Cannes' Message So Far: The World's Going to Hell, but We Love Movies!

For the first six days of the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, the festival and its filmmakers kept making the same point: "Damn, the world is a mess." And yet, in an example of gloriously mixed messages, it also took a couple of massive opportunities to add, "but aren't movies fun?" So far, Cannes '25 has made for cultural whiplash of the best kind. The festival presented a string of films that delved into the darkness that surrounds us these days, from Gaza to Ukraine to Donald Trump's administration, but it also embraced the sheer escapism of Hollywood cinema and the artistic . . .