From the ascent of Isabel Perón* to the position of President of Argentina in July of 1974, through the military junta that deposed her in March of 1976, until the autumn of 1983, which saw the collapse of the junta in the wake of their devastating loss in the Falklands War, the political left of Argentina was subjected to a relentless wave of state-sponsored political terror that murdered anywhere from 10,000-30,000 people and tortured and imprisoned tens of thousands more.

The actual number can’t be verified because most of the junta’s violence was conducted in secret, with the military, security forces, and the Argentine Anticommunist Alliance (of military and police death squads) “disappearing” small bands of guerrillas, but also trade unionists, writers, journalists, artists— anyone who was determined to speak out against the junta, be it ideologically, economically, or politically. This decade is known as the “Dirty War”, but let’s use quotation marks because it was, in fact, no war at all; it was the asymmetrical application of political murder by the powerful against those who dared to stand against their campaign of terror.

Truly:

In 1983, the National Commission on Disappeared People (received testimony that) described how “prisoners were drugged, loaded onto military planes, and thrown, naked and semi-conscious, into the Atlantic Ocean.” A vast majority of those who were killed disappeared without a trace and no record of their fate.**

Notably, the campaign also targeted students, beginning with the infamous “Night of The Pencils, a series of kidnappings and forced disappearances, followed by the torture, rape, and murder of 10 high-school students that began on the evening of September 16, 1976.” One of the survivors later gave testimony:

“…they gave me electric shocks in my mouth, my gums, and my genitals. They tore out one of my toenails. It was very usual to spend several days without food.”

This period of state brutality and murder***, conducted in secret within a hidden network of state-run prisons and torture facilities, provides the historical backdrop for Our Share Of Night, Mariana Enriquez’s masterpiece of a novel set in Argentina before, during, and after the junta’s campaign of unaccountable, unrestrained violence.

And while the actual details of the “Dirty War” are not the story that propels this book, this decade of political terror is its subject; it is everywhere within it, a dark, swirling, omnipresence— an inescapable madness— that gives the novel a profound, unshakeable human resonance. Our Share Of Night transcends political, historical, and horror fiction by uniting them. It is an unforgettable novel, a roadmap for how fiction can help us understand and remember the past by making it tangible, physical, and emotionally alive on the page. It is also absolutely terrifying.

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Others will summarize the brilliant, gripping plot of Our Share Of Night better than I, but in brief: the story centers around two children raised within an elite, dark, and powerful demonic cult that traces its roots back to colonial England**** and has blossomed among the upper classes of 20th century Argentina. Rosario is the daughter of the cult’s leaders, a family that controls vast natural resources and has used its dark power to amass a huge fortune. Juan is a boy from an impoverished family who requires urgent treatment for a potentially fatal heart condition. When Rosario’s uncle, a heart surgeon, operates on Juan, he discovers that the boy is able to embody The Darkness, the powerful demonic force that the cult believes can ultimately offer a form of immortality to those who are devoted to its secrets. Those who can manifest The Darkness are incredibly rare and are known by the cult as “mediums”— precious vehicles for the cult to communicate with and learn from The Darkness. After Juan survives his heart surgery, Rosario’s family “buys” him from his parents and brings him to their sprawling estate in order to conduct manifestations and rituals with him.

Over the years (and its horrors), Juan and Rosario become close, end up marrying, and have a son named Gaspar. But as The Darkness and its followers continue to take a tremendous physical and psychological toll on Juan, he dedicates himself to preventing Gaspar from becoming a medium as well. Juan continues to serve the cult while keeping Gaspar’s potential power as a medium hidden, until ominous and terrifying tragedies begin to befall Gaspar, his friends and his family, and a final confrontation becomes inevitable. 

While this summary hardly does this brilliant novel justice, the devil is literally in the juxtaposition of Enriquez’s grotesque details and the impact they have on her very human characters. The cult of The Darkness is horrific in its brutality, and Enriquez pulls no punches in describing their crimes which, for me, were unimaginable until I read them on the page— kidnapping, torture, disfigurement, dismemberment, starvation, imprisonment, disease, much of it done for sadistic pleasure, inflicted upon the poor and marginalized, and almost all of it done under the delusion of expanding personal power within the cult and society at large.*****

But in parallel with all of the physical brutality, surrounding it, Enriquez has imagined a rich, complex supernatural system, filled with powerful spells and symbols, where interior spaces transform from their quotidian appearances into shifting, terrifying, haunted nightmares. Enriquez shows us just enough of the arcana without dwelling on its mechanics— we see it and feel it through the characters, and we experience the real-world emotional consequences of the cult’s power without knowing precisely how it all works. And it is that unknown “how?” that is at the root of the book’s true horror, as uncertainty and the unknown (and unknowable) drive the narrative further toward the void.

This feeling is overpowering because Our Share Of Night privileges the position of the reader and understands how literary horror should function; it lets us in on just enough of its secrets, it shows us some of what is hidden from its characters, and this knowledge, like Hitchcock showing us a ticking bomb, creates an almost unbearable atmosphere of dread when, in the novel’s final section, that perspective is removed, and everything we know is possible, all of it terrible, seems to be lurking in the next sentence we’re about to read.

In that sense, Our Share Of Night functions explicitly as a series of nightmares. I don’t mean that as a metaphor, I mean it literally; in the book’s supernatural moments, which lurk behind every locked door, Enriquez’s writing feels like “dream logic” where time slows down, becomes inescapable, presses down on the characters, where landscapes transform, where horrors arise and disappear, rife with meaning, but unable to be fully understood, relentlessly and without respite. While reading, I found myself unable to talk about this book, not because of its complexity, but for fear I would diminish its meaning by describing it in my own “waking” language when, instead, it had activated my imagination in a way that felt like I was dreaming. As a reader, I found myself returning to sentences in order to distinguish what was on the page versus what was happening in my own imagination, which had been activated to new levels of paranoia and fear. 

And as we experience these pages as a lucid nightmare, carried forward by this deeply resonant power throughout the book, it is also clear that, in the world of Our Share Of Night, The Darkness and its power are real. It is not a magical delusion, the book doesn’t play games with its world building, it is all real; the literal disfigurement of society and its people, forever marked by the lust for a secret and violent power. This the atmosphere of the novel, tying its historical reality to its timeless, otherworldly violence. Here, on these pages, the nightmare is made both literal and dreamlike. 

Argentina’s horrors and those of the cult converge, echo, and rhyme; the Darkness consuming limbs and people, hidden prisons and torture chambers, anonymous buildings that hide terrible secrets behind their anonymous doors, and the unconscionably brutal collusion among the powerful to “disappear” people, to murder them, without consequence or justice or a full possibility of understanding which, in the end, brings us to an absence, the ultimate horror of Our Share Of Night. People vanish and die, become palpable absences, and for what purpose? The vanity of the elite, the eternal continuation of their injustice, the cycle of exploitation, all of it without any real meaning. And there, in this realization, we come to understand the “why” of this brutality clearly— it is done because it can be done. In the end, none of it can be undone, it can only end in a perpetual void, allowing the past to linger on, to hang, suspended and airless, irreconcilable.

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Notes:

* I had never seen a photo of Isabel Perón until after I read this novel and was reading up on the junta and the so-called “Dirty War”, and it turns out she is the EXACT image in my mind’s eye of the character of Mercedes in this book. I mean, EXACT. Which I am sure will now haunt me forever. Crazy!!!  

** Friends, the continued availability of “helicopter ride” T-shirts should be a wake up call to everyone in this country as to the actual intentions of the contemporary right wing. These are not benign memes, but like so many right wing “jokes”, an explicit, direct threat that is based on the terrible history of state murder. And yet.

*** It should of course be said that this campaign of terror was part of a region-wide program of so-called “anti-communist military government” called Operation Condor, which included Pinochet’s Chile and which was covertly (but enthusiastically) supported by the United States government. And so, to read this book as an American is to understand the role our nation played in facilitating and supporting these horrors– nourishing them with resources, publicly ignoring them, never accounting for them, and actively working to keep them secret.

**** The colonial origins of the Cult of The Darkness in the novel are fascinating and tie into the history of political power within Argentina, the socio-economic privilege of European immigrants in Argentina, and the 19th century English cult The Hermetic Order of The Golden Dawn, but are also a perfect framework for a historical examination of the brutal exploitation of people and resources by the elite classes, all of which is too much for this review to address meaningfully, but upon which this book does a brilliant job of building historical context for the cult’s dark power.

***** It also bears mentioning that this is a deeply Gen X novel, one that points a clawed finger squarely at the selfish brutality of older generations who cling to what they have inherited, revel in cruelty, and who are obsessed with defeating mortality and perpetuating their hold on social power at any cost (but especially at the cost of others). The arrogance and resentments at the heart of the cult are not just historical, but symptoms of our contemporary reality, driven by greed and the exploitation of the young by the old; there are moments that call to mind Pasolini’s anti-fascist film SÁLO, aligned with that film’s deep understanding of the dynamics of inter-generational brutality.

Photo by Juan Davila on Unsplash

“Meanwhile the fog of deception was spreading… (The country) completely abandoned to lies that the Nationalists disseminated through millions of loudspeakers and printed pages… Lies and violence went hand in hand… (Political violence) was glorified as a sublime deed. Misery and lies also went hand in hand. They spoke of “Freedom and Bread” but they meant only freedom for their followers; they meant to destroy their adversaries… Lies, profiteering, and selfish indulgence prevailed… There were very many who took no interest in public affairs. They put their faith in the apparent peace of everyday life. The country groaned, but peace and order were preserved. The pillars of that order were six hundred thousand stormtroopers.” — Lion Feuchtwanger, THE OPPERMANNS (1934), Chapter Fifty Nine

Writing these words will make no material difference in the world.

Reading them, even less so.

I knew this before I sat down to write them. But I sat down to write anyway, I’m compelled, because people who are living through the grave danger of physical violence, —violence fomented by lies, by cynical disinformation attacks against already marginalized communities of Jewish people, Trans people, immigrants— our families, friends, colleagues, and neighbors are asking us all to stand up and speak out. To stand against violence springing up from bigotry and hatred that is supported by judicial action, legislation, and unilateral acts of political power seeking to unravel our shared progress. 

Our words and refusals provide support, but they are not enough. Voting is required, but alone, it is inadequate in the face of gerrymandering, voter suppression, election denialism, systemic and structural bias. In the face of this ongoing parade of nightmares, those elected and given power have refused to wield it, unwilling to act with proportionate speed, relying on institutions to hold the line, not doing too much of anything to fight back.

Just beneath the framework of political power sits an overwhelming, unrestrained architecture of propaganda, shamelessly creating an indistinguishable relationship between so-called journalism and carefully coordinated political messaging, using deception and disinformation to not only destabilize the country, but to do so in service of an international authoritarian movement. Because news organizations continue to fail to acknowledge this disinformation campaign for what it is, and instead present its framing as a legitimate political “side” in a “two-sided” discourse, propaganda continues to find safe harbor in the mainstream of American life, dominating the media landscape nationally by refusing the constraints of journalism and truth while continuing to use the visual and linguistic tropes of news gathering to deceive the public. It has been an enormous success. It is literally everywhere.

Of course, this success feeds on and is in turn fed by the public distraction of rich, entitled know-it-alls whose ignorance is only matched by their self-regard, working overtime to spread anti-semitism, election denialism, and other bigoted conspiracies once unimaginable in serious public discourse, which have now found legitimacy within these newly drawn boundaries. People using their economic power and personal notoriety to make things objectively worse for the victims of bigotry while refusing to consider their own intellectual failures. The fact that, reading this, you can think of multiple people about whom I could be talking only highlights the asymmetry of access to the public square, where money grants amplification that the rest of us will never experience, regardless of the quality of our ideas or how we articulate them. Instead, by engaging with the sideshow they provide, hatred gets amplified, perhaps negatively reinforced, but reinforced nonetheless. In this way, the architecture of lies is strengthened and propaganda is further legitimized, which enables the powerful to continue to push the boundaries of what they are willing to do or say in order to be a part of the rising tide they have, without shame, created.

If I told you just a handful of years ago that today, the attempted assassination of the Speaker of The House and the serious injury to her husband would be treated with mocking laughter and, simultaneously, promoted as a conspiracy by sitting members of Congress, what would you have made of me? But we are here. And so, the chorus of bigotry is amplified, violence is justified or laughed away, random acts of terror become more frequent. The expectation that we will somehow emerge from this cycle through accommodation, common sense, conversation, acceptance, understanding, voting, and decency is the same expectation that foreshadowed the horrors of the past— mass murder, pogroms, wars. Surely, we think, this can’t be happening now?

Look at the lies to see the truth.

The truth is this: there is an organized, activist, right-wing political movement in this country that has a hand at every lever of power— government, law enforcement, business, and churches— driven by the sole goal of preserving white, Christian dominance of the public sphere. The foundation of the nation’s propaganda problem, its violence problem, its disinformation problem, its collaboration with foreign rightwing governments, its antisemitism, its racism, and its hard turn into authoritarian minority rule, begins here. This group is incredibly disciplined in its political action because it is otherwise apolitical— there is no issue, no goal, no need, no analysis, essentially, no politics at all. It is simply this: we want control by any means, we will do whatever it takes, and we will destroy those who don’t agree with us.

Donald Trump is perfect for this anti-ideology, despite not believing any of it. He is the ideal vessel for this apolitical movement because he will act on their nihilism in the name of power, which is all he craves; power to funnel money from the state into the pockets of himself, his family, and loyalists, power to use the vast resources of the state to act criminally and then manipulate the judicial system through loyalists to shut down investigations into his crimes, the power of control in the public sphere to scapegoat immigrants, Trans and queer people, threaten Jewish people, all while flaunting his own immunity. Actual scandals are equivocated with manufactured ones (a coup vs a laptop, campaign coordination with a hostile foreign power vs an email server), all intended to make governance and justice meaningless. You must debase power in order to create an environment where it is willingly ceded to you; when it means nothing, why bother fighting for it?

And yet, power still brings the thrill of standing in front of thousands of admirers, all over the country, recounting his criminality, scapegoating anyone who would bring him, and them, to account. He is so blind to his own narcissism that the white supremacist movement can easily align itself with him by piggybacking his work, feeding his ego, showing up for his rallies, and through alliance and his own apolitical, non-ideological, nihilistic, sociopathic vision of governance— which is simply a sole executive, him, winging it— get what it wants. Just give him the love he craves, tell him what you want, and he’s all yours. Look at his face as right-wing religious leaders from around the country come to “lay hands” on him; he can’t believe this con is all it takes to have everything. But you will put up with all of that, justify it all, to get the one thing you want— social and cultural control over the lives of others.

Compare this nihilistic void with the vision of government on the left, a collection of people seeking progress and support from a government and society with a troubled history of racist, antisemitic, and anti-immigrant action. People who not only want roads and safe communities and clean energy, but an accounting of the past and then, justice. And not just justice for the past, but for a worsening social and political climate built on that troubled history. Then, after years of battles, a doubling down; judicial decrees, activist state legislatures, voter suppression and sowing distrust in elections, unaccountable police violence, all designed to take away what little power you have. Who is left to fight? A group cobbled together by a wide range of interests that are sometimes in sympathy and sometimes in conflict, each person an individual required to analyze what they want (jobs, housing, choice, criminal justice reform, Trans rights, freedom of religious expression, climate justice, fair taxation policies, etc) and to then bring that list of wants and needs and ideas to a voting booth, where often, they are faced with a binary where the only reasonable choice is a centrist corporate politician who espouses a few ideals, has no interest in acknowledging the necessary fight, and responds primarily to those who finance their campaign.

It will not be enough.

Historically, it has never been enough, and we know it and have to admit it.

These are two completely different universes— one driven solely by the desire for the power to use the state for social and cultural control, and one a loose majority of interests that cannot see itself fully reflected in the system it must uphold. One willing to use state power to dominate through violence, legal control, propaganda, corruption, and lies, and one that seeks the status quo with maybe a few touch ups here and there and isn’t that nice? 

But soon, institutions are bent, purged, and converted from organizations serving our once shared values into powerful weapons of the state, which becomes not representative of the people, but a personal tool of corrupt individuals who utilize it ensure their own immunity, criminalize their opponents, scapegoat social groups, and persecute their victims, all while telling lie after lie after lie. The lies, simple inversions of the truth, are not intended to cover up these acts, but to broadcast them through projection, to flaunt immunity, to disempower rational analysis and create a new framework that erases democracy in the name of an authoritarian state.

And so, when I see calls from my friends and neighbors and family and allies saying “we need you to speak up” against antisemitism, against the criminalization of Trans people, against the criminalization of women’s reproductive choice, against state violence wielded against communities of color, please know that I understand what is happening and I stand with you against all of this bigotry. But also, we need, each and every one of us, to see this fight for what it really is.

There is nothing. They simply want power. Power to establish, consolidate, and mandate their dominance, using social control as a cover for getting away with whatever they want.

And you and I are left here, together, staring into the literal void.

Our collective history:

Remember in 1993 when an OB-GYN was murdered by an antichoice terrorist who shot him in the back three times outside of his reproductive healthcare clinic in Pensacola, Florida?

And nothing really changed because—

Remember the next year, in 1994, when a women’s healthcare provider, again in Pensacola, Florida, was walking into work at the very same clinic and he and his bodyguard were murdered with a 12 gauge shotgun at close range by an antichoice terrorist?

And nothing really changed because—

Remember that same year, in Brookline, Massachusetts, when two women’s healthcare clinic workers were murdered by an antichoice terrorist who shot them at work in two separate attacks on women’s reproductive healthcare clinics on the same day, and then the terrorist drove to Virginia to kill more people but got caught after shooting into yet another women’s reproductive healthcare clinic?

And nothing really changed because—

Remember in 1995 when that white supremacist terrorist filled a truck with fertilizer and diesel fuel and drove it up to a Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, lit two fuses, fled the scene, and the truck exploded and killed 168 people, including 19 kids in a daycare?

And nothing really changed because—

Remember in 1998 when a women’s healthcare clinic was bombed in Birmingham, Alabama, killing an off-duty police officer providing security and it turned out the white supremacist antichoice terrorist bomber had also bombed other clinics, a lesbian bar, and the Olympics in Atlanta which injured over 100 people combined?

And nothing really changed because—



That same year, a women’s healthcare provider in Buffalo, New York was murdered at home when he was shot in the throat with a high-powered rifle through a window in his kitchen by an antichoice terrorist?

And nothing really changed because—

There was that one day in 2009 when a women’s healthcare provider was ushering at his church in Wichita, Kansas and an antichoice terrorist walked up to him and assassinated him by shooting him in the head with a handgun?


And no one did anything because—

Remember in 2014 when a white supremacist misogynist drove around Isla Vista, California and killed six people and injured fourteen more, because he had been radicalized to hate women in online misogynist forums?


And no one did anything because—

Remember in 2015 when a white supremacist terrorist walked into a prayer meeting at a primarily black Charleston, South Carolina church and shot and murdered nine people because they were black?

And no one did anything because—


Remember in that same year when an antichoice terrorist attacked a Planned Parenthood in Colorado Springs, Colorado and killed three people, including an Iraq war veteran, a police officer, and a woman accompanying her friend to a reproductive healthcare appointment?

But no one did anything? And then—

In 2017, remember when a white supremacist terrorist got on public transportation in Portland, Oregon and started shouting racist slurs at a pair of Muslim women and some men stood up for them and he slashed and killed them with a knife?

But no one did anything? And then—

Later that summer, remember when a white supremacist terrorist used his car to drive into a crowd protesting for racial justice in Charlottesville, Virginia and murdered a woman, the day after a radical white supremacist march where Nazis chanted about replacement theory and the President of the United States said there were “very fine people on both sides?”

But no one did anything? And then—

Remember in 2018 when a white supremacist terrorist walked into a synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and murdered eleven people and wounded six during morning services because he believed the work of the Hebrew Immigration Aid Society “Liked to bring in invaders and kill our people”?

But no one did anything? And then—

Remember in 2019, when a white supremacist terrorist who had been radicalized online on 8chan, the birthplace of QAn*n, walked into a Wal-Mart in El Paso, Texas and murdered 23 people and injured 23 more, and he was targeting Latinos because of his anti-immigrant belief in replacement theory?

But no one did anything? And then—

Remember in 2020 when white supremacist terrorists started showing up in large numbers at state houses and COVID-19 protests and then to Black Lives Matter protests, heavily armed with assault rifles and body armor, and then, seeing that they could walk into the State Capitol building in Michigan, showed up in the gallery fully armed in an attempt to intimidate lawmakers?

But no one did anything? And then local law enforcement treated them as allies? And then—

Later that summer, when a white conservative drove across state lines from Antioch, Illinois to Kenosha, Wisconsin with an AR-15 to intervene in a local Black Lives Matter protest and decided he wasn’t safe, so he murdered someone with his gun and when people tried to chase him down and stop him from killing more people, he murdered another person, injured another, and then walked past the police who were continuing to ally themselves with extrajudicial white supremacist groups and assumed he was innocent? And then a jury found him not guilty of murder? And then he continued to be treated like a celebrity by now-mainstream white supremacist conservatives and began to profit off of his celebrity status?

And then no one did anything? And then—

In December of that same year, a right wing terrorist drove an RV into downtown Nashville and detonated a massive truck bomb, demolishing a city block in a major American city because he believed in “long-held individualized beliefs adopted from several eccentric conspiracy theories” and then the FBI said “his actions were determined to not be related to terrorism?“

And then no one even blinked because it happened on Christmas morning? And then—

Remember when, only two weeks later, thousands of radicalized conspiracy theorists who had been swayed by the political mainstreaming of QAn*n, stormed the United States Capitol at the behest of the sitting President of The United States and other political leaders, who were using them as a tool to stage a coup by murdering the Vice President in order to stop the ceremonial counting of electoral votes in order to overthrow the results of a legitimate Federal election? And they ransacked the offices of elected officials and beat and injured Capitiol police officers and set up a gallows and took zip ties into the building searching for specific Democratic legislators to abduct and “try”?

And no one did a fucking thing?

And just yesterday, back in Buffalo, New York, an 18 year old white supremacist terrorist posted an online manifesto extolling his now-relatively mainstream white supremacist political beliefs, and then, motivated by his belief in “replacement theory”, which has become a relatively mainstream idea on the #1 rated “news” channel on American television, pulled up to a grocery store with a Bushmaster XM15 with Nazi slogans and racist language written on it and murdered 10 people because they were black, live streamed it on Twitch, and was arrested without injury?

I was trying to remember where I had heard about that gun and it came to me—

Remember in 2012 when a man shot his way into an elementary school Newtown, Connecticut with a Bushmaster XM15 and murdered 20 kids aged 6-7 and six educators?

And then no one did anything?

People seem eager to speak about what peaceful protest should look like, about which political appointees should be protected from hearing from the people and where, about which freedoms are “deeply rooted in our history”, about who should have power and control over women’s bodies, over trans bodies, over LGBTQIA+ lives, over people of color’s lives and prosperity, over what is appropriate history, or gender expression, or love, or a family.

This post has barely scratched the surface of merely the last 30 years of the evolution and mainstreaming of white, right wing terror in this country. It stretches back for centuries.

So– who and what “deeply rooted tradition” does the Supreme Court continue to bolster while tut-tutting us about the credibility of their institution?

And when you open your mouth, when you act, are you standing with that history of violence, murder, and terror, or against it?

 

I was incredibly anxious in making plans to go to Cannes; with the global response to COVID-19 in a constant state of flux, travel requirements changing from week to week, and a great deal of work required at my own Montclair Film Festival, I wasn’t sure I how the trip would go. As the festival grew closer to launching on July 6th, things remained up in the air; the screening schedule hadn’t been announced, the status of vaccinated Americans like me and our access to the festival was undecided but optimistic, and the process for how we would all get tickets to films remained a mystery. Because of my travel requirements, I had to book a flight through London, which I was assured would be fine, but which ended up adding a layer of complexity, COVID testing (despite my vaccinated status), and even more anxiety. There is something powerless about air travel, especially on an international level, where every customs officer has the power to make things difficult, enforce an unforeseen rule, end any plans on the spot. The more people and portals with which I had to interact, the more I feared an insurmountable problem. This much uncertainty? Not my forté.

But from the moment I left JFK on the 4th of July, until the moment I started writing this from a café in the Nice airport in France, everything went perfectly. My planning for COVID requirements was not only correct, but allowed me to move quickly through the system; checking in and customs were a breeze, and my bag was waiting for me on the other side. I grabbed it, hopped the train that runs along the Gold Coast of France, past mansions, beaches, and massive condos, to Cannes, standing against the Mediterranean Sea, hot and steamy under the relentless sun. I walked to my condo, unpacked and settled in, before walking out the door to get reacquainted with the Cannes Film Festival.

I had been to Cannes before, in 1999 and 2000 which, in my estimation, was one of the greatest Cannes programs of all time. Since that time, my festival work, which for decades had been situated in the April-May timeframe, made a trip to Cannes irrelevant and impossible. But those early trips were formative for me, creating a version of the festival that lived on in my memory; jet lag, packed screenings, familiar faces in the crowd, but mostly, the premieres of great films, a program bursting at the seams with the most important and interesting international titles of the year. 

It is funny to think about, but I am almost certain that everyone who programs films looks at the Cannes program with extreme scrutiny and, if they’re honest, a sense of jealousy; with 74 years of institutional work put into creating an event that provides a global launching pad and sales platform for films while elevating the work of film directors into the highest levels of the contemporary arts, this unique blend of glitz, raw business, and extreme artistic seriousness provides Cannes Director Thierry Fremaux with the ability to, for the most part, have his pick of films and talent to attend the festival. It is hard to think of any film or film company that wouldn’t deeply desire the imprimatur of the iconic gold palm imposed over the words Official Selection Festival Des Cannes.

And so, year after year, Cannes reclaims its position at the center of the film world, with its program defining the state-of-the-art in the same way the autumn festivals herald the launch of awards season in the United States. Cannes is far more global than the Oscars, and features its own, highly coveted awards, given by small juries of acclaimed artists, serving as an international counterweight to the Academy. In this way, the festival best serves a certain type of film and film lover; it is driven by and the exemplar of global cinephilia, where the artistic ambitions of the form are placed above (and yet alongside) the business of box office. Typically, Hollywood and Cannes are not aligned , but sometimes, these two worlds come together; Bong Joon-ho’s PARASITE won the Palme D’Or and the Best Picture Oscar in 2019, but that overlap is incredibly rare.

This year, in the midst of planning for the 10th Annual Montclair Film Festival and working to launch our very own six screen cinema in the fall, our own changes in planning and schedule made me believe that a trip to Cannes would be worthwhile again; in the wake of the pandemic, Montclair Film moved our festival to October in 2020 and provided a huge transformation in terms of the films we were able to access, with Best Picture winner NOMADLAND serving as our Opening Night Film, and multiple award winners and nominees participating in the festival. In the wake of the success of that program, which we had worked carefully to position on the calendar in a way that would give us impact without competing with other, more established fall festivals, we decided that October was the right spot for us, and as we began planning for October 2021, Cannes seemed like a good opportunity; I wouldn’t be able to attend my traditional fall festivals (Toronto, the New York Film Festival) because their proximity to our new dates, and with the announcement of our new cinemas, the time was right to go scout films, meet with distributors, and see what a trip to Cannes would mean.

So I went.

From the moment I walked into the small tent where my badge would be printed via a touch screen kiosk in a matter of seconds, to the COVID testing tent I was required to use to gain access to the Marché and certain theaters, to the line of badge holders all eagerly awaiting our first film (Mark Cousins’ delightful retrospective of contemporary cinema THE STORY OF FILM: A NEW GENERATION), Cannes felt relatively effortless. I never waited more than one minute to get a COVID test and after an early hiccup, my results arrived in time for me to use them (I was negative. Get vaccinated everyone.). No one ever dismissed my clothes or my ticket or did anything more than smile, say a polite word of greeting, and send me on my way. Cannes is known for being finicky, building procedures and processes for attendees— lines, hoops through which to jump, arbiters of what is and is not “acceptable” attire, etc— but the radical change this year that switched off so much frustration was the online ticketing system, which eliminated waiting in line for tickets and allowed everyone to apply for a seat at films by going online.

With attendance down (huge swaths of the world who typically attend were unable to participate this year because of COVID, others chose not to attend because of the overwhelming uncertainty and COVID concerns, all of which is completely understandable), the doors to the cinemas were more accessible than ever before. This was part of my strategy in going; hopeful I could find tickets to screenings because attendance would be more manageable, I found myself granted a ticket to literally every film I could schedule. It was unbelievable. The only struggle I had was making sure my phone had enough power at the end of the day, so I could make my final screening and show my digital ticket to get into the theater.  

As each new morning arrived and I applied online for future screenings, as each e-mail confirmation rolled in after that, as each COVID test retuned a negative result, as I washed and pressed my tuxedo shirt over and over again, I settled into the rhythm of the festival. I took a few meetings, attended a party (outdoors and unmasked, and regretted it immediately), had a lunch here, a coffee there, a dinner with colleagues, but mostly, I dove into film screenings, surrounded by appreciative audiences who, as far as I could see, politely followed the mask mandate and acted with overall courtesy toward the staff and one another.

Once the lights went down in the Grand Lumiere or Salle Debussy (the festival’s largest theaters, where I spent most of my time), everything else- the uncertainty, the anxiety- melted away and I found myself completely absorbed in the films, my long relationship with theatrical viewing instantly re-established. As the program began to reveal itself, right away, an overall mood became clear; the films began addressing human connection and the need for kindness, from romantic and familial relationships to institutional interactions, a cinema urgently advocating for compassion and understanding. The humanist power of movies was on full display right away; maybe it was having been away for so long, maybe I was really tired, but sometimes, the films seem to be in dialogue with one another, pulling me in and framing my thinking as they go.

For me? It was the love affairs that broke the screen wide open again.

Joanna Hogg’s THE SOUVENIR PART II was the best film I saw in Cannes, and it played in the Director’s Fortnight section (which was typically outstanding), and I have to say, it is a huge shock to me that this film was not in competition in the main program. The film picks up immediately after Hogg’s achingly beautiful THE SOUVENIR, in the aftermath of a disastrous relationship, as the film’s protagonist Julie (played brilliantly again by Honor Swinton Byrne) shifts her focus from her loss to discovering her voice as a filmmaker. It was a powerful statement of becoming, a self-portrait of a young artist by her masterful later self, and one that reflexively examined that tension within the structure of the film itself. THE SOUVENIR, as a single film project made up of both parts, is a triumph, and I am eager to watch both parts again, together, in one sitting. Straight onto my personal favorites list.

Right behind Hogg’s film on my list was Norwegian director Joachim Trier’s VERDENS VERSTE MENNESKE (THE WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD), starring a Norwegian actress previously unknown to me, Renate Reinsve who took to the Cannes red carpet (which is broadcast on the screen inside the Palais and provides a ton of pre-show joy to the awaiting audience) as a whirling, twirling burst of bright energy and carried that obvious charisma straight through the film itself. She is a movie star, arriving seemingly fully formed on screen, a modern European actress who seems to be filled with optimism and feeling. The film capitalizes on her performance with a melancomic story of a young woman named Julie who can’t settle into her romantic relationships, but one who clearly imagines herself as the type of person who does. Funnily, I am seeing reviews calling the character “unformed” or “childish” or comparing her to Frances Ha, but for me, that’s very wrong. She’s alive and justifiably uncertain about who and what she wants to be and be with, and just goes about the business of trying things out, like we all do. This movie felt very much like real life to me; real, wonderful characters alive to the continuing possibilities of life. It is judgement-free, compassionate, and a joy. I didn’t see every eligible movie, but if Reinsve doesn’t win the Best Actress award, it would be a crime.

Trier’s co-writer on THE WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD, Eskil Vogt, wrote and directed a film at Cannes as well, and it was one of the few genre films I was able to see. THE INNOCENTS, playing in Un Certain Regard (the festival’s section for official selections not selected for the main competition), is the story of a group fo small children, living in the same apartment complex, who come to learn of a supernatural connection they share, one which gives them extraordinary powers of communication and destructive force. It also features some heavy duty staged violence against animals and children, which had the audience gasping in surprise, and draws on the relationship between adult power and the way in which kids misunderstand that power when they interact with one another and the world, often turning the tyranny of the adult world into acts of cruelty that Vogt captures with prowling, long lens shots that call to mind recent horror classics like IT FOLLOWS or LET THE RIGHT ONE IN, reminding me that I need to watch more contemporary horror.

Also in Un Certain Regard and also grappling with childhood cruelty, Laura Wandel’s UN MONDE (aka PLAYGROUND) is the story of a pair of siblings enduring the daily degradations of life in a Belgian elementary school. Shot in a social realist style (think the Dardenne Brothers making SON OF SAUL) that never diverges from the point of view of Nora, a kindergartener whose older brother suffers constant abuse and humiliation at the hands of his classmates. It is very rare to see a film perfectly grasp the emotional life of young kids, but PLAYGROUND absolutely nails it, tracking the mistakes, the attempts at kindness, the meanness and exclusion, and all of the emotions that follow through the beautiful, powerhouse performance of young Maya Vanderbeque, who carries the entire movie on her shoulders and never delivers a single false beat. 

Another film about the emotional isolation of systemic abuse, and also in Un Certain Regard, was Sebastian Meise’s GREAT FREEDOM, the story of Hans Hoffmann, a gay man in Germany repeatedly imprisoned over violations to the nation’s infamous Paragraph 175 law, which made homosexual activity a crime (and was utilized by the Nazis to send LGBTQIA+ people to the concentration camps). Franz Rogowsky is an actor who never fails to fascinate with his ability to seemingly haunt the frame, and his work here is yet another in a recent string of outstanding performances, here showing the complex relationship between freedom and the past, and how trauma informs the experience of persecution. 

Arnaud Desplechin’s adaptation of Philip Roth’s DECEPTION is a film I have been discussing with Desplechin for many years, one that he had long been seeking to make, and once it began playing, it was clear why; Desplechin has returned to the themes of his best films with this story of Roth’s extra-marital affairs, here presented with such tenderness that I was shocked; Roth’s reputation as an irredeemable misogynist was here transformed through the lens of his equal, a lover played by Lea Séydoux, who understands his desire for her and meets it with her own understanding and power. Of course, the film also proposes that maybe the entire proposition is a fiction invented by Roth to help him understand and invent women as fictions, but that doesn’t distract from the film’s power for me. As always with Desplechin, the spiritual side of his work is boiling beneath the surface of his images and characters, here represented by Roth’s outsider status as a Jewish American abroad. I can’t wait to see this again, a top-tier Desplechin film for me (and I love them all for my own, selfish reasons).

Wes Anderson’s THE FRENCH DISPATCH arrived with expectations that can only be compared to a new album by a well-established rock star; Anderson’s visual and storytelling style is so consistent, so unique, and so wonderful, there is a fear that any major changes to the director’s signature approach might be alienating or somehow dishonest. Anderson is who he is, a visual stylist unlike any other who relies on the bespoke details of his image making to create a symbiotic relationship with his writing, together creating films that serve both as cinematic homage and something truly unique. THE FRENCH DISPATCH is no exception, a love-letter to the long form journalistic essay writing that shaped the mid-20th century glory days of THE NEW YORKER and other prestigious literary magazines. But the film is also filled with cinematic nods to the French New Wave, films noir, 1930’s comedies, and more. It is an absolute joy to watch, twinned to THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS for me, both films adapting a certain era of the written word that captures the spirit of the times and subverts nostalgia by creating something new.

And finally, speaking of new, Julia Ducournau’s TITANE was my final film of the festival before heading home. The story of a young woman named Alexia (played with unbelievable power by Agathe Rousselle) who suffers a traumatic head injury and develops into a sociopathic murderer before passing herself off as a young man who had disappeared years ago, TITANE is also the story of radical, physical transformation of the female body into whatever the fuck it wants to be. And it is radical; did I mention the car that impregnates Alexia, in the form of mechanical parthenogenesis that drives (see what I did there?) the story to its almost unbearably moving conclusion? Ducournau’s control of the film’s escalating tensions, purposeful gender confusion, male vanity, and found family is flawless, making TITANE a film that deserves multiple viewings in order to unpack its narrative and visual strategies. 

I could go on and on, and already have; I watched 28 films and for the most part, found something compelling and thought-provoking about each. And there were so many more I didn’t see but wanted to see; festivals are always filled with regrets. As I sit here, having departed Nice, passed through Heathrow in London, and now flying home over the Atlantic Ocean, I’m thinking about how much this festival means to me in the ongoing world of COVID. I know I am landing back in the reality of family life, work, and responsibility, and I can’t wait to replug into my real life. But there is something about Cannes that will continue to frame my inner-life, the interior version of myself that adores sitting in the dark with strangers and giving myself permission and room to think seriously and passionately about cinema, a word I use without reservation. For me, that is the ideal of Cannes, which has once again replenished me and lead me to try to continue to find ways to honor that part of myself in the other areas of my life. I hope to be back soon. 

(Click here For a full list of my Cannes screenings)

Sparks, the endearingly enduring pop duo of brothers Ron and Russell Mael, have created a monumental body of work together for over 50 years, a sort of parallel history of contemporary pop music that exists both within and outside of the structures of genre, style, and stardom. Leos Carax has been operating in a parallel world as well, explicitly so, a master of creating tangible, physical images that are driven by his profoundly visual imagination. ANNETTE, their collaboration in the form of a cinematic opera, is an expression of these synonymous outsider visions, and the tension between the desire for acceptance and the embrace of rejection.

ANNETTE operates as a sort of narrative history of what I can only imagine is the tension at the heart of Sparks as an artistic project; the serious musical ambition and mastery of form that is embodied by Marion Cotillard’s Ann Defrasnoux, a beloved soprano whose work in the opera brings her global renown, and the dark, confrontational comedy of Adam Driver’s Henry McHenry, who prowls the stage as a form of self-analysis and truth-telling that calls to mind Bo Burnham’s confessional storytelling mixed with Andrew Dice Clay’s intentional, absurdist bomb of a masterpiece THE DAY THE LAUGHTER DIED. The couple, united in love for one another, embody the paradox of mastery and humor, the embrace of the serious and the lowbrow that has both limited Sparks as a commercial project and has given them a profound and sustainable creative career.

Carax, whose films have consistently addressed the complex dance between love, personal integrity, and creativity, seems to be in familiar territory, having created wonderful musical sequences like the classic moment built around David Bowie’s MODERN LOVE in Carax’s 1986 MAUVAIS SANG, the incredible fireworks sequence from 1991’s THE LOVERS ON THE BRIDGE, or the thrilling, accordion mob cover version of LET MY BABY RIDE from 2012’s HOLY MOTORS.

With ANNETTE, however, Carax takes a different approach, seeming to transform the Mael’s ideas into a set of creative constraints. Carax’s touches are still there, primarily in Adam Driver’s performance, which seems to have taken on the physical requirements in Carax’s films that usually fall upon Denis Lavant, one of the most gifted physical actors of our generation. Here, though, Driver’s physicality is intentionally hemmed in by Carax, who frames the film far more theatrically than the anarchic naturalism we are used to, taking his cues from melodrama and classic cinema to create a more controlled world for his musical fairy tale.

The Maels seem to have also taken the film, which brilliantly lampoons the musical formalism of opera and modern musical theater, as a way to try something different. One of the great things about Sparks is that they use the conventions of pop music- form, length, instrumentation, style, genre- as a playground, infusing their music with humor (both lyrically and musically), repetition (think of BALLS or DICK AROUND), and stylistic wanderlust. But here too, outside of the film’s opening song SO MAY WE START, the Maels put aside expectations, instead sticking to the project, delivering music that relies on full orchestration and lyrical repetition, character themes and reprises; there is hardly a pop song in earshot, and barely a hint of the propulsive electronic instrumentation that shapes much of their best work. 

Here, a quick * SPOILER ALERT* for those interested in seeing the film with fresh eyes (as I always say, it is impossible to talk about a film without talking about it):

But transformation through constraint seems to be precisely the point, and ANNETTE absolutely sticks the landing.  In the film’s final sequence, Annette (to this point played by an intentionally artificial puppet) is transformed into real girl (played and sung beautifully by Devyn McDowell) and Driver’s Henry is also transformed into a stand-in for Leos Carax. In an inversion of the finale of PINOCCHIO, Annette becomes a real girl, not because she finally tells the truth, but because her creator does; Henry stops lying to himself at last through his rejection by his daughter. Long in denial of Annette’s full humanity, and seeing her now as a person and no longer as an extension of himself or Ann, he understands that he has created his own isolation all along. Here, the film’s slow moving evolution of Henry into a simulacrum of Carax himself— first the sunglasses, then the hat, and finally the hair, mustache, and world-weary eyes—arrives both visually and in the form of a song (which, for me, was the highlight of the film), a lament between the newly human child and the director’s Geppetto, who at last gets what he always wanted through the act of creation, only to remain in the prison of his own making, watching the only true thing he ever made carried away from him forever.