What is fascinating about the Polanski case is that it is not particularly about Polanski. Looking at the debate raised in France (where I live) and the United States -- in defense of the extradition decision or against it -- it becomes clear that the Polanski affair has become an...

Its violent Spanish history aside, Peru is one of the most gentle countries I have ever visited: from the huge grey ocean over the cliffs of Lima to the quiet green lagoons in the jungle of the Amazon, where I swam with the Shipibo Indians.

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My image of a Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrilla was not a small-framed pretty girl in a jean-jacket, hands bangled in silver rings and white-sparkling nail-polish, with a silver cross hanging down a low-cut t-shirt and high heeled black sandals that evidently cut in her feet (she kept...

Luis, my smiling surfer instructor, has gorgeous tattoos on his arms. One says: "Dios es magia, y Magia es Dios!" I asked him why.

Because the day I walked into the United States, it rained. We had been walking for three days in the desert, and on the fourth...

Last night, in a cool summery taxi ride back to my apartment in Puerto Escondido, my Mexican taxi driver nicely said, "Why do you speak Spanish so well?"

"Because I come here all the time," I said. "And you? Why do you speak English so well?" His English was...

I happened to be sitting in front of Mexican director Carlos Reygadas when his film Battala en Cielo premiered at Cannes, to thunderous applause and a wildly ecstatic standing ovation. The film--a quirky story about a rich girl who plays whore in a brothel and her chauffeur who kidnaps a...

The Dardenne Brothers' latest film The Silence of Lorna probes--as do many of their films-- the underside of humanity: what happens when people are willing to do anything--even kill--to economically survive. Lorna, an Albanian immigrant in Belgium, goes along with a plot to marry (and murder) a heroin addict for...

Arta Dobroshi was a surprise. Dressed in a pretty turquoise sleeveless sweater and jeans, she stepped into the small office on the Thessaloniki pier, where I was to interview her, with a bright pretty smile and fresh eyes, and immediately went to the window and opened it. "My it's hot...

Francis Ford Coppola teared up twice during our interview at Cannes, when discussing his new film Tetro, the story of a young man who adores his fascinating older brother, emigre writer to Argentina, who abandoned him when he was a kid. It turns out that this story is personal to...

Have you ever fantasized about cutting off all ties with everyone you know, quitting your job, selling your home, throwing out your clothes, to then take all your money out of the bank and leave with a feather-light knapsack (and no cell-phone) to live in a foreign country (preferably...

It was the most controversial -- and hated -- film at Cannes this year.

The audience at the premiere press screening of Lars Von Trier's Antichrist booed -- with loud hisses (and a few hoots of laughter). "How dare he show us this!" exclaimed more than a few. The...

Rumor has it that the jury at Cannes was furiously divided this year: actress Isabelle Huppert supposedly in one camp rooting for Lars Von Trier's Anti-Christ and director James Gray in the other, arguing for Jacques Audiard's The Prophet. Yet neither film won the great prize at Cannes: rather...

Michael Haneke's powerful film White Ribbon , which won the top prize at Cannes this year, is as a close to a scientific study in evil as a fiction film can get. The camera travels from one family to another in a stern Protestant village in pre-World War I...

Celebrated Korean director Park Chan-Wook's new film Thirst shared the Jury Prize at Cannes with Andrea Arnold's excellent Fish Tank. To its credit, the film is a fresh cinematographic take on the old vampire theme, with an exciting rhythm and interesting camera-work. However, I was still a bit surprised...

It was my first Johnnie To film -- "Vengeance" -- and I was happy to find it an aesthetic experience. From the first shot of an upper-class mod home in Macao -- designed like a film-set with great white walls -- to the climatic forest shoot-out in the dark, the...

It is a compelling true story: a French convict is released from prison, finds it impossible -- with a prison record -- to get work, and decides to get a highway built instead, by pretending to be a project manager for a construction firm.

At first, French director Xavier...

A desperate broadcaster -- charmingly bubbly and blonde -- grabbed me out of the line to Michael Haneke's new film -- and begged me to give a run-down of the festival for her television station. "Just there!", she said, pointing at a Eurovision sign across the Palais, in exchange for...

Angela Ismailos' Great Directors screened today: a film journey of interviews with a dozen contemporary directors, including David Lynch, Todd Haynes, and Agnes Varda. The most intriguing aspect of the film is the acute variance in how these directors perceive film: for some, film is political (Ken Loach), for...

The story of a depressed postman who finds encouragement from a phantom Eric Cantona (for those not in the know, a famous French soccer player) who visits him in private to buoy up his spirits, Ken Loach's new film is a "crowd-pleaser". While I myself -- preferring more intense dramas...

Filipino director Brilliante Mendoza's new film Kinatay (which means Slaughter) drew me in, I admit, only because of a hallucinatory summer I once spent on Dumaguete Island in the Philippines. Mendoza's film is basically the story of a group of thug policemen who abduct a stripper and torture her...