Daniella Shreir

The call to mobilisation began to spread at the start of September: first on TikTok, then across social media platforms via AI-generated graphics announcing ‘le retour des gilets jaunes’. The date has political resonance: on 17 October 1961, Maurice Papon ordered the Police Nationale to attack Algerians protesting in support of the FLN. This time, graffiti across Paris read: ‘Nous sommes les descendants des Algériens que vous n’avez pas noyés.’

Although she often responded to questions with anecdotes and talked about the role of chance and the necessity of pragmatism, Chantal Akerman was a fine theorist of her own work. She couldn’t understand why she was seen as an ‘intellectual’ filmmaker, but she has left a rich glossary with which to talk about her films. 

Western critics take Jafar Panahi’s ‘banned’ status to mean that he cannot legally make films in Iran, but in fact it means that he can’t work with the state (not that he would want to) or access state funding, and he can’t get a licence to film in public places or screen his films publicly. The festival can be jarringly self-congratulatory, but it also has real power: the decision to include a particular film makes a dissident director into a celebrity, which gives them a level of protection in their home country.