Express At Cannes: As curtains come down on Cannes, some non-main competition favourites

Listening to the 86-year-old Loach speak about his latest film, about a town in the Northeastern UK divided by racism and protectionism, was even more rewarding. This is a filmmaker who has always worn his politics on his sleeve, and in this last one, his fierce engagement with current events almost verges on the polemic. But to see someone who belongs to one of the richest countries in the world, speaking up for the dispossessed, makes a difference: we bear witness, because he does.

#CannesMoments | Last night, Ken Loach delivered a message of hope at the presentation of The Old Oak, his latest film in Competition. Will he become the first filmmaker to win 3 Palmes d’or? Find out tonight when the #Cannes2023 Palmarès is revealed. pic.twitter.com/2Xaq7KT7HR

— Festival de Cannes (@Festival_Cannes) May 27, 2023

One of the by-products of focussing on the competition line-up is not being able to watch as much from the other sections of the festival. Here are my top non-main competition films, which draw attention to original first-time voices, or throw light on parts of the world which are still under the radar, in terms of creating cinema which travels outside their borders.

Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry (Directors’ Fortnight) by Elene Naveriani is about a 48- year- old woman in Georgia who is struggling with the kind of issues middle-aged women face everywhere. A lack of intimacy, which she seeks to alleviate with a man she becomes close to; and a surfeit of gossip from her so-called friends who call her for coffee and cake, and make digs at when they think she isn’t listening. Her dilemma, does she trade her independence for company with all its attendant irritants, or chooses to stay free of all encumbrances, is instantly relatable.

Geng Zihan’s A Song Sung Blue (Directors’ Fortnight) refreshes the coming-of-age trope by giving us a protagonist who invites not easy sympathy, but a nuanced understanding of what a 15-year girl can feel if her divorced mother goes off for a long period, leaving her in the care of her father. The latter is involved with a woman, who has an 18-year-old daughter of her own. The younger girl is instantly drawn to the older one, and their relationship, rocky yet intense, becomes the strongest bond in the film.

Omen (Augure), the first film from Congo at Cannes, has already won the top prize in the Un Certain Regard section. Directed by Belgian rapper Baloji, it is about an interracial couple navigating the complicated strands of identity and tradition. Koffi wants to introduce his Belgian wife, pregnant with twins, to his parents, and the journey that they undertake changes their lives. Executed in zany, jagged, stream-of-conscious strands which intercut the stories of the characters—Koffi’s mother hasn’t forgiven her son for marrying ‘outside’, his father seems to have vanished—Omen is a psychedelic, vivid delight.

Inshallah A Boy is the first film from Jordan at the Cannes, screening in Critics’ Week, a non-competitive parallel section which features first and second films from filmmakers around the world. It is about Nawal, a woman forced to fend for herself after the death of her husband, hounded by the latter’s brother, and only given partial support by her own male sibling: the house which was paid for by her dowry is not in her name, her brother-in-law demands that she pays him the money owed to him for transactions she is unaware of, and threatens to take away her daughter, stating in a family court that she is a ‘bad mother’.

Patriarchy, misogyny, and the implacable hatred towards women who speak their minds is the toxic mix Amjad Al Rasheed’s debut feature seeks to highlight: the country’s law states that if a woman doesn’t have a son, her husband’s family is entitled to a share in the inheritance. Nawal’s brother-in-law is about to gobble it all up. The only way out for her is to pray that she is pregnant, which she finally discovers she is, and that, inshallah, it is a boy.