and “White Ribbon” will become a must-see movie on this year’s list of top films. It will likely head toward this coming year’s Oscar race as a favorite. But to win that honor — the world’s top film award — it has a long way to go. Lest one forget, last year’s Palme d’Or winner, French film “The Class,” appeared to be a shoo-in for the Academy Award for best foreign language film, only to be surprised by Japanese movie “Departures.” Yes, the Cannes jurors can be a fickle bunch, but so can Oscar voter. We’ll see what happens, come next February.

The 2009 Cannes film festival reaches its finale on Sunday night when the coveted Palme d’Or (Golden Palm) trophy is awarded to the best film among the 20 in competition. That movie, and current frontrunner is French movie “Un Prophete” (”A Prophet”) will likely find success in theaters around the world.

But critics have been widely mixed with their reaction to the overall slate of films screening at Cannes this year (read a wrap up here). The lack of a clear thumbs up, or thumbs down, also has been a hallmark of the Cannes’ movie market in 2009, where buyers and sellers of film rights from around the world meet to do business. Read about that, here. And while 3D films were a big part of Cannes after the festival opened with Disney’s animated “Up,” the reality is that for independent filmmakers, making a 3D film is a mixed (there’s that word again) proposition. For that story, clicke here.

What does it all mean? At the mid-point of ‘09, the worldwide independent film industry is in flux. After funding for movie production froze in the waning months of 2008, a glut of films is expected to work itself off by the end of this year, and that means that financiers — with a little more visibility on the future economic outlook — are once again beginning to look at movies in which to invest for 2010. But the capital flow into the market, for now, is just a trickle. If you’re a seller and you have a good, “A” movie with marketable stars, then you might find theaters to screen it. If it’s a straight to video title with “B” or “C” stars, times remain difficult because your primary market is DVD retailers (sales are down) or TV (ad revenues are dismal).

The next big meeting for the global, independent film industry is the American Film Market in Los Angeles, starting Nov. 4, and it will provide a fresh look at the business of indie movies. On the art front, look to the Telluride, Venice and Toronto film festivals that start in late August and run into early September to see what’s on the minds of filmmakers.

Until then, take a look at the video below on the final weekend at Cannes. It’s a wrap!

As the Cannes film festival headed toward it’s final weekend with a few films left to play on Saturday and awards to give away on Sunday, the reactions to films screening here seemed to be mixed and the star power decidedly low, which was what had been expected going into the world’s largest film gathering.

The frontrunner for the coveted Palme d’Or, the festival’s top honor, appears to be French film “Un Prophete” (”A Prophet”) from director Jacques Audiard, telling of a 19-year-old man who learns how to survive in prison. Read more about it here. Because Cannes is considered a festival where cinematic art is explored, winning the Palme d’Or does not always translate into commercial success, especially in the Hollywood-dominated United States. But Sony Pictures Classics acquired U.S. distribution rights to the film, and they are masters at luring U.S. audiences to foreign films. Perhaps their biggest success in that arena was Oscar nominee “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.”

The major starpower of the festival was, as expected, the Wednesday premiere of Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds,” which brought Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie to Cannes’ red carpet. You can read about that movie here. And if you want a peak inside their premiere party, just scroll down the Fan Fare blog, and we give you some video behind the velvet rope. The other major star on the carpet was Spain’s Penelope Cruz in Pedro Almodovar’s “Los Abrazos Rotos,” (”Broken Embraces”). Click here for a story on that title. Both of those movies ended up with mixed buzz from their Cannes screenings.

The big bomb was “Antichrist” from Denmark’s Lars von Trier, mostly because people considered it excessively brutal to the point of being gross. Read about it here. But But von Trier is considered an artist of cinema, and the thing about art is that it is supposed to challenge people, make them think in new ways and see the world differently. Perhaps that is what “Antichrist” eventually will do. It was picked up for distribution in the U.S. by IFC Films.

And the parties? Going into Cannes, merchants, caters, restaurateurs and others were expecting business to be down about 30 - 40 percent. That has likely proven to be true, but the real result won’t be known until after all the receipts are tallied up. But it is certain, there were fewer events, fewer invitations and fewer crowds along Cannes beachside Croisette and inside its posh hotels. That tale of low lights and dim star wattage — with the exception “Twilight” heartthrob Robert Pattinson, is here. Still, if you got in, the parties were just as fun as ever. We tried to bring you the parties here on the Fan Fare blog, and you can watch some of them by scrolling down.

Business was mixed, too. If you had a good movie, business was good. If not, it was pretty rough. That tale of haves and have-nots is here. And business can’t be frowned upon even at an art-focused, cinema-loving event like Cannes because, after all, money does make the world go around. That is as true in Cannes as it is in Hollywood.

Celebrity heiress and businesswoman Paris Hilton is back in Cannes to drum up some interest in the documentary “Paris, Not France”, which follows her as she goes about her daily life being rich and famous.

The 28-year-old tried to prevent the film, directed by Tom Petty’s daughter Adria, from reaching the big screen, but now sees it as a  kind of set-the-record-straight exercise for someone whose portrayal in the media is not always flattering.

“I was a little scared,” Hilton told reporters at the Cannes film festival, where she said she was partying hard. “I filmed it over three years ago so it was a different period of my life.”

“It also shows how it is living in this life and how much pressure there is. It definitely shows a different side than the media portrays me as.”

You can read about the documentary here, from a story we did when it screened back at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2008.

Asked why she thrust herself into the limelight as much as she did, Hilton replied: “I have a brand, I have a business … I always have something to promote. I love doing it, it’s fun. I always loved Marilyn Monroe and she loved the camera and the camera loved her and I just think of her as one of my idols.”

Sure, Penelope Cruz will be on the Cannes film festival’s red carpet, and Brad Pitt will be there too. But the festival is not all big stars and glamorous premieres. There’s real business that goes on, too. Buyers and sellers of rights to independently made movies — those made outside Hollywood’s major studios — meet up to do deals.

For the past few years, the indie film business has been in a funk as a glut of expensive movies failed to do big box office and, more recently, the global financial crisis dried up financing to make movies. But major players here say tough times could be nearing and end. While film promotional parties are down, the ranks of company staffs in Cannes are thinner, and restaurateurs and hoteliers have said business is down some 30 percent, many company executives say they have been pleased with the amount of business that has been done.

To read the Reuters story on the business of Cannes ‘09, click here.

For a video tour of the film market’s convention floor — not the glam red carpet — click below. And stay until the end of the video because Jonathan Wolf, executive vice president of the Independent Film and Television Alliance, offers two comments on Cannes’ current business climate and a look ahead to this fall’s American Film Market in Los Angeles.

If Danish director Lars von Trier was out to create a stir with his movie “Antichrist”, he got what he came for in Cannes. After a charged press screening where the movie, in competition at the film festival, was jeered, laughed at and loudly booed, the reviews are in, and unsurprisingly, most of them are, well, diabolical.

Faced with a hostile question during a press conference, the director who won the Palme d’Or in Cannes with “Dancer in the Dark” in 2000, took exception, and said he did not make his film for the press sitting before him or, for that matter, for an audience at all. That only served to wind some members of the press up further, begging the question why he made the film at all.

The explanation appears to be to help von Trier get over a bout of depression. The result is a horror starring Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg as a couple who struggle to overcome the grief of losing their young son. What Gainsbourg’s increasingly deranged character does to her husband, and then to herself is hard for a family-friendly blog page to describe. Suffice it to say that many of the 1,000 people watching groaned and turned away.

Critics have attacked the film for being gratuitously violent and sexual, pretentious and misogynistic. But it also has a handful of reviewers who defended it, saying it is one of the few films in Cannes this year that dared to be different.

Just for good measure, von Trier-the-provocateur told reporters he believed he was the world’s best director. I couldn’t work out if he was joking or not.

Plus ca change…

The Cannes film festival IS different from recent editions, but not radically. For me, the most noticeable difference between 2009 and 2005/6/7/8 is the absence of stars, be they genuine cinema greats or headline-grabbing celebrities who people care about, however fleetingly.

Sure, there are famous people here — Quentin Tarantino, Penelope Cruz, Mariah Carey, Brad Pitt, (a little later on) and Bill Clinton (in town soon for a charity dinner). But there are significantly fewer than we in the press are used to. In one sense that’s a good thing in that reporters can concentrate more on the film festival itself rather than the red carpets and celebrity-driven stunts. On the other hand, any major festival, and particularly the world’s biggest in Cannes, needs the glamour that star power brings to generate interest around the world.

So that’s what is different. But what is the same is the sunshine, the extortionate prices, the yachts in the harbour occupied by scantily-clad women and not-so-scantily-clad men, the parties (albeit fewer) and that “Cannes attitude”, in other words, “put-on-your-Sunday-best-even-if-it’s-Monday-because-you-never-know, someone-important-might-notice-you.”

Here at the Cannes film festival along the world famous Croisette, which is not unlike a seaside boardwalk in the U.S., a sort of circus atmosphere lights up the night as tourists stroll along the beachside walkway. Posh hotels, designer boutiques and restaurants border the Croisette and its adjacent boulevard. Artists and street performers work the crowds that come out to see film stars who are here to attend the festival. Movie companies advertise their upcoming films, and industry pros take a break from business to schmooze a little. A nighttime view is pictured above, and for a video look, click below:

And to read some of our early stories from Cannes, click below:

Jane Campion

Martin Scorsese

Lou Ye’s banned Chinese Film

Opening Night

Disney/Pixar’s Up

Call it a Cannes-style recession, courtesy of Disney magic. Even though there are fewer people at this year’s film festival — merchants say business is down some 30 percent — the opening night premiere party for the movie “Up” still lit up the Croisette late Wednesday night.

The new Disney/Pixar animated movie about an old man who ties balloons onto his house and floats into the air on the journey of a lifetime opened to solid reviews by critics, and fans at last night’s premiere almost unanimously seemed to buy into its sentiment.

But beyond the Disney/Pixar celebration, the party mood that generally grips this playground for the rich and famous on the French Riviera was decidedly subdued. There were fewer yachts in the bay, fewer loud discos pumping music onto the beach and several restaurants and bars that would usually be packed with opening night crowds had, in fact, closed for lack of business.

Still, as they say in entertainment, “the show must go on,” and Disney put one on late Wednesday night. One small item of note, however. Typically at these premieres, there will be plenty of food and drinks on hand, but it did not go unnoticed by anyone at the Disney party that the food was, for the most part, only fruits and candy — hardly a feast for Cannes. Then again, these are tough times, even in the film business.

The first film has been shown at Cannes and it is already a hit, which will come as welcome relief in the general climate of economic crisis that has surrounded the start of the festival.

Disney/Pixar’s “Up”, the story of retired balloon salesman Carl Fredricksen, thrown together with a keen but clumsy boy scout called Russell, has been hailed as “arguably the funniest Pixar effort ever” by The Hollywood Reporter and as a “tremendous film” by Britain’s The Guardian newspaper.

Director Pete Docter said he was inspired by film-makers of an earlier era like Frank Capra and “Up’s” debt to old movies is obvious.

Three dimensional digital effects give a remarkable visual depth to the adventure of the gruff old widower and the zealous young stowaway who float away to South America in a house borne aloft under a string of balloons. As the pair swing precariously through the clouds above the jungle green or flee a bounding pack of dogs, the 3D effects add a dazzling dimension to the tale. But beneath it all, the film is an old fashioned story of love and redemption in the classic Hollywood manner that would have done the old master proud. “Walt Disney always said that for every laugh there has to be a tear,” said producer and Pixar boss John Lasseter. Many a tear certainly seemed to be creeping out from under the special 3D goggles at the press screening and it was faintly disconcerting to see so many hardened reporters blubbing silently away as the credits rolled.

None of that will hurt of course and amid all the gloomy talk of recession and cancelled parties, “Up” added an undoubted “feel good” element at Cannes that will doubtless translate into huge commercial success. “Boxoffice-wise, the sky’s the limit for ‘Up.’” , The Hollywood Reporter, for one, opined.
Four years in the making, “Up” was conceived well before subprime mortgages, a collapsing financial system and ever-mounting jobless rolls became the stuff of daily headlines.

But its echoes of the sentimental comedies that audiences turned to for comfort and entertainment in the troubled decades of the 1930s and 1940s, seem oddly appropriate in an economy facing its worst crisis since the Great Depression.