Free Republic

High class escorts charging €1,000 an hour aboard luxury vessels afloat in the Riviera The blonde Slovakian call girl who gave her name as Klara was dressed in a revealing thigh split dress, making her look no different to the ranks of models, actresses and Instagram influencers tottering around in high heels as they headed out to film events. EXCLUSIVE: MailOnline investigation reveals 'putes de luxes' flock to Cannes Models, aspiring actresses and some Instagram influencers are invited on board Red carpet film premieres and appearances by Hollywood A listers make it the epitome of glamour and the most prestigious...

Hollywood star (and now father of seven) Robert De Niro is back to slamming Donald Trump in public, calling support for the former president “insane” during a press conference Sunday at the Cannes Film Festival.De Niro also compared Trump to the murderous villain in Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon. In the new movie, which had its world premiere this weekend at Cannes, De Niro plays William Hale, a cattle baron who was convicted in 1929 of murdering a member of the Osage nation over oil rights.The actor told reporters that evil still exists in the world, and former...

CANNES, FRANCE - MAY 22: Woody Harrelson attends the photocall for "Triangle Of Sadness" during the 75th annual Cannes film festival at Palais des Festivals on May 22, 2022 in Cannes, France. (Photo by Samir Hussein/WireImage) Legendary “Cheers” actor Woody Harrelson told Bill Maher the “last people” he would trust with his own health is “Big Pharma and Big Government” — and he explained why. During the 61-year-old actor’s appearance on the “Club Random with Bill Maher” podcast Sunday, the TV actor and host discussed the response to the COVID-19 pandemic over the last two-plus years. The two agreed that...

A Japanese filmmaker is shaking Cannes film audiences to the core with a dystopian vision of her country in which old people agree to be euthanized to solve the challenge of a rapidly aging population. “Plan 75” by Japanese director and writer Chie Hayakawa is based on a very real problem. Japan is the most rapidly-aging industrial society, a trend that is causing huge economic and political problems as a dwindling number of younger people must support a growing army of the old. Close to 30 percent of Japan’s population is over 65, the majority women, and that rate is...

CANNES, France (AP) — The 75th Cannes Film Festival kicked off Tuesday with an eye turned to Russia’s war in Ukraine and a live satellite video address from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who called on a new generation of filmmakers to confront dictators as Charlie Chaplin satirized Adolf Hitler. After tributes and musical numbers, Zelenskyy was streamed live for the formally attired audience who had gathered for the premiere of Michel Hazanavicius’ zombie comedy “Final Cut.”

“Hundreds of people are dying every day. They won’t get up again after the clapping at the end,” he told the audience, which had reacted with surprise when the pre-recorded message was introduced.“Will cinema keep quiet, or will it speak up? If there is a dictator, if there is a war for freedom, once again, everything depends on our unity. Can cinema stay outside of this unity?” Zelenskyy added.

A policeman survived a knife attack in the French Riviera city of Cannes on Monday, according to the country's interior minister. The incident took place early Monday morning as four police officers outside Cannes police station were preparing to go on patrol, Gerald Darmanin told reporters. The assailant approached the officers asking for information before opening the door of the vehicle they were in and stabbing one of the officers in the chest with a knife, the minister said. The attacker then attempted to stab a second officer before he was neutralized. Darmanin said the officer emerged from the incident...

[snip] How far is too far? A new movie project being presented during the Cannes Film Festival's Market has added itself the conversation. It's called When Women Rule the World and the poster image — circulating at the Cannes Market and in trade publications including The Hollywood Reporter — features a bikini-clad woman (a Melania Trump-type character called Maria Putin, played by actress Anna Hera) holding two decapitated heads. One is bloodied up to look like Trump in a Make America Great Again hat and a shaggy blond wig. The other, a gray-skinned, bug-eyed zombie. "Meet the First Lady of...

The cast and crew of a new documentary pose together on the famous red carpet at the Cannes Film Festival, ahead of a screening of their new film on French migrant rights. It tells the story of an olive farmer, Cedric Herrou, who's helped thousands of migrants cross the French-Italian border. His aid work has landed him in court a number of times, but has helped him become a symbol for activists fighting asylum law. The 38-year-old olive farmer, who stars in the documentary, says he won't let the glamour of the film industry go to his head: "I'm going...

“I thought my last film was hard,” Zhao laughs, “but for a Chinese woman to try to wrangle a bunch of young cowboys?” Chinese filmmaker Chloé Zhao is making her second trip to the Cannes Film Festival’s Directors’ Fortnight this year, with sophomore feature The Rider. Born in Beijing, Zhao went to school in the UK and college in the U.S. before settling in Denver, basing her first two feature films on South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Reservation. Zhao’s 2015 drama, Songs My Brothers Taught Me, was developed at the Sundance Institute and premiered in Park City that year. It centers...

An aspiring actress says Harvey Weinstein used Oprah Winfrey and Naomi Campbell to dupe her into thinking he would help her with her career — only to use her for sex. British actress Kadian Noble said Tuesday she was head-over-heels impressed when she first met Weinstein at an event in London because he was hanging out with model Campbell and had megastar Oprah “swinging off his arm.” “I thought, obviously, this man has something amazing in store for me,” she said during a teary-eyed press conference in Manhattan to discuss the sex trafficking lawsuit she filed a day earlier against...

There were also wins for Sofia Coppola, Joaquin Phoenix and Diane Kruger. The Competition prizes for the 70th edition of the Cannes Film Festival have been handed out tonight (28 May) in the Lumiere Theatre, with Ruben Östlund’s The Square winning the coveted Palme d’Or. Pedro Almodóvar presided over this year’s jury that also included Will Smith, Maren Ade, Park Chan-wook, Paolo Sorrentino, Jessica Chastain, Fan Bingbing, Agnès Jaoui and Gabriel Yared. Palme D’Or The Square (Ruben Östlund) Grand Prix 120 Beats Per Minute (Robin Campillo) Best Director Sofia Coppola (The Beguiled) Best Actor Joaquin Phoenix (You Were Never Really...

Hollywood screen legend Clint Eastwood sounded off on what he described as the scourge of political correctness in an impassioned speech this weekend at the Cannes Film Festival. While addressing a packed audience Sunday, the Oscar-winner said his seminal crime drama Dirty Harry could not have been made in today’s politically correct climate. “A lot of people thought it was politically incorrect,’ Eastwood said of the 1971 film he starred in. “‘That was at the beginning of the era that we’re in now, where everybody thinks everyone’s politically correct.” “We’re killing ourselves by doing that,” the 86-year-old star warned, declaring...

A backdrop of Third World atrocity, suffering and merciless human-rights violations serves as the canvas for a faux-profound Hollywood love story in Sean Penn's stunningly self-important but numbingly empty cocktail of romance and insulting refugee porn, The Last Face. Beautiful movie stars — rugged, earthy Javier Bardem sporting flawless, bedroom-chic stubble, and iron butterfly Charlize Theron, wearing dewy no-makeup makeup and an excellent moisturizer — battle for 130 stultifying minutes to listen to their hearts while their souls take a hammering. Audiences are more likely to check out and just leave them to it....

UPDATED: Sean Penn’s humanitarian romance “The Last Face” is being savaged on Twitter after premiering Friday at the Cannes Film Festival. Commenters on social media are describing the film, which stars Charlize Theron and Javier Bardem, as the worst of the fest. Others are also quipping that the picture is so awful that it destroyed Penn’s relationship with Theron. The duo broke up a year ago. When critics weighed in, they largely echoed the flash reactions that bubbled up online.

British-Indian filmmaker Asif Kapadia blasted Donald Trump’s proposed temporary ban on Muslim travel to America during a film forum Friday at the Cannes Film Festival. “Boycott Donald Trump,” Kapadia, who was raised Muslim, said Friday of the presumptive Republican presidential nominee at the 7th annual Winston Baker Film Finance Forum. “If he was president, I wouldn’t be allowed into the U.S.,” he added, according to the Hollywood Reporter. The Oscar-winning filmmaker behind the 2010 documentary Senna is in Cannes this week to promote his latest documentary, Amy, about the late soul singer Amy Winehouse. The London-born Kapadia also said the...

George Clooney is making his disdain for Donald Trump known not just here in the United States but also overseas. The actor was interviewed by members of the international press at the Cannes Film Festival on Thursday afternoon, and took some time to share with them his opinion of Trump. 'There's not going to be a President Donald Trump,' said Clooney, who held a fundraiser for Hillary Clinton last month in Los Angeles where tickets reportedly went for $353,400 per couple. 'That's not going to happen. Fear is not going to be something that drives our country. We're not going...

CANNES, France — A massive police force will be guarding the Cannes Film Festival this year. But the only scuffle on the horizon may come in response to the right-wing producers of a devastating new documentary about Bill and Hillary Clinton’s alleged influence peddling and favor-trading. “Clinton Cash,” screens here May 16 and opens in the U.S. on July 24 — just before the Democratic National Convention. The allegations are as brazen as they are controversial: What other film would come up with a plot involving Russian President Vladimir Putin wrangling a deal with the alleged help of both Clintons,...

Jodie Foster is on point. Mere minutes into conversation and she’s talking politics, specifically as they pertain to “Money Monster,” a timely thriller she’s directed. It’s impossible to watch “Money Monster,” which stars George Clooney and Julia Roberts and opens May 13, and not be reminded of the indeterminate rage of the Trump phenomenon. She’s eager to talk about “Money Monster,” in which Clooney plays Lee Gates, the swaggering, superficial star of a cable financial show who’s taken hostage by a young man, played by Jack O’Connell, whose savings have been wiped out by one of Gates’s stock tips. Foster...

Thirty-seven years ago, at the age of 32, Moustapha Dali quit show business. An Algeria native, he'd begun to build an acting career in France but tired of his Paris agents telling him he'd have to change his name to one "less Arabic, more French." As Dali recounts it, "I told them I wanted to keep my name. I said Omar Sharif didn't change his name, but they said, 'He's not a French actor, he works in Hollywood.' " Today, at age 69, the scholarly, erudite Dali is the soft-spoken but righteous rector of the Mosquee Al Madina, the main...